Greil Marcus: Jay DeFeo and All That Jazz November 5, 2012

Noted author and cultural critic Greil Marcus will discuss the work of Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo (1929-1989). DeFeo was part of a vibrant community of avant-garde artists, poets, and musicians in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s, and was a faculty member at Mills College in the 1980s. Although best known for her monumental painting The Rose, DeFeo worked in a wide range of media and produced an astoundingly diverse and compelling body of work over four decades. Her unconventional approach to materials and her intensive, physical method make her a unique figure in postwar American art.

Greil Marcus is a contributor to the exhibition catalogue accompanyingJay DeFeo: A Retrospective, on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from November 3, 2012 to February 3, 2013. He is the author ofLipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, The Dustbin of History, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n Roll Music, The Manchurian Candidate: BFI Film Classics, The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, and most recently, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years. With Werner Sollors, Marcus is the editor of A New Literary History of America, published by Harvard in 2009. He lives in Oakland, CA.

Presented by the Jane Green Endowment for Studies in Art History and Criticism.