Jay DeFeo, The Rat Bastard

The Rat Bastard Protective Association was an artist collective in San Francisco in the 1950s–1960s. Members included Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman, Joan Brown, Art Grant, David Haselwood, Alvin Light, Fred Martin, Michael McClure, Manuel Neri, Bob Branaman, Carlos Villa, and Jay DeFeo.

Jay DeFeo's signature work is a painting called The Rose, formerly titled Deathrose and The White Rose. 

It's a 128 x 92 inch monstrosity that originally weighed around 1,850 pounds. After adding steel reinforcements and supports to the framing, it now weighs around 3,050 pounds. Whoa! It took a total of seven years to complete although her process which is less painterly than sculptural included scrapping the paint down to the canvas and starting over numerous times. Along with house paint, her materials list includes wood scraps, stones, beads, wire, mica, and pearls.

Jay working on her masterpiece.

Six years into the process she was evicted from her apartment and had to have it transported to the Pasadena Art Museum for storage where she continued to work on it. The moving company had to cut a hole in her apartment wall and lift it out.

See Jay out on the ledge in black watching.

It was purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1992 after sitting in storage for nearly thirty years.

Why am I writing a post on a California artist from the 1960s?

I think working on your life's masterpiece for seven years and then sending it way must be traumatic anyway, but she became very depressed and disappeared from the art scene for three years. I read the whole time she was working on the Deathrose (aptly named), the lead (white) paint was making her very sick to the point where her teeth were falling out! She was painting it in her studio which also functioned as her apartment, breathing it day in and day out. It probably took three years for all the toxins to clear from her body and I'm sure she spent much of that time in bed sleeping or in the bathroom puking. She died from lung cancer.

I think there are far more stories about chemically-sensitive artists than we know. Entertainment that is deadly. I guess I should re-think my house paint paintings, but I've tried and I can't stop myself.

I should write a book about this...