Jay DeFeo
Untitled, 1973

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Untitled
Artist name
Jay DeFeo
Date created
1973
Classification
photograph
Medium
collage with gelatin silver print, paper, and paint on gelatin silver print
Dimensions
10 in. × 8 1/4 in. (25.4 cm × 20.96 cm)
Date acquired
2004
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Purchase through a gift of Robin Wright and the Accessions Committee Fund: gift of Barbara and Gerson Bakar, Shawn and Brook Byers, Jean and James E. Douglas, Jr., Pamela and Richard Kramlich, Mary and Howard Lester, and Nancy and Steven Oliver
Copyright
© The Jay DeFeo Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2004.251
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

How did DeFeo make this?

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NARRATOR: 

DeFeo made this untitled photographic collage in 1973.  

 

COREY KELLER: 

So in this work, you see a photograph that she has made of a rose.  

 

NARRATOR: 

Corey Keller.  

 

KELLER: 

She’s carefully ripped along the contours of the rose’s shape, tearing the photographic paper so that the actual fibers of the paper are exposed. And then she’s glued it onto a second piece of photographic paper, on which you can see a fairly ghostly shape of her hand. The second photograph is a photogram made by placing her hand on the photographic paper and exposing it to light. The hand could refer to herself as a maker. It’s a way of referencing her own intervention in the process. It’s a way of saying, “I was here.” It’s a really economically poetic work. She was a master of saying a great deal with very little. 

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