DeFeo & Johns
Now, I do understand that museum exhibits are not competitions and painting is not a contact sport. That being said and on the basis of their career-spanning shows at SFMOMA, Jay DeFeo wiped the floor with Jasper Johns. She was simply a better painter than he is.
Last Sunday was cold and four of us went to to see what all the shouting was about on 3rd Street. The early reviews, especially in the Chronicle, had spent most of the ink on Jasper Johns, I suppose because he is a bigger name and still alive. From the writeup I was expecting a small show for Jay, maybe one room. But what we found was an extensive life review of Jay’s work. ( My usage of DeFeo’s first name will become clear.)
Starting with her school and jewelry pieces, the curator of Jay’s show walked us through her life in art. It was in this first room that pieces of my own very early history came. Standing in front of the display of Jay’s jewelry, I saw an earring I remember her wearing. For those of you who’ve seen the show, it is the wire piece in the shape of a treble clef.
My parents were friends with Jay DeFeo and Wally Hedrick. My father, Robert Jenkins, went to school with Wally and there is at least one Sierra Madrean who still calls him “Wally Bill.” I don’t remember Jay and Wally coming over to our place on Hayes, three blocks from the Park (don’t make that face, it was 1958/60 and the rent was cheap), though they may have; I was a little kid so things that happened at home were normal. I do remember going over to their place, a second-floor flat in what I understand is a known address. (Hayward King lived in the same building.) There were always paintings stacked in the ground floor hall on the left of the stairs.
There is a big photograph of Jay working on “The Rose” in the SFMOMA show. On the edges of the picture you can see the doorways of the kitchen on the right and the front room on the left. The adults would sit at the kitchen table and visit while my sister and I would settle down in the bedroom, she reading and me restless until I fell asleep. Wally put a leather-seated swing in the doorway between the bedroom (the old dining room) and the front room. He let me swing on it a little. The original bedroom was Jay’s studio.
One more memory, just to tell you what a sweet woman she was. For Valentine’s Day one year, Jay filled cardboard hearts with Conversational Sweeties for my sister and me. She also included Avon testers of lipstick and nail polish. I don’t think my mother appreciated the gift but I loved it.
By the time you leave the first room of Jay’s show, you understand that she was a monochromaticist. Primarily she worked in shades of black on white canvas. And in the series she called “Veronicas,” there are various shades of brown. One of them is in the biggest room of the show. Motion in two dimensions is Jay’s genius and it is manifest in almost all of her mature work. There are three monumental sculpted paintings that sing that genius. All I will say about her most famous work, “The Rose,” is that I finally understand why it lives at the Whitney. I was not prepared for its effect on me. No photograph can describe it. You really must go see it.
Unlike the curator of this show, I will not tell you what Jay meant by “The Jewel.” To these eyes, it looks like a monstrance. It is made all the more compelling by the broken rays that seem to be bleeding. The cross at its center is pushing forward, toward the observer. The other paint sculpture on the same wall as “The Jewel” is the mind-altering image named “Incision.” From the same period (1958-66) as the other paint sculptures, “Incision” looks for all the world like a topographical map of the San Andreas Fault. Sculpted primarily in black lead paint, augmented with lead white and string, this piece is completely involving. Or is my response because I love maps?
Lead paint, she sculpted in lead paint. In search of the three dimensional image, Jay put her health in jeopardy. There were a couple of paintings referencing her gum disease and subsequent dental work from the early 1970’s. Jay breathed lead paint fumes for ten years. And she smoked (like everybody else). These sculpture/paintings taught her eye how to make three-dimensional depth on a flat surface. Her later paintings manifest the lessons she learned from the sculpture, and it was a hard lesson. Her photographs and collages are wonderful but the paintings are my favorites.
It might be noted that I’m not writing about Jasper Johns. He is more famous and less interesting than Jay. It was informative, nay, surprising to see these shows side by side. Having seen one, two or maybe a room of Johns, I did wonder what I was missing. This is the great Jasper Johns, why don’t I care more? Having seen the whole retrospective at SFMOMA, what I missed was the passion of the artist. Johns is a mechanic, and I ain’t talking Smokey Yunick. For Johns, process is all, with no final statement. Maybe he never wants to finish. Whatever he is up to, it leaves me cold. Art, among so many other things, is a conversation between the artist and the observer. Jasper Johns speaks a language that I don’t.
This review is way too late. The DeFeo show will close on February 3rd. When I saw Duane on Tuesday, he a great fan of Johns, I simply said, “You have to go and see. There are only two weeks left.” Jay was lovely and very kind. But that is the memory of a little girl. What I saw last Sunday was the life of an artist in all of her depth and glory.
