BWW Reviews: Whitney Museum's DeFeo Exhibit a Ton Worth Seeing

Jay DeFeo's "The Rose" 1958-1966

The Whitney Museum's Jay DeFeo exhibition runs through June 2. You'll want to see a ton of the " The Rose" and more before it leaves to get a glimpse of this complicated and diverse artist.

What I discovered was not the mesmerizing ideal form she must have felt she found in her most famous artwork, 'The Rose', the heavy weight of her career. Instead, I discovered Jay the artists, a great photographer, a master at collage and a talented progressive jewelry worker ahead of her time.

Jay DeFeo "Brooch," copper, pearl, wire, beads (1953-54)

Playful, free and fun are words that come to mind when seeing DeFeo's jewelry. Her use of social detritus, of discarded objects and 'junk' make the work socially significant. This is high art with low materials that convey the beauty in simplicity and everything.

Alexander Calder

It is hard to think of anyone else but Calder who has done such moving and serene works in bent wire. These are graceful free-formed pieces that speak of natural forms and flow. In comparison Calder's work almost seems simple and constrained. Calder seems limited by his stylized repetitive forms and predictable shapes. On the other hand, DeFeo reaches a level of sophistication in her work due to the differences and micro manutia combined in her natural non-idealized forms.

Sara Sze Tara Donovan

Her work is akin in temperment to the current works of the two contemporary leaders Sara Sze and Tara Donovan albeit it on a small scale in 1954.

Jay Defeo's cabinets filled with treats and Wayne Thiebaud's "Candies"

Her cabinet filled with tasty ice cream treat predates Wayne Thebeaud's painting and Damian Hirst's cabinet works. She has made eye candy (eye ice cream and dessert to be more precise) both repulsive and iconic. The images are removed from their soda fountain bar top and offered as faux treats that makes us questions our taste and ideas of beauty. Her arrangement of the objects on shelve in a glass case predates efforts by artist like Damian Hirst who ideally, logically and very cleanly lay out and preserve their art world as if it is in a hypo-allergic hyper clean safe environment.

Damian Hirst "Still" Jeff Koons 1 Basketball/Tank

DeFeo's box is not going for a clean space for a vacuum or a basketball as a Koon's tries to achieve when he is not cleaning or shooting hoops. Instead, Defeo plops the objects in to set them off, to preserve that which we cannot preserve and that we would not want to. Yes, I would be happy with a brake the glass incase of emergency Ice cream Sundae but there is something ugly, raw and perverse that would make me second guess a quick bite of her treats.

Her skill as a photographer is obvious in many of the Silver Gelatin prints on view. She is able to bring something unique and different, something of meaning and a surreal twist to her subjects. Her collages challenge the viewer.

In her tiny photographs you sense her concern for repeated patterns, for the subtle changes and movements that makes the mundane interesting and yields a photograph worth studying. There is an appreciation for the casual nuances that happen randomly and sense how her jewelry work is related to her photography. Even the wrong turns in "The Rose" are all right here in the thick flowing random yet balanced forms.

Still from Chaplin's "The Dictator" and Defeo's "The Rose" unplucked from SF.CA

What of the famous 'The Rose," indeed the whole reason for the show? 'The Rose' left me wondering did DeFeo take a wrong turn.

She seems to have focused in on the absolute form, the end all of form, the light, the enlightening, one line to rule them all.

What do you get-None of this.

Later that night I watched Charlie Chaplin's "The dictator." In one scene Chaplin stands in front of his desk as a Hitler like ruler. Behind his desk is a large painting prominently placed and oversized and one that looks remarkable like "The Rose." It's both funny and sad that the set decorators and the director represented the obsessive ruler and his head strong vision with an image so much like 'The Rose."

I do respect DeFeo's effort's in "The Rose" and can relate but in the end you get a maniacal myopic view of perspective lines heading to a one point vanishing line. They raise and grow from the canvas. Her obsession with this form plays out in her later works and leaves a dull ending to an otherwise exciting diverse display of a great artists range of challenging art at the forefront of the aesthetic if not the cash register.

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