The Whitney Museum in New York houses one of the world's foremost collections of modern and contemporary American art.
Jay DeFeo inscribed the back of her painting The Eyes with this stanza from a contemporaneous poem by Philip Lamantia. The artist used the first line as the full title of the work for several years before it became known simply as The Eyes.
The Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective exhibition catalogue—the first comprehensive monograph of her work—is available at the Whitney Shop. The book was recently featured in The New York Times.
In conjunction with his event SYNONYM FOR UNTITLED, artist Andrew Lampert designed a limited-edition set of seven postcards featuring photographs taken behind the scenes at the Whitney. To purchase, visit the Museum Shop while supplies last.
This Friday, experience an immersive evening of live performance and culinary invention at SYNONYM FOR UNTITLED. Untitled chef Chris Bradley will prepare a tasting menu based on a grocery list created by artist Andrew Lampert, which makes associative pairings between artists in the Whitney’s collection and culinary ingredients. The evening will also feature contributions from poet Mónica de la Torre, cellist Okkyung Lee, and violinist C. Spencer Yeh. Visit whitney.org for more information.
Christina Ramberg (1946–1995), Istrian River Lady, 1974. Acrylic on composition board, overall: 34 1/2 × 30 1/4in. (87.6 × 76.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Frederic M. Roberts in memory of their son, James Reed Roberts 74.12. Image (C) Whitney Museum of American Art, courtesy the Estate of Christina Ramberg; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
I always take something out of my pictures. I strip the design to the essentials.
— American painter Milton Avery, who was born today in 1885.
We’re thrilled to introduce the latest iteration of Sunrise/Sunset, launching this evening. goodmorning goodnight by JODI explores visual and textual representations of the sun’s trajectory in an online environment. The project premieres tonight at 5:52 pm (EST) on whitney.org.
Overlaid on a grid of latitudes and longitudes of the area surrounding the Whitney Museum are location-specific images of sunsets and sunrises culled from Panoramino, a photo sharing website. Viewers can follow the sun’s visual path in different locations around Manhattan superimposed with text via livedash.
JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans), or Jodi.org, started pioneering Web art in 1994. Based in the Netherlands, they were among the first artists to investigate and subvert conventions of the internet, computer programs, and video and computer games.
Join us this Thursday evening for Greil Marcus: Jay DeFeo and All that Jazz, as the author and critic discusses Jay DeFeo’s stylistic inventions, physical processes, and improvisational approach to materials. As Marcus argues, “in the deepest, fiercest, and most playful moments of her work, Jay DeFeo’s work was jazz,” too. Get your tickets now.
Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), Dove One, 1989. Oil on linen, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8). Collection of Dan and Claire Carlevaro. © 2013 The Jay DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Ben Blackwell
This Wednesday, Blues for Smoke curator Bennett Simpson discusses the vitality and innovation at the core of the blues tradition as a major catalyst for experimentation within modern and contemporary art. Get your tickets now.
Jack Whitten (b. 1939), Black Table Setting (Homage to Duke Ellington), 1974. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 60 inches. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Purchase with funds provided by Jack Drake and Joel and Karen Piassick
© 2013 The Jay DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photograph by M. Lee Fatherree
Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective, opens today at the Whitney and features nearly 150 of DeFeo’s works, many of which will be exhibited for the first time. The show traces motifs and themes the artist examined throughout her career in drawings, photographs, collages, jewelry, and the monumental paintings for which she is best known. The exhibition is organized by Dana Miller, curator of the permanent collection at the Whitney, and will be on view in the fourth-floor Emily Fisher Landau Galleries through June 2, 2013.
Always eager to work with new media, DeFeo began to explore photography. A 1973 National Endowment for the Arts grant allowed her to buy a medium-format camera and install a darkroom in her home. She incorporated her photographs into highly inventive collages. These works, much like her paintings and drawings, were the result of an iterative process of building an image, breaking it down, and then reworking it again. This open-ended and labor intensive process, which the artist described as a “cliff-hanging experience,” allowed for highly expressionistic forms and an astonishing range of surfaces.
American guitarist Gary Clark Jr. discusses what the blues means to him as a young contemporary artist who possesses a radiating blues sensibility. Blues for Smoke is on view at the Whitney Museum through April 28.
Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective—”which is as tenderly shaped and as visually stirring as a career survey could possibly be” (The New York Times)—opens today.
Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), The Rose, 1958–66. Oil with wood and mica on canvas, 128 7/8 × 92 1/4 × 11 in. (327.3 × 234.3 × 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the Estate of Jay DeFeo and purchase with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation 95.170. © 2013 The Jay DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Ben Blackwell
Only by chancing the ridiculous can I hope for the sublime.
— Jay DeFeo. Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective opens tomorrow.
Catch our ad the next time you’re waiting to catch your train! Blues for Smoke is on view through April 28.
Weighing nearly one ton, The Rose by Jay DeFeo is one of the most complicated works in the Whitney’s collection to install. On February 15, the work was installed at the Whitney Museum as part of the exhibition Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective (opening February 28). The work arrived in New York from California, where the Whitney’s exhibition had finished a successful run at SFMOMA. Photographer Paula Court documented the installation that day from start to finish.
