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Jess: A Grand Collage 1951-1993
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- GenresArtVisual Art
264 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1993
About the author
Michael Auping
65 books2 followersMichael Auping is chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
October 12, 2010
It's almost unfair to give this book a glowing review as it's out of print and shamefully expensive now, but... I can't help myself.
Jess was the life-long companion of the poet Robert Duncan, and was a retiring gentlemanly artist, but who in his own way was terribly radical and contrary and lived far from the conventional currents of his time. He was originally inspired to essentially drop out of society when he had a vision of the world self-destructing by 1975. At the time he was an atomic chemist working to develop weapons systems. He then went to art school during a particularly fertile and propitious time in the history of San Francisco art and education, and threw himself whole hog into the life of a bohemian artist.
His was a deeply romantic sensibility and all of his art is a celebration of the Romantic Imagination in which art is viewed as sophisticated play in which myth and dream are prominent players. He made the largest most complex collages I've ever seen. They sometimes appear to be a single image but are actually composed of thousands of smaller images all arranged in a meticulously associative way. Others can seem nearly abstract at first glance, but once again when looked at are once again composed of thousands of images arranged in a meticulously associative way. He called these works paste-ups, rather than collages for some reason.
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He also did a series of paintings he called Translations which are heavily impastoed usually brilliantly colored images which are direct translations of images from old Scientific Americans or old alchemical engravings or panels from Krazy Kat cartoons, etc. Attached to these are quotes from indirectly related texts. There's something about this series that is I find very profound. I like the interplay between the text and the image, and the obsessive concentration on an image derived from an old source. These paintings have a kind of meditative aura about them. While working on them he wore especially constructed blinders, like those worn by horses, to help facilitate his extreme concentration.
[image error]
Another series of works are called Salvages and are altered thrift store paintings, or modified previously incomplete paintings of his own. These also have texts associated with them, which help to multiply the already multiple meanings of the canvases.
Jess was an inspiring figure and a potential example for anyone who feels inclined to reside mainly in the cosmos of his/her own peculiar and particular imagination.
Jess was the life-long companion of the poet Robert Duncan, and was a retiring gentlemanly artist, but who in his own way was terribly radical and contrary and lived far from the conventional currents of his time. He was originally inspired to essentially drop out of society when he had a vision of the world self-destructing by 1975. At the time he was an atomic chemist working to develop weapons systems. He then went to art school during a particularly fertile and propitious time in the history of San Francisco art and education, and threw himself whole hog into the life of a bohemian artist.
His was a deeply romantic sensibility and all of his art is a celebration of the Romantic Imagination in which art is viewed as sophisticated play in which myth and dream are prominent players. He made the largest most complex collages I've ever seen. They sometimes appear to be a single image but are actually composed of thousands of smaller images all arranged in a meticulously associative way. Others can seem nearly abstract at first glance, but once again when looked at are once again composed of thousands of images arranged in a meticulously associative way. He called these works paste-ups, rather than collages for some reason.
[image error]
He also did a series of paintings he called Translations which are heavily impastoed usually brilliantly colored images which are direct translations of images from old Scientific Americans or old alchemical engravings or panels from Krazy Kat cartoons, etc. Attached to these are quotes from indirectly related texts. There's something about this series that is I find very profound. I like the interplay between the text and the image, and the obsessive concentration on an image derived from an old source. These paintings have a kind of meditative aura about them. While working on them he wore especially constructed blinders, like those worn by horses, to help facilitate his extreme concentration.
[image error]
Another series of works are called Salvages and are altered thrift store paintings, or modified previously incomplete paintings of his own. These also have texts associated with them, which help to multiply the already multiple meanings of the canvases.
Jess was an inspiring figure and a potential example for anyone who feels inclined to reside mainly in the cosmos of his/her own peculiar and particular imagination.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review