Jess
1923–2004
A San Francisco Bay Area artist who came to prominence working alongside artists and writers of the Beat Generation in the 1950s, Jess (Collins) created figurative paintings with a literary sensibility. Trained as a chemist, he worked on producing plutonium for the Manhattan Project during World War II before dropping his surname and enrolling at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where he studied under painters Clyfford Still, Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, and David Park. His long-term romantic partnership with Beat poet Robert Duncan, whom he met in 1951, served as great artistic inspiration; the two often collaborated, with Jess’s artwork accompanying Duncan’s poems.
Jess is known for his collages, which he referred to as “paste-ups,” a term that references the media and advertising culture of the time. Tricky Cad, Case 1, in which individual panels from Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy comic strips have been cut up and rearranged, is an early paste-up that references Pop art, Dada collage, and the experimental cut-up poetry that William Burroughs would produce later in the 1950s. Jess reordered the plots and relettered the dialogue of the comics, but made no additions. As the original narrative breaks down, a strange poetry emerges. In an introduction to the series, Jess referred to the project as “a demonstration of a hermetic critique self-contained in popular art.” This critique, however, is infused with a playful sensibility. Jess transforms the deconstructed comic strip into a riddle that demonstrates the unexpected potential for poetics in pop culture.
Introduction
Jess Collins (August 6, 1923 – January 2, 2004), simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.
Wikidata identifier
Q4228019
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 12, 2025.
Introduction
Known for his distinctive paintings and layered collages that he called "paste-ups." His collages, typically large-scale, included fragments of magazine photographs, old engravings and illustrations, and jigsaw puzzle pieces. His paintings were both narrative and abstract. For his series entitled "Salvages," Jess painted over found canvases as well as his own, older paintings. In 1993 to 1994, there was a retrospective exhibition entitled "Jess: A Grand Collage" at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo; it travelled to New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. He was the companion of the poet Robert Duncan from 1951 until Duncan's death in 1988.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, chemist, collagist, painter, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500030886
Names
Jess, Burgess Collins, Jess Collins, Burgess Jess Collins
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 12, 2025.
