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Bruce Conner and Painterland

By Peggy Roalf   Thursday September 8, 2016

Bruce Conner, the Bay Area artist whose work is currently on view at MoMA, was probably the most important mid-century American artist you are not aware of. He was the center of an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists called The Rat Bastard Protective Association, a group of artists who lived and worked in a building they dubbed Painterland, located in the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco in the 1950s.

The artists who counted themselves among the Rat Bastards—including Joan Brown, JayDeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Michael McClure, and Manuel Neri—exhibited a unique fusion of radicalism, provocation, and community. Geographically isolated from a viable art market and refusing to conform to institutional expectations that were the norm on the East Coast, they animated broader social and artistic discussions through their work and became a transformative part of American culture over time.

 

In Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association [University of California Press 2016], Anastasia Aukeman presents an insightful account of these artists and their circle, a colorful cultural milieu that intersected with the broader Beat scene. The book comes to life through new and little-known material Aukeman uncovered during archival research and conversations with members of the group, including Conner’s wife, Jean, also an artist.

With more than 100 photographs, many of them snapshots of the artists at work and at play--in addition to the many images of their artworks--the style of the times becomes a vivid participant in the narrative. In one of the most dramatic scenes, Jay DeFeo observes the removal of her seminal work, The Rose (now in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art). On the last day the artists occupied Painterland, the huge work was hoisted by crane from DeFeo’s second floor apartment as she watched on from a fire escape. Above:  Bekins Moving & Storage workers remove The Rose from Jay DeFeo’s home and studio at 2322 Fillmore Street, November 9, 1965. Courtesy of the Jay DeFeo Foundation, Berkeley.

Row 1: Jerry Burchard, contact sheet prints, ca. 1958-59. (From left): Wally Hedrick at His Fillmore Street Loft; Stairwell of 2322 Fillmore Street; Jay DeFeo at her Fillmore Street Loft. Row 2: Jerry Burchard, contact sheet prints, ca. 1958-59. (From left): Jay DeFeo in the Kitchen at 2322 Fillmore Street; Wally Hedrick Making Beer at 2322 Fillmore Street; Jay DeFeo Gazing out the Window of Her Fillmore Street Loft.

In a recent post on the UC Press Blog, Aukeman told of a meeting with Conner that took place about sixteen years ago.

As  Bruce Conner and I were leaving his favorite restaurant in San Francisco, we began talking about the Rat Bastard Protective Association. I had been working with Bruce for about three years by that time, as director of the art gallery that represented him in New York City, and had already mounted the show “Dead Punks and Ashes” for the gallery, of Conner’s photos and photocopy collages that memorialize punk rockers from his Mabuhay Garden days in the late 1970s….Now I wanted to know more about his early career.

“Perhaps we could do a show of your  assemblages,” I told him, pronouncing the word with a French inflection. He stopped in his tracks and shot me a withering look. “Assemblage?” He practically spat the word. “Assemblage? This is not France. San Francisco is not the Paris of the West. It’s assemblage. Here, we say assemblage.” For someone who didn’t know Bruce, the outburst might have ended the conversation. But I had learned that his impatience often stemmed from the frustration of having his work misinterpreted, so I simply made a mental note of the correction and charged on.

The feature continues with Conner’s remarks on his influences and the importance of the Rat Bastard Protective Association, founded in 1957, whose story parallels the subversive beginnings of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. [More]

Left: Bruce Conner. Bombhead. 1989. Collage of found illustration and photocopy. Courtesy Conner Family Trust and the Museum of Modern Art.  © 2016 Bruce Conner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Anastasia Aukeman is an art historian and curator who teaches at Parsons School of Design in New York City. She will be signing copies of Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association  next Tuesday, September 13, 7 pm, at 192 Books; 192 Tenth Avenue, NY, NY. Info Info

On September 23, Anastasia will be a featured speaker in the Bruce Conner Symposium at the Museum of Modern Art. 11 West 53rd Street, NY, NY Info

Dr. Aukeman is also curator of The Rat Bastard Protective Association,  opening at the Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, October 1s, 2016. Info

Bruce Conner: It’s All True, continues at MoMA through October 2. 11 West 53rd Street, NY, NY Info The exhibition will open at SFMOMA on October 29th. Info PRreview

 


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