January 05, 2021 at 2:01pm
Megagallery Gagosian has closed its San Francisco outpost after just four years and is instead seeking to elevate its profile in Los Angeles, where it recently struck a deal to occupy space in the former Marciano Museum, where it is to begin programming early this year. The addition complements its established Beverly Hills outpost. “To consolidate and strengthen Gagosian’s presence in California, we are concentrating our efforts based in Los Angeles, for the time being,” said the gallery in a statement.
Gagosian s Bay Area gallery, which opened in 2016 on Howard Street across from the newly renovated San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, hosted shows by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood, and Jay DeFeo, among others, and partnered with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Parks Conservancy to install two large-scale sculptures by Giuseppe Penone at Fort Mason, where they remain on view through March of this year
Blooming Brilliance on a Grand Scale
Jay DeFeo’s monumental ‘The Rose’ weighed 2,300 pounds when completed. By Peter Plagens Jan. 1, 2021 7:00 am ET
Some artists are identified with a single work. With Leonardo da Vinci it’s the Mona Lisa, with Grant Wood it’s “American Gothic.” Which brings us to Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) and her strange, huge sculptural painting, “The Rose” (1958-66).
DeFeo was one of those lucky kids whose talent and enthusiasm for art was noticed early on by a high-school teacher; in her case it was Lena Emery in San Jose, Calif. The mentoring led to museum visits in San Francisco and, eventually, a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a grant for a trip to Europe and North Africa. In 1954 she married Wally Hedrick, one of the weirder of the many weird Bay Area artists, and set up shop in a large second-floor space on Fillmore Street in jazz- and beatnik-infused San Franci