America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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Jack Smith’s film Scotch Tape takes its name from something almost invisible and unintentional—a shadow in the lower right corner, caused by a piece of cellophane tape that got caught in the camera while Smith was filming. By titling his work after this bit of detritus, Smith underscores his embrace of accident and the real world’s intrusion into art. Many of the artists represented in this chapter shared in this omnivorous attitude, and their work features extensive use of nontraditional materials, often scavenged in junk shops and along city streets. There are assemblages including bits of burned paper, deconstructed furniture, comics, conveyor belts, newsprint, and a stuffed pheasant. Even the paintings and other works in more traditional mediums appear built up or perhaps excavated from the base stuff of the world.

These works were made at a time of great postwar prosperity, when widespread material excess and consumption existed as never before in human history. Yet the planned obsolescence of mass-produced goods led to more and more junk, and the booming economy was inextricably linked to the military-industrial complex and a daily life informed by the simmering tensions of the Cold War. Under these circumstances, making art from castoffs and embracing chance could be seen as a way of resisting the norms of postwar American consumer society. That challenge manifests itself differently in the various works on view in this chapter, whether through irony, perversity, humor, hermeticism, creative intensity or refusal, shamanic ritual, or material transformation.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

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Jay DeFeo, who emerged as part of a vibrant community of artists, poets, and musicians active in San Francisco in the 1950s, worked on this monumental painting for nearly eight years. She later described The Roseas “a marriage between painting and sculpture.” Built almost entirely from thick layers of paint—supported in some cases by wooden dowels—the work weighs more than 1,500 pounds. DeFeo made it using a laborious process of building up, carving back, and repainting. Her original idea was simply to produce a painting that had a center. Over the ensuing years, she extended its length and width, and worked and reworked the painting stylistically. In the end, The Rose had to be removed from her second-story studio through a partially dismantled window using a forklift.

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America Is Hard to See

Scotch Tape

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JAY DEFEO (1929-1989), THE ROSE, 1958-66

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America Is Hard to See

Scotch Tape

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JAY DEFEO (1929-1989), THE ROSE, 1958-66

Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection