{"data":{"id":"3946","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":3946,"topgoose_id":2359,"tms_id":3946,"display_name":"Jay DeFeo","sort_name":"DeFeo Jay","display_date":"1929–1989","begin_date":"1929","end_date":"1989","biography":"\u003cp\u003eJay DeFeo came to the fore as part of a vibrant community of avant-garde artists, poets, and musicians active in San Francisco in the mid-1950s, a moment often referred to as the Beat era. A number of significant visual concerns can be traced throughout her forty-year career: a primarily geometric vocabulary of key shapes and symbols; the presence of a centrally located form or image; an emphasis on surface texture; and a tension between compositional order and a sensuous response to her materials.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDeFeo’s monumental and now legendary painting \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/10075\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Rose\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e simultaneously connotes the centrifugal patterns of flora and the fissures of geologic formations in a stunning composition that has been estimated to weigh more than 1,500 pounds, with the paint measuring as much as eleven inches thick in places. After spending nearly eight years completing this work, DeFeo took a hiatus from art making. When she resumed her artistic practice in the early 1970s she employed acrylic paint—rather than lead-based oils—and focused on depicting items from her immediate surroundings. \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/18045\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCrescent Bridge II\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e literally represents a dental bridge composed of her own teeth and replacements for those she had lost to periodontal disease. Courting a sense of mystery, DeFeo rendered the tooth forms in a scale and manner that recall a dramatic mountain range or lunar landscape. Figuratively, this image and its pendant, \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/16507\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eCrescent Bridge I\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, symbolize a transition period in her career and personal life.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the early 1970s DeFeo also began experimenting with photography. For her \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/25557\"\u003eseries of pictures\u003c/a\u003e made on and titled for the birthday of \u003ca href=\"/artists/t4805\"\u003eSalvador Dalí\u0026nbsp;\u003c/a\u003eshe worked without the mediation of a lens or a negative, manipulating the photographic chemicals as they ran across the surface of the photographic paper. The resulting images share not just the compositional aspects of her paintings but their spontaneity and expressive volatility as well.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"gray\"\u003eDana Miller and Adam D. Weinberg, \u003ca href=\"https://shop.whitney.org/products/whitney-handbook-of-the-collection\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHandbook of the Collection\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2015), 113–114.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":true,"artport":false,"biennial":false,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500112022","wikidata_id":"Q15522104","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:19:46.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-30T07:01:56.990-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/3946/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/3946/exhibitions"}}}}