Interview with Jay De Feo
Conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom
At the Artist's home in Larkspur, California
June 3, 1975
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Jay De Feo on June 3, 1975. The interview took place in Larkspur, CA, and was conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Interview
PAUL KARLSTROM: What I'd like to do today in our conversation is lay in some biographical information about your background and your personal experiences. One of the outstanding experiences of your life, of course, was all the time and effort devoted to The Rose, your major painting. But I thought what we could do today is save The Rose for a second interview and really talk about Jay and the events leading up to that very important experience. So what I'd like to ask first of all is for you to give some biographical information, especially as it might tie in with your later career as an artist. Obviously, when you were only a couple of years old you can't remember anything that was art-oriented.
JAY DE FEO: Oh, yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, you can? Well, that's good. Well, you were born in Hanover, right?
JAY DE FEO: Yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Hanover, New Hampshire in 1929 (the year of the Crash). And I see that you moved to the San Francisco area in 1931. Where do you want to start?
JAY DE FEO: Okay. Just a factual background, then. When I was born, my father was going to medical school at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. I lived there, I guess, for about 3 years. And I still have memories of that period, the place where we lived, the landscape and what have you.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Have you ever been back since:?
JAY DE FEO: No, I haven't. I was back East briefly on my way to Europe after I'd graduated from the University of California, but never to New Hampshire.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But basically you really are, except for those first few years, a Californian.
JAY DE FEO: I'm a Westerner, right. (Laughter) Or even a Middle Westerner, because I did spend a lot of my childhood in Colorado, too.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, I didn't know that. After your family moved to . . .
JAY DE FEO: If you really want things that I recall, I was a first child born to a student of Dartmouth. Eleazar Wheelock (sic) (Ernest Martin Hopkins), as I recall, was the president of the school at the time. That name has always been a kind of outstanding one in my memory. I was presented with a perambulator on that occasion. Supposedly, it was quite an event, considering what has gone on at college campuses since. Anyway, we lived there for the first three years, and I do have personal memories of living with my parents there. Then we moved back to California, and my father continued to go to school. He went both to the University of California as well as Stanford. It was kind of a difficult time, especially because of the Depression. My grandmother had three sons, and no one could really find work at that time. My mother was one of the main sources of support. She was doing a great deal towards sending my father through school.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Were your grandparents, or at least one set of grandparents, here in California?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. And my mother's parents lived in Colorado. My parents didn't get along and kind of broke up when I was at an early age. Partly because of a personality conflict and also because of other difficulties.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Maybe the pressures of medical school?
JAY DE FEO: The pressures of the time, that was a good part of it. And I don't want to go into all the personal differences between mother and her mother-in-law. A good part of my childhood was spent living with members of the family other than my actual parents. And I lived with my grandmother a great deal in California.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That was in San Francisco?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. And also I lived with my mother's parents in Colorado during the summertime.
PAUL KARLSTROM: So those were the schizophrenic days, the city Jay and the country Jay.
JAY DE FEO: Right. And, well, I think possibly I made a kind of a joke out of that. I suppose it did have an influence on me. Everything does.
PAUL KARLSTROM: How do you think it did? You say you joke about a sort of schizophrenia.
JAY DE FEO: Well I did. (Laughter)
PAUL KARLSTROM: Two personalities?
JAY DE FEO: Well, you said when we were having lunch together that Wally commented on me being a funky girl. That might have been my Colorado bringing-up.
PAUL KARLSTROM: All those pigs and horses.
JAY DE FEO: I think also later I was influenced by the two kinds of painting which I'm interested in, or which I consciously or unconsciously tried to resolve in my own work.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What are they?
JAY DE FEO: A kind of a classic style, if you wish, for lack of a better word. I don't want to think of it as a sophisticated style necessarily. But something that's classic in nature, influenced by the Renaissance.
PAUL KARLSTROM: More formal?
JAY DE FEO: Formal, right. I'm not happy unless I've got that. But at the same time something that is essentially either funky or primitive. Putting it another way, a very close relationship to the use of the materials and my relationship to the process of painting. But that's progressing way into the future. Let's try to stick to this little bit.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Good! I'm supposed to tell you that. (Laughter) Well, let me ask one other thing about your early years growing up. I gather then that you weren't with either one of your parents most of the time.
JAY DE FEO: Part of the situation there was one of health. I kind of fell heir to a whole bunch of childhood diseases, simultaneously, which put me in a very weakened condition. And my mother, who was also going through a terrible strain with her relationship to the family and whatever, became ill, too. Now, I was put into Stanford Rest Home for about a year.
PAUL KARLSTROM: How old were you then?
JAY DE FEO: I was still pre-school.
PAUL KARLSTROM: About four?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. Five maybe. And that was a partial isolation from the family. My mother fell ill, too. As a result of that, after I got out of the rest home, they wanted me to be separated from her. You know, there might be some kind of contagious effect. In fact, I was put in for that reason, too, because they thought for a while that my mother might be tubercular, which turned out not to be the case. But we were separated for that reason for quite a while. And my mother was sent back to Colorado which was considered to be a better climate for her condition. After she came back, and I finally got out of the rest home, there were other circumstances in the family that caused my father and mother to split up. Consequently I lived a good deal with my grandmother, and with my grandparents in Colorado. After my father finally graduated from medical school (which I can still remember -- I think it was from Stanford). We are still in the Depression years, or post-Depression years. He worked at -- I think it was called the 3C Camps. That stands for Civil Service if I'm not mistaken. I don't know exactly. But it was a program that Roosevelt instigated to stimulate the economy.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And employ the unemployed.
JAY DE FEO: Right, right. Anyway, he became a physician that traveled around with the worker groups in these camps. Consequently we lived in may places in Northern California. my mother and I more or less camped in a kind of small town close to the camp where he was in residence. He was separated from us a good deal of the time. And, due to his job during the early years in the 30's, we lived in a number of small places in Northern California: Alturas, Dunsmuir, Cedarsville, Red Bluff, to name a few. Many of them.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Obviously your parents were still together at that time?
JAY DE FEO: Ah, yes and no. As I say, they never got along. I don't know if it was impossible for them to be together, or if it was just a question of convenience. Daddy could never be home. But, at any rate, somewhere along the line my father fell very much in love with another woman and was living with her. He was living two kinds of existences simultaneously. It was a long time before I ever found about this. Even my mother found out about it. Eventually she discovered that things were being charged on the family account. Things like baby clothes and so forth and so on, which she had absolutely no knowledge of. And my father isn't, I guess, a very careful person in some ways. However, it all ended in a complete split. But my mother left it to my father to explain the details to me, which he finally did when I was about 12 years old. We finally settled down, my mother and I. My father and my mother having divorced each other, we moved to San Jose where I started junior high school and where I finally spent a few years in one place with a single parent at least. And my father by this time had married the woman, and is still married to her. It's been a reasonably happy marriage, I should say. He's a very difficult person, but she's the kind of a saint that can put up with him. (Laughter) I have two half sisters and one half brother.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you have any natural brothers and sisters?
JAY DE FEO: No. My family is a very small one. I suppose it might be just interesting for the record to say, too, that my father is Italian and my mother came from German and Austrian parentage. And again, too, just as an interesting contrast, my split existence, as you say, was quite a different one in terms of environment. In San Francisco (this is a strange irony; I've never been able to figure this out), in spite of the Depression, I had nurses and there was a maid in the house which I've never been able to understand.
PAUL KARLSTROM: This was your grandmother's house?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. The grandmother on my father's side. On the maternal side, it was really down home living, without plumbing, electricity, or even running water.
PAUL KARLSTROM: The wealthy Italians and the poor German/Austrians.
JAY DE FEO: This was, oddly enough, part of the problem between my parents. I only get what they tell me. I was really pulled apart during this period as far as my loyalties were concerned, to tell you the truth. My mother was always made to feel conscious of the fact, somehow, or at least to her way of thinking, that she came from an inferior kind of stock. I can't explain it in any other terms except through my experiences of what her reactions were to this. And, on the other hand, on my father's side, I think they had some kind of pretenses about, as many Italians do, keeping up with the Jones's and doing them one better. I think he came from a background where he was a little bit looked down upon because of his nationality. Something I have never felt. At any rate, he always felt he had to prove a little bit of something, and success meant a great deal to him. Also, an outward show of things.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did he end up as a fairly successful physician?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. I mean not successful to an extraordinary degree financially.
But he's someone who's always been
tremendously devoted to his work.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And respected, I suppose?
JAY DE FEO: Yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And did you have contact with him when you were finally settled down in San Jose?
JAY DE FEO: When they finally broke up, my father frankly left my mother with very little sustenance. He did provide her with a house. But my mother really had it all to do herself as far as bringing me up was concerned, as far as any financial help was concerned.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What did she do?
JAY DE FEO: She was a nurse. In fact, in the tradition of the soap operas (laughter) . . . but it was a difficult time for her, very difficult. And a lot of the reaction she had to that, I kind of understand now. She was working nights and it was difficult for her to have to leave me alone. And I didn't want to be left alone. But there was no other way to do it. So I grew up very much as an isolated child, except for the summers which I spent with my father. But you asked me, I think, if my family was small. It was, very. In fact, my mother is my only relative (on that side) aside from her sister, who still lives up in Washington. And my father's side of the family is very, very small, too. There's only one cousin in the whole family.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But you're not from an immigrant family?
JAY DE FEO: My mother's parents immigrated.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay, so you would be third generation?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. My father's father was born in Naples. (He died when my father was a child.) They were raised in the Italian tradition of family togetherness and that kind of cohesiveness that Italians feel. No matter how small the family, it's nevertheless a cohesive kind of thing which is something that he's inherited. And this is still important to him, more so than it is to the children.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, not to dwell on the early period . . . .
JAY DE FEO: We're getting on to high school now, which is where I left you, in San Jose.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, you were in junior high and high school.
JAY DE FEO: The high school period was a very important period for me. I wanted to give you a little bit of background as far as my parents were concerned, because suddenly somebody came along in high school that was very influential in my life. San Jose High School was one of the very first high schools in the state, and it was still the only high school in San Jose. It was still located on the San Jose State campus. While I was in high school there they built the second high school, which was the first big innovation in San Jose as far as the population explosion was concerned. I would have given anything if I had had the opportunity that the kids have living in San Francisco now. To go to a museum and to take an art class, for instance.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But do you remember feeling that lack? Actually wanting to go to a museum?
JAY DE FEO: Oh sure I did! And this is one of the kind of funny ironies of my childhood. But when my mother and I were living out in the east foothills, my father had the idea that I was supposed to take piano lessons, because this was the period when all young ladies took piano lessons.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That and watercolor.
JAY DE FEO: And it was an absolute failure -- the piano lessons. I would have been delighted if they'd said, "Take watercolor classes." Anyway, I took these piano lessons for about a year or two. It was a complete flop. I just loathed it and I would have given anything if I could have taken painting lessons. The closest thing I could get to painting lessons was my association with a neighbor out there in the east foothills who was a commercial artist. To me he was god, for more reasons than one. He did commercial illustrations with an airbrush. And I had all of these books that I used to borrow from him, like How to Draw (the perfect circle was my favorite exercise).
PAUL KARLSTROM: What was his name?
JAY DE FEO: Michelangelo.
PAUL KARLSTROM: His name was Michelangelo?
JAY DE FEO: Really!
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, he's a god to other people as well! (Laughter)
JAY DE FEO: Didn't I tell you this story before?
PAUL KARLSTROM: No! Michelangelo!
JAY DE FEO: Because it was really something for every reason in the world, you know. He was an idol. But I used to borrow these "how-to-do-it" books from him and learned really from a commercial artist's point of view. You know, light, shadow, and all of this. And I used to really labor over every page. This was pre-high school. But when I got to high school in the midst of this absolute cultural desert, I had one of the most fantastic teachers I would ever have hoped to have had. And that was Mrs. Emery. I still call her Mrs. Emery. She remained very close to me, even til the time she died, which was only about 10 years ago. She was old enough then. In fact, she retired as a public school teacher the year after I graduated from high school in San Jose. She must have retired in 1947, which made her -- when did those people retire in those days? -- about 64 or something? But anyway, Paul, she was just an incredible woman! She introduced me to people like Picasso and Matisse.
PAUL KARLSTROM: She was the art teacher in San Jose?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. And she was an absolute inspiration to me. She took me to plays. She took me to the San Francisco Museum for the first time in my life. She really just opened up the whole world to me.
PAUL KARLSTROM: How did you get that close? Obviously it went beyond the normal teacher-student classroom situation.
JAY DE FEO: Well, as a teacher myself, I can recognize when a student is interested. If I find a student that's interested, I give them special attention, and so did Mrs. Emery in my case. Actually, she became more than a teacher. She became a kind of second parent to me. She had, unlike my parents, an understanding and an interest in the thing I was interested in, namely art. (My father has an interest on a kind of intellectual textbook level, and my mother is a creative person, too, in her own way.) But neither one of them has any kind of rapport with me on my own terms as far as my work is concerned. They've always encouraged me. I'm not saying that they haven't done that. But, you know, they've never really been able to participate in any kind of a way where I would really be able to say, "Come into my studio and look," and really look and see. Whereas, Mrs. Emery did. (And there was perhaps a little bit of jealousy on my mother's part, which I can understand in retrospect. Because I was all she had, and still has. And my devotion to this woman was a little hard for her to take.)
PAUL KARLSTROM: It must have been very obvious, too.
JAY DE FEO: Yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did Mrs. Emery have . . . she was married, I gather.
JAY DE FEO: Yes, widowed. She helped me all through the Fillmore period. She supported The Rose to a great extent.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did she have children of her own?
JAY DE FEO: Yes, she did. She had one child who was a tremendous burden to her. Josephine is still a burden, Mrs. Emery having been dead now for about 10 years. But her one and only child Josephine was a hopeless alcoholic and was in and out of the sanitariums.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But not at that time?
JAY DE FEO: Yes, even then. She was one of those poor unfortunates who couldn't even take a glass of beer without absolutely going on a binge for a whole week.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And so it appears that you then played a very special role for Mrs. Emery.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. I think so.
PAUL KARLSTROM: She was important to you.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. I had adopted her as a mother and she, in a sense, adopted me, you're right. I suppose it did go somewhat beyond the creative level in a sense. It was still on an art teacher/student level. And her support was always on professional terms, you know. Whenever she helped me it was always . . . well, for instance, during the period when I was making jewelry she would come and buy things. And justify the benevolence. If Mrs. Emery had had money, Paul, she would have been the greatest benefactress in the world for an artist. I think she lived the life of an artist. She started as an art student, you know. And she married Henry Varnum Poor (which, for whatever reason, she wished to keep a secret). And Josephine was their child.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Poor was out here working on murals at one time.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. He was a potter as I remember.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, he was a painter, too.
JAY DE FEO: I think they were students together at Stanford, Mrs. Emery and he.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, really?
JAY DE FEO: And that's how they met, I think.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I think Nell Sinton, if I'm not mistaken, was one of the students who assisted Poor on a mural project.
JAY DE FEO: Oh, really? Is that so?
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes. You'll have to ask her about that. What interests me very much is that Mrs. Emery was a spiritual support for you, a source of nourishment.
JAY DE FEO: I make a point of it because she was the first essentially important person in my life.
PAUL KARLSTROM: A contact with a broader cultural context.
JAY DE FEO: Definitely! I suppose anybody that was as interested as I was would have found a way eventually, but it's important to be given direction in early years. My father, of course, as soon as I graduated from high school, said, "From here you go right into the University of California." Mrs. Emery, however, would have had me go to the Art Institute. (That was her dream.) But I feel that I got a great deal out of the University. Of course, my father wanted me to go there (again, a bit of paternal pride) as it was one of his old alma maters. And I'm not sorry that I did. I think now it's more common for kids to take a break between high school and college. But in my case it didn't really make a hell of a lot of difference, because I always knew what I wanted to do anyway. There was no problem of finding out what I was going to be interested in.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, getting back to that, that's exactly what I wanted to investigate or determine. You mentioned first of all this very interesting commercial artist, Michelangelo. And I gather that's not his full name.
JAY DE FEO: It was! Michelangelo! (Laughter)
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did he give you any lessons?
JAY DE FEO: No. Well, he encouraged me because he knew I was so interested. And he gave me the most stereotyped how-to-do-it type of book in the world. And maybe there was really something to it. (Laughter) As a matter of fact, Mrs. Emery was a kind of an academically-oriented person.
PAUL KARLSTROM: This is what I wanted to ask, what the instruction was like.
JAY DE FEO: We were talking about classic and funk a while ago.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes.
JAY DE FEO: I teach a more spontaneous approach than I myself tolerated in my own self-instruction in those days. I was very deliberate about these things. And I practiced that circle over and over again before I finally decided that I couldn't possibly draw it correctly. Or could never possibly hope to unless I bought myself a compass. (Laughter) I think what you're trying to ask me, and what I'm trying to say to you too is that I experienced an early orientation toward both discipline and freedom (or spontaneity). One of the things that I respected much about Mrs. Emery was that she, in spite of her joi de vivre (and I always in my mind's eye see her as an Isadora Duncan image) . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: Was she something of a Bohemian there in San Jose?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. A bit. An older Bohemian. But nevertheless she was very strict with me when it came to what we did in art class. And learning perspective, all of which I've forgotten, "Let us copy a Matisse and find out how difficult it is to paint in such a . . . ."
PAUL KARLSTROM: But she did admire Matisse. Even that late some of these characters were considered a little bizarre, Matisse and Picasso.
JAY DE FEO: Oh, very, very much so. At least in that environment they were. And she was much more avant-garde than Matisse and Picasso in those days. But she started me off gently.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But she then really provided you with your first exposure, I gather, to the School of Paris?
JAY DE FEO: Oh yes. And she was a kind of a marvelous romantic, you know. As well as a person that made you do your homework, let's put it that way.
PAUL KARLSTROM: So you graduated from San Jose in what? '46?
JAY DE FEO: Yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And, as you say, went directly on to Berkeley.
JAY DE FEO: With Mrs. Emery's encouragement I took just one little fling in a summer class at San Jose State after I graduated from high school there. I took my first art history class, which was really my favorite thing in college. And I got my first taste of it from a Dr. Kaiser at San Jose State the summer after I graduated from high school.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, Kaiser!
JAY DE FEO: You know him?
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, I think a know a Kaiser. Stephen Kaiser?
JAY DE FEO: I don't know his first name.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Because he's still teaching, I think, at the department at UCLA.
JAY DE FEO: You're kidding!
PAUL KARLSTROM: If it's the same Kaiser, K-a-y-s-e-r?
JAY DE FEO: I don't remember how it was spelled.
PAUL KARLSTROM: He's a very popular teacher, very enthusiastic. A small man. Very communicative.
JAY DE FEO: Yes, and he took a tremendous interest in me, and here I was not even a college student at the time. But I was so absolutely wrapped up in the thing. I just spent every waking moment in that library, you know, doing my homework.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What was the course, by the way?
JAY DE FEO: It was an art history course. I think it was modern art history.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Meaning the Impressionists to . . . ?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. It's been so long, Paul, it might have even been a general art history course. I don't even recall. I think it might have been a general survey course or something like that. But, my God, to me it was the most concentrated thing in the world. This was my first opportunity to really get into a library and read and look and see.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, that must have been your first real contact then with art history?
JAY DE FEO: It was.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Other than maybe some picture books you would see, earlier on.
JAY DE FEO: And again, Mrs. Emery was the one who pushed me into that. Because she knew it was the next best thing available to me. But from there I went in the fall to the University. And again, I've never been unhappy about that experience. I thought that the department was a good one, and I learned something from everybody that was there.
PAUL KARLSTROM: You keep saying that you knew you wanted to be an artist, there was never any question?
JAY DE FEO: Never any question.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I'm curious about just how this happened. What was it? Was there any specific exposure or experience? Was it something innate?
JAY DE FEO: I don't know.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you want to be a commercial artist? Or did you want to be a fine artist?
JAY DE FEO: I never had any feelings toward either pursuit, specifically. I remember, and my mother always likes to tell this story, that my first toy was a pencil. And indeed it was. I never really had a lot of toys the way modern children do. But I was happy with that. I also did a lot of writing when I was a child, much more than I do now. And was almost equally interested in that. But drawing and painting were always terribly, terribly important. And the event of getting a coloring book was something I still remember. And the first day I was able to stay within the lines. That was a challenge and that was an absolutely fantastic accomplishment.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, so you basically loved to make pictures.
JAY DE FEO: Absolutely! I think people find their way as artists sometimes early on life, sometimes late. And heaven knows there's been some fantastic artists in history that have begun in middle years, or even their late years. But it just so happened, in my case, there was never any doubt about it. I don't think that makes you any less or more of a creative person.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But at least your way was clear.
JAY DE FEO: It was clear. And I've often thought about that with students I've had, with friends and my brothers and sisters, for instance. I think most young people do have to "seek out" their vocations. I've looked back on it and thought, "Gee, I never had that problem." But, for instance, my brother tried just about everything, you know, before he finally decided that he wanted to become a doctor like my father (who never pushed him into it).
PAUL KARLSTROM: This, of course, is a half-brother.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. But some of my students, too, that have started in one thing -- some of them doctors, lawyers -- have gone into painting or another vocation. Or a lot of people just live in limbo for a while. So in that sense I don't really feel it might have better for me to have been on my own for a time between high school and college. That is, I didn't need to "find myself." I don't really think that it would have made any difference in terms of settling my personal direction. But, it may well have helped me to become more independent. It would have prepared me to deal with life more effectively later in critical times.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, you then entered the University of California at Berkeley in, I guess, the fall of 1946. And apparently you went there with the idea of majoring in studio art. What do you remember from the experience? I am, of course, asking a lot of things with that one question. How did you find the art department there? The teachers? With whom did you study?
JAY DE FEO: Oh, I'd love to tell you 'cause I remember it very well.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you feel that it was good?
JAY DE FEO: I loved it! It was a tremendous adventure for me. One of the main things I remember about that experience was that all of my teachers were very different. I felt closer to some of them than others, or had a lot more in common with some than others. There were even one or two I didn't get along with, but I think it was the variety that made a great deal of difference. You know, it helps you find out who you are, I think, seeing teachers not only as painters but as different kinds of personalities. And the first one I had was kind of the daddy of them all. You probably know about Ward Lockwood. And I think he was probably actually the first teacher that I had there.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What did he teach there? Do you remember? What course did you have?
JAY DE FEO: Charcoal. The medium. The class dealt with form and composition.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you have to draw from the cast?
JAY DE FEO: No. Well, I wouldn't have. Mrs. Emery had me draw from a cast.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That's of course very traditional academic training.
JAY DE FEO: But she knew what she was doing. The University was built on a program that hasn't changed too much in terms of art. You start with charcoal, and then you go to 2B, Watercolor. It's sort of built on the hierarchy of charcoal to oil color. I don't believe in this step-by-step approach in terms of media.
PAUL KARLSTROM: So you climb the ladder until . . . you get maybe a life class and then . . . ?
JAY DE FEO: But no, let's get back to that because in this particular period we were sort of hanging on to the apron strings of Cubism, as it were. And just right in the middle of this period Abstract Expressionism bloomed. And when Abstract Expressionism bloomed, life drawing classes went out the window. I've often regretted frankly that at a time when I was really ripe for it, there were no life drawing classes in the traditional sense.
PAUL KARLSTROM: It's amazing! What about at the Art Institute at the same time, which was even more of a hotbed of Abstract Expressionism?
JAY DE FEO: Now that's interesting. Because the Art Institute, or the California School of Fine Arts as it was called then, was a complete myth to me. Not a myth, but a kind of a place that just existed across the Bay. I had never even visited it and knew nothing about it, necessarily, except that I felt the vibrations kind of coming over toward Berkeley from Clyfford Still and Rothko and all of those people that were just a generation ahead of me. But the impetus of that movement was so powerful that it was really felt by everyone. And I think it must have been about '50, or a year to two sooner, that this happened. And Sam Francis and Fred were going to the school with me at the University at this time.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Sam Francis And Fred Martin.
JAY DE FEO: They had more direct contact with those people. They were, you know, a year or two older than I. And they were my closest contemporaries who were friends and who also had contact with this "magical" world. You know, I think I was sort of fed some of this through them. I felt very stimulated by what was going on over at the California School of Fine Arts. I know Fred even took a class there, if I'm not mistaken. I may be wrong about that. But they had more direct contact. And because I was close to them I think I felt it even more strongly through them and became much influenced by it. Although everybody was feeling it.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, who else do you remember from the faculty at Berkeley?
JAY DE FEO: Well, I started out with Ward Lockwood, who was the old dad of them all and perhaps somewhat academic, if you wish, in relation to these later influences. (I can't remember exactly when he died.) In spirit, I think he was really avant garde about it all. I think it was Ward who, for his time, kind of provided an avant garde spirit at the University. And of course there was very much of a Hans Hofmann influence. Again, this is another source of Abstract Expressionism, not only from the California School of Fine Arts but simultaneously from some of my own teachers. I think maybe Erle Loran might have been one of them; I don't know if James McCray was one. Margaret Petersen, I think, was one. But many of them were products of Hans Hofmann in New York and were enormously influenced and excited by this movement. They brought that to their teaching in a sort of a second generation way. Although I think they were all working in different styles. But the vibrations that I got through all of them was that Hofmann was an inspirational teacher. And, of course, Erle Loran was instrumental in bringing a great body of that work to the University.
PAUL KARLSTROM: When did Hofmann come to teach at Berkeley?
JAY DE FEO: I don't know, Paul. I wasn't there. That was before my time.
PAUL KARLSTROM: '40 maybe. Maybe it was later, actually. I'm not sure. But he did come out for a semester, I believe.
JAY DE FEO: I have a terrific respect for Erle. A lot of people looked at him as kind of . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: Stodgy . . . yes.
JAY DE FEO: But to me he always had the most fantastic sense of humor. And I always had a respect for his response to painting. There were people that sort of looked on him as being a kind of academic, textbook sort of personality.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Probably because he wrote criticism and so forth.
JAY DE FEO: In my opinion, I saw him as being one of the most avant garde people, in his thinking at least.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Really? In his attitudes towards teaching or in his work itself?
JAY DE FEO: Not in his own personal work. Well, it could have been; I've never really been too familiar with his work. But he recognized things and directions. And after all, Cezanne was not one of my favorite painters. I think he saw Cezanne like Mrs. Emery saw Cezanne, unlike the way I saw him. I mean, I have never really wanted to have a Cezanne on the wall to "live with." But there were things in Cezanne that he made exciting for me, and she made exciting for me too.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I think that's strange that you say that. That you wouldn't want to . . .
JAY DE FEO: I like some of his things.
PAUL KARLSTROM: . . . because you talk about this aspect of your own sensibility, this classical element in your own work. And, of course, Cezanne is of the Modernists and one of the great Classicists, in terms of imposing an order and sobriety upon nature.
JAY DE FEO: He just doesn't excite me as a lot of the other earlier painters do. But there are isolated works, like some of his bathers. Some of his early things remind me of other people that I can really identify with more. For instance, The Bathers. Some of those early things remind me a bit of some of the later Matisse things that I like very much. The Dance. I mean this is my own relating of certain works of Cezanne's to other people's who I really like better, you know, to live with. Painters like Picasso, for instance. Like Picasso, I mean I find myself returning to early influences in my current work. Like Demoiselles d'Avignon, for instance, which is one of my favorite paintings. And when I say that, when I went to the University of California, we were hanging on to the apron strings of Cubism, I mean I was hanging on for dear life. And I've never let go because I still love that period.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, let me ask you this, in the curriculum at U.C. I gather that there was an emphasis upon the fairly early stage of Abstract Expressionism. Let's face it, it was just happening.
JAY DE FEO: Well, let's expand on this just a bit more. I said to you that the teachers were varied stylistically.
[INTERRUPTION]
Well, I said something about Ward. Then again, there was James McCray. I don't know if he was one of the products of Hans Hofmann or not. But I loved the things that he was doing, his way of painting and his way of teaching, too -- a very encouraging and quiet way. I remember one silly thing about going to Jim one day. You know, in those days I had a thing about color, that it was some big magical thing. We'll get to that eventually. It still is, you know; it's just on a low-key basis now. But my own students come to me with this. There is something about color. And every student I've ever had, I suppose, may have entertained the same thought. That there's some formula for color. And I remember going to Jim and saying, "I want to learn how to use color. Tell me what color is all about." You know, as if there's something you can say in 25 words or less. Well, I don't think he said anything, but I finally found out for myself. It's one of the most intuitive things, I think, that one can deal with.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Certainly with some sort of Hofmannesque influence in the department at the time there must have been an emphasis on color.
JAY DE FEO: Yes, I think that might have been. And, oddly enough, frankly some of the Hofmann things I see I can't get with. I'm not really (in spite of what might seem natural to me), a Hofmann fan. And, to tell you the truth, when I went to see the collection at Berkeley I was disappointed. I thought it was sort of second rate. Maybe Hofmann was a great innovator and a great painter in his own right. But the message that I got from my teachers mainly was that he was an extraordinary teacher. I've never heard of anyone who had any contact with him whatsoever that hasn't given me that message. And it's sort of hard, I think, to separate as artists and as teacher. Where does one start and the other end? I mean, there's an overlapping there of your experiences as a student and your experiences as a teacher. And altogether there's painting going on as students and teachers. In terms of the great mainstreams and flow of things that were coming along at the time, we all recognize the great influence Picasso has had, as well as the flow of Abstract Expressionism. And here was Jim McCray who was really in a kind of Renaissance tradition. At the time he was doing Mondrianesque sorts of things in a kind of a Renaissance space.
Well, I was talking about McCray . . . . Now this is my way of looking at his painting. He never described it or explained it to me as such, but I see it as a combination of Mondrian with a very interesting kind of Renaissance space concept. He was doing things with all kinds of infinitesimal squares with primary colors, etc.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But with a recession into space?
JAY DE FEO: Little compartments of endless space. Very, very much in the tradition of the Renaissance. And that's very interesting because I think Ward was instrumental in keeping alive the spirit of the Renaissance there. He was very interested in fresco. I think it was Ward who was instrumental in introducing a lot of fresco painting at the university, which was somewhat prior to my stay there.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Was it true fresco? Were walls decorated?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. There were vestiges of outdoor walls. There were classes in this. And, of course, that wasn't just the Renaissance influence. There was, I think, an interest in Mexican murals at the time, too.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That's very true. And besides it was the aftermath of the WPA period.
JAY DE FEO: It was so kaleidoscopic, too, you see, that it's hard to talk about one thing without bringing in fifty others. And so when I start talking about Hans Hofmann, I end up with . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: Diego Rivera.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. [Laughter]
PAUL KARLSTROM: I realize one can't simplify an experience like being in the art department during this time at the University of California. But it's interesting to try to determine just what the flavor of the department was. In other words, was it tight? Was it loose? What were you encouraged to do?
JAY DE FEO: There are a few others that I would really like to discuss in terms of the stylistic things that were going on there. Let's see. John Haley was one of the most important persons that I studied with. And when I was asked what my projected program would be in teaching a graduate seminar at the college of Arts next fall, he immediately came to mind as one of the most important people that I can recall in terms of what he offered in the graduate program there. We took Picasso's Guernica as a point of departure, as a major work. From there we let it expand into small studies in small mediums and let small work grow out of the major work. And at the same time let small work feed into the major work. Anyway, I don't identify John with any specific style necessarily, but with a kind of tremendous awareness of what a creative direction was and how to expand upon it. How to become your own self, and how to become your own teacher. I think that was the most important lesson that I learned from him in that class. The final class that I had there was a kind of way of learning what it was like to be in your own studio away from the atmosphere of school. And to learn from yourself, to let yourself become your own teacher. And to feed your own ideas out of your own past. I'll never forget that experience from him. At the same time, curiously enough, I remember writing John a long letter. I don't know if he would ever remember this. I can't remember much about it except that I was doing a hell of a lot of thinking at the time. I remember this one image on a note that I wrote to him when I submitted paintings, not for graduate class that I mentioned to you, but for the regular class that I'd had from him. About what my aspirations were in painting and what I wanted to accomplish. I wish I could see that once again. But there was one image that I wrote and I remember. It was that I wanted to create a work, or some kind of a work. (In retrospect, I'm thinking of The Rose.) At the time I was a very young and aspiring person. I was making some kind of image about being on "an edge." I wanted to create a work that was just so precariously balanced between going this way or that way that it maintained itself. I can't really describe it right now. I wish I could refer to that letter that I wrote. But it's just sort of interesting thinking of John. Anyway, I saw him for the first time in years. I was teaching at the Museum and the "Poets of the City" was on. And I had just gone off to play hooky, gone out for a sandwich or something, and I ran into him as he was going into the galleries. And I shook his hand, and he said, "Dear old Jay!," and he was really pleased that I had a couple of pictures hanging. He doesn't look any different to me now than he did then. Anyway, along with other nostalgic memories [Laughter], let's get along to Abstract Expressionism. Of course, they imported Felix Ruvolo from the East. He was a kind of direct current from the East coast, a contemporary person. A person like that was vitally needed in the midst of all these other people, too. He gave all of the students there a real shot in the arm, as far as what was happening from the East. Not that we needed a message from the East necessarily, but it was just like all of a sudden having somebody that was really contemporary with what was really vital and alive in another part of the country in terms of Abstract Expressionism. And, last but not least, there was the person who was probably at the very top of the heap as far as I'm concerned, if I had to name one. (In retrospect I don't really know that I could say that one person was more important to me than another, in terms of the experience.) But Margaret Peterson O'Hagan was a terribly important teacher to me because of what she did for me in terms of discipline. The others, in spite of all that I appreciate them for, were quite passive in their criticism -- in fact, I did, more often than not, have more of a critical eye in regard to my own work than they did. I don't mean to say that I didn't thrive on praise and didn't like being patted on the back a bit and, "You're doing just fine, dear." And all of that. But Margaret was much more of a disciplinarian than the rest of them were, as far as really working was concerned. And she really made me think. She was, very ironically, kind of "anti" Abstract Expressionism in her attitude. She really fought a hard battle there for her Picasso, and for her Northwest Indians, and for her Mexico. She was also the only woman on the faculty.
PAUL KARLSTROM: The token.
JAY DE FEO: The token. But boy, she really made herself felt. And the other old dads heaved a great sigh of relief when she left and said, "Boy! That's the last prima donna we're going to have around here for a while in the men's faculty club." But it was all sort of understood all the way around. To digress from her influence as a teacher, the circumstance of her departure was a question of taking the oath at that time at the University. (Which in recent years would have caused a complete furor among the student body as well as the faculty.) But in those days we were just recovering from the war and nobody wanted to be a rabble rouser. But Margaret stuck to her guns. And she was not going to have any part of that sort of thing. And she and other members of the faculty resigned on that account.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, that was entering the McCarthy era.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. I really don't know what, if any, her feelings were politically. She was kind of a D.H. Lawrence person in her feelings about getting back to nature philosophically -- "the primal instincts of man" -- the flowering of that instinct into works of art. I think she resigned more on principle than anything else. The point I was making was that so few people were interested in that sort of thing at that particular time. It hardly went observed or noticed, you know.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That she was out?
JAY DE FEO: That she sacrificed such a job because of principle. In other words, she could have been made a martyr, you know, at another given time, depending what the climate was like at the University.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you take classes with her?
JAY DE FEO: Part of her image was very theatrical as well as being a very profound and a very knowledgeable person, and knowing a great deal about what made a painting a painting. She could really take it apart and lay it on you. But she was very theatrical. And I think it was a great part of her image for her students. Besides that, she had something underneath that could back it up. That's what I was trying to get at. I think teachers are very important. Perhaps more than as artists they're important as personalities. And, in terms of a personality, she really made herself felt strongly. I was really absolutely fearful of taking a class from her because of this tremendous -- I mean everybody approached her like a goddess, you know. I was so inquisitive about everything in those days that I remember very clearly going into one of her classes (without being formally enrolled). And sneaking into the back of the room. She was giving a class criticism at the time. I could never forget it, Paul! I mean the whole image is right there in front of me! Exactly where the room was, in one of the most vivid recollections possible, in a rainy day. I know exactly what I had on. [Laughter] I turned right and went to the back of the room and sat in one of the very last seats. And she pointed me out instantly. She took one look at me and she just demolished me. She said, "You are not enrolled in my class. You have no right to be here." I was absolutely shattered. I was in tears. And I left. Two years later I had the courage to take her class. It was her last year at the University, which is what brought the whole thing up. Because she left, you see, quite suddenly and I had no opportunity to take a class from her again after that. So I only had a chance to take her, I think, for two semesters. Didn't understand a word she said. Except everything that she said has stuck with me. And I've thought about it year after year since them. And it's finally coming through.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What was that? What did she say?
JAY DE FEO: One of her most important expressions was, "I want to show you what a visual idea is. Not a literary idea, but a visual idea." The interesting thing about her teaching (I could never teach that way, personally, but I went along with it because I had a feeling it was the only way she could communicate), is that you had to paint just like Margaret painted, because this was her language. And, unless you spoke her language in some way or another, she couldn't talk to you. And she was brought up in the tradition of Picasso as well as having been influenced by primitive painting of all kinds. It would take me a whole lecture to go into what a visual idea is, but just let it suffice to say that it isn't a literary idea -- it's a visual idea. And it might be as simple a thing as what Picasso does in terms of putting opposites on opposites. Like you could take a blank piece of paper and paint one half white and one half black. And you put a white image on the black side and a black image on the white side. Now that's a deceptively simply visual idea that artists have been dealing with ever since kingdom come. It is what you have to say visually within that structural format that gives it aesthetic merit. But these classic structural themes persist throughout painting. And, as you know, Picasso leaned heavily on classical structure and content in terms of his own contemporary painting. At any rate, I finally had the courage to take her class. And, as I say, a lot of things she said to me, in terms of visual ideas, never really permeated at the time. But they were so strongly implanted in my head that I carried these words with me throughout the years. And every once in a while something dawns on me in my own work and in the things that I see. I never liked Margaret's painting and I dare say she probably would not have liked mine. And I've seen students of hers, in the years following, just becoming like little Margaret Peterson O'Hagan's. And kind of picking up on the superficial stylistic thing that she had, but not really seeing what the structural things were underneath and what she really "had to say" visually. I probably did some of the worst work in the class because I wasn't stylistically in tune with her. But I realized that I had to paint in that fashion in order to talk to her visually. Before I graduated the last thing she said to me -- and it took me a long time to understand what she meant, but with pride I think I finally did. She said, "Jay, you're really the only person that understood what I had to say in this class." And she's been in touch with me occasionally since then. And she was very "anti" oil paint. She was an egg tempera lady from the word "go." You know, oil paint was an absolute sin. [Laughter] It was almost to the point of something kind of screwy in her own head to think that oil paint was such a disaster. Years passed and I thought that she was dead. Actually, to tell you the truth, Margaret was 50 then. Kind of getting along eking out an existence in Italy. Around 1970 there was a kind of "friends of Margaret Peterson O'Hagan" established in Berkeley that got together a little group to give her some assistance and buy a painting for the University. And so I finally found out where she was. I sent her a photograph of The Rose. And she wrote back a very beautiful letter that the Archives will eventually get. So she didn't mind the 2,300 pounds of oil paint so much after all.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, you came to Berkeley when pretty callow and young and unformed as an artist.
JAY DE FEO: Oh yes, definitely! And left quite the same way.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh really? Well, this is what I was going to ask. What did Berkeley leave with you?
JAY DE FEO: I hope, at least, that I've given you some idea of the variety of personalities. I've dwelt more on Margaret perhaps than the others. And I've even left out a few. But the picture that I wanted to give you was that I was given an enormous variety of philosophical as well as visual food from my teachers. I also was very absorbed in art history while I was there.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I was going to ask that -- if you took art history classes?
JAY DE FEO: I took as much as I possibly could. And I studied too with a Dr. Horn in particular. Do you know him?
PAUL KARLSTROM: Walter Horn? Yes.
JAY DE FEO: He was very important to me. (I think there was a psychology class that I took from a Dr. Kretch that I've saved notes from.) But aside from that, Dr. Horn's lectures, as well as Mr. Maencken's lectures on eastern art history, are the only notes that I've saved from that period.
PAUL KARLSTROM: What interested you the most in art history? Was there a period that had a special appeal?
JAY DE FEO: I was very interested in primitive painting. Also, the notes that I saved specifically were the architectural notes from the Renaissance, from Dr. Horn. The floor plans of the cathedrals, for instance, were very interesting to me, as you might imagine. Although I had no notion then of what it might eventually mean to me.
PAUL KARLSTROM: You were interested in Brunelleschi and Alberti and all the heavies?
JAY DE FEO: Oh yes! Architecture.
PAUL KARLSTROM: More so than painting?
JAY DE FEO: More so than painting. Well, it's the architecture that came through heavy to me. The monumentality of the architecture. If you can see the architecture of a culture, you can practically read the culture.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes.
JAY DE FEO: It sort of happens like that.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I know what you mean.
JAY DE FEO: I mean, look at the stuff in this country and you can just see it as eclectic, you know, whatever our country is.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, what was it, do you suppose, that appealed to you? I gather
that you were particularly attracted to the architecture of the Renaissance.
JAY DE FEO: Yes. Also, I had Indian art history from Maenchen, I believe. Then there was Dr. Amyx. For a time he was head of the art department. He also taught a class in aesthetics, which I wanted to take but never did because of schedule problems. The department had not really expanded too much at that time. Not a great variety of courses were offered. Speaking of the past, if I'm not mistaken, I think my father had studied anatomy or bone structure in that particular shingle shack the art department was still in when he was a medical student. This was long before they even had the temporary buildings which predated the final building that they now have.
But I guess what I'm trying to say is that my preoccupation with primitive art found expression in my intuitive response to materials and the imagery that emerged from it thanks to my exposure to the Abstract Expressionist movement. That plus the continuing interest in a classic discipline which was amplified when I got a grant and went to Europe after graduation.
PAUL KARLSTROM: That's the next thing, when you went to Europe. Of course your horizons must have been expanded tremendously because of contact with old master works and museums and so forth. But there are a couple of things I would like to ask about again, about the years at Berkeley. I was wondering if you had any heroes as a student? And I don't necessarily mean at the department at Berkeley. I think it's unlikely, perhaps Margaret O'Hagan to a certain extent. But any contemporary heroes, national figures that you knew about as a student? Maybe having only seen reproductions in magazines or something?
JAY DE FEO: Honestly, that's a difficult question. That's a question I always ask my students the first day they come into class because it's very helpful. It's a way for me to see what perhaps they might become interested in. It was really pretty vast. Well, again, Picasso has always been strong with me, although I don't like every period of his. Needless to say, Matisse and Van Gogh of the "old modern masters."
PAUL KARLSTROM: Right. There are too many.
JAY DE FEO: In more contemporary terms, getting back to the fact that I was across the Bay from the California School of Fine Arts, Clyfford Still, Frank Lobdell, Hassel Smith, etc. These influences were felt through my association with Sam And Fred.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Second hand, of course.
JAY DE FEO: Yes, and Jackson Pollock of course.
PAUL KARLSTROM: So you knew about him.
JAY DE FEO: Who didn't! Due to all the national publicity, everybody dripped a bit. You know, you couldn't help it. And Felix Ruvolo of course brought much of this from New York. I mean he had come right out of the New York scene and it was all very romantic, you know. All this jazz and booze and dripping paint and all that sort of thing. As for now, I have a new love of Picasso. [Laughter] But it could've been Duchamp a little while ago. I've even probably, you know, thrown a little devotion towards Paul Cezanne, contrary to what I've said on this tape. But, probably, also thinking of Marcel Duchamp whose early work was quite influenced by Cezanne.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But certainly during that period you didn't know anything about Marcel Duchamp?
JAY DE FEO: No. That was a bit before my time.
PAUL KARLSTROM: No. But I mean the interest is actually later than your time.
JAY DE FEO: But it also was before my time. I think my specific sources for visual information did not include him at the time. Although, again, he wasn't an unfamiliar name. As soon as I met Wally, he became very familiar. Because he was one of Wally's greatest gods, always. And actually, having met Wally and finding out something, I found that there was a bit of latent material there for me.
PAUL KARLSTROM: While Clyfford Still was holding forth at the California School of Fine Arts, supposedly at the heyday of that institution, did you ever actually see any Clyfford Still paintings? Did you see any of the heavy Abstract Expressionists?
JAY DE FEO: To tell you the truth, Paul, I was really pretty cloistered over there. As soon as I came back from Europe, which was let's say, 1952 . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: What about 1953?
JAY DE FEO: Or even later than '52. The tail end of my time at the University was when all this was really just starting, right?
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes.
JAY DE FEO: So I left in '51 or '50, or something like that. I was away for about 18 months, which is not a very long time. But a lot was happening in that period.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Of course Still was gone by that time.
JAY DE FEO: Oh yes. Well, it didn't really make any difference where he was because it was terribly felt.
PAUL KARLSTROM: No. Because everyone looked like Still.
JAY DE FEO: I suppose my first real feeling of proximity -- perhaps due to the fact that I even belonged to the same league -- was when there was some kind of round table discussion at the Oakland Museum for which Fred was a part of the panel. My own painting, as well as something of Wally's and something of Clyfford Still's, kind of brought these two generations closer. As time elapses, the generations become closer together. Well, how old is he anyhow? He is probably 20 years older than I am.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Still? Oh, yes.
JAY DE FEO: But in those days you sort of thought of it as a generation apart. Because most of the people involved in that era were sort of a generation ahead of me. You know, like Frank Lobdell and Still. We always thought of it as a generation ahead.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, as a student then, you probably didn't have contact with them except indirectly.
JAY DE FEO: It was being bombarded by a bunch of exciting vibrations that were coming from all sources, I think. Not any one particular person. I bring up Picasso because he was a link with the past that really never left. And there was a lot of Dada in him. But, if you ask me, if there were one or two or even three particular gods that I aspire to, I couldn't name one -- the influences are many.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I gather, then, at Berkeley you weren't getting this same barrage of pure, uncut Abstract Expressionism that they were getting at the Art Institute? And I think that's important that you didn't.
JAY DE FEO: No. Not quite. I was doing it though, for some reason or another. I mean I don't know whether it was just one of those things that happens to people at a given time, whether or not they're exposed. You know, that's happened in very strong art movements. I think, even if there's no contact or visual exposure between artists, if the feeling and time is ripe enough, these things come out. They just sort of come out in an evolutionary way in the history of art when the time is absolutely right for them to do so. I think it probably might have been even stronger, if that's possible, if I'd been over at the California School of Fine Arts. But nobody could have been heavier into this kind of a thing than I was, given less actual exposure to it than I had.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Why do you suppose that is? I'm sure you must have thought about it.
JAY DE FEO: That's just what I said to you. I think that artists are really a vehicle for a kind of creative response at any given . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: So you feel it was an intuitive thing?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. Whether you want to say it's ESP or whatever you like. But I think it's that certain kinds of things have to be said in a certain time. And they come through whether or not you've had any kind of a visual contact with another artist. (Which has happened to me years later. You know, occasionally you find someone that is coming on with the same visual ideas that you are, unbeknownst to you.)
PAUL KARLSTROM: But it seems much more likely, reflecting on that time, that there was some visual contact at Berkeley.
JAY DE FEO: Oh! I'm not saying that I was living in a vacuum. Yes, of course there was some visual contact.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And at Berkeley, to a lesser extent than at the Art Institute, you've been saying that certainly Abstract Expressionism was in the air. But obviously, at least art historians tend to disbelieve the possibility of an absolute spontaneous . . . .
JAY DE FEO: I agree with that. Certainly we weren't living in an absolute vacuum over in Berkeley. Actually, a few people rowed their boats over and [Laughter] stuff like that.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, I think what I understand you to say is that you can't pinpoint any direct experience, like one painting.
JAY DE FEO: The most direct link I had with this particular environment in San Francisco was probably through Sam and Fred as I've mentioned. And they were the most exciting contemporary people that were working with me. I was still making little triangles at a time when Sam was making great big blobs of color. And I thought, "Gee, that's wonderful but I'm just not ready for that yet." But I understood it. And Fred, of course, was doing the same thing. I was just told by a friend of mine over the telephone that Fred has left the Art Institute altogether and is teaching at Berkeley now. Which is the height of irony, his having been flunked from the graduate program there when we were going to school together, which is one of the real feathers in Fred's hats. [Laughter] And flunked especially by Margaret Peterson, by the way.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh really? Good for her. [Laughter] This is exactly what I wanted to lead up to, sort of the last thing that I wanted to touch on during this U.C. period. And that is this close relationship with Sam Francis and Fred Martin. And I'm very interested in knowing what type of relationship it was in terms of exchange of ideas. Because obviously you were quite excited by what they were doing or what they were talking about. Did you get together and talk about art?
JAY DE FEO: Quite a bit. Especially in Sam's case. Now here's another frank little remark for your tape recorder. Sam was always very kind of, you know, "Girls shouldn't be doing this sort of thing."
PAUL KARLSTROM: "Male chauvinist pig?"
JAY DE FEO: I would never say that about Sam.
PAUL KARLSTROM: I said that.
JAY DE FEO: [Laughter] But he always said it with tongue-in-cheek. Sam has always been one of my most encouraging friends, as far as my own work is concerned. He was a bit . . . .
PAUL KARLSTROM: Condescending, perhaps?
JAY DE FEO: A bit. But it certainly didn't spoil anything. No. Not even condescension. It certainly wasn't directed towards me specifically, I don't think. Actually Sam and I were pretty close at one time. He had sort of a crush on me and I didn't like him. And by the time I'd recovered and got a crush on him, he wasn't interested in me any more. It was one of those situations. But we survived that. At any rate, through all of this something more important was the painting. I never could jump on a bandwagon ever in my life, even though this was when I first knew Sam. And I was terribly excited by the things he, as well as Fred, were doing. And they were very close friends during this period. I was still doing paintings that were somewhat post-Cubist in style, or "classic abstraction." And I knew I didn't want to do that anymore. But I just had to work it out, as they say, and get through a period that I was going through. You know, I was making kind of stylized, geometric kinds of images. Almost sort of pre-Renaissance kinds of things. I was interested in Romanesque painting and things like that. Another thing that Ward Lockwood introduced to the department. Another very important friend and fellow artist was Pat Adams. She should certainly be mentioned here. Our relationship was close and our exchange of ideas very important. And I was looking at the things that Sam and Fred were doing and feeling enormously turned on to it. I finally got into it. But I had to really work through the cycle of my own development before I was able. The Abstract Expressionist thing actually came along a little bit before I had even worked through several steps of my own development -- before I really dived into it with a free hand. And then I did. But all through this I had a close relationship to them. And even though I wasn't quite with them at the time, they treated me, you know, as an "equal" in my thinking. And eventually time caught up with itself and I became their contemporary. Although eventually we all went our separate ways stylistically. But it's funny how in a certain period maybe even a question of six months can make a tremendous difference in terms of what your development is stylistically or as far as your growth is concerned. Time lessens or becomes more compact in what it means in terms of growth as you get older. At any rate they were, I think, my most significant links to what was in fact actually happening in the art world.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you do things together, like go to parties?
JAY DE FEO: Oh, yes.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Was it a very tight social group?
JAY DE FEO: Not tight. But we socialized together definitely. And Jean, of course, Fred's wife, was a terrifically gifted painter herself and did a lot of things. and later did a lot of marvelous ceramics that people are just getting into now. I don't know if you know that or not. She's always been fantastically creative.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, I've seen some of her work at their house. I was over there once.
JAY DE FEO: On one level perhaps she and Fred seemed just worlds apart in terms of personalty, but still they are very compatible personalities. I knew them before they got married when they were both students at U.C.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh. So she was a student at California . . . ?
JAY DE FEO: Yes, she was a student along with Fred. There were a number of people in our "loose social group." Of course Sam was married to his first wife, Vera, in those days. This was just after he had gotten out of the army with a back ailment and had been hospitalized and had gotten turned on to painting by David Park while he was convalescing. I guess you know all about that, too. But this is how he finally became an art student there. I think he was going to be a doctor originally. And he'd gotten turned on to painting. There's an instance of somebody who hadn't painted all of his life by a long shot. But all of a sudden he found himself in a period when he was restricted from any other activity. And heaven knows, that's what he's wanted to do ever since.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And done it very well and very lucratively.
JAY DE FEO: Indeed. That's for sure. I suppose the culmination here would be the classic story of Nell Sinton and how I got the traveling fellowship.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, because that's a good introduction to your time in Europe.
JAY DE FEO: And Nell would probably have something to say about that, too! [Laughter]
PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, I've heard it from Nell but I'd like to hear it again from you.
JAY DE FEO: I'll tell it to you as Nell told it to me.
PAUL KARLSTROM: And also you may as well bring in at this point, if you would, the name. I think it's a source of confusion.
JAY DE FEO: You mean Sigmund Martin Heller?
PAUL KARLSTROM: No, no! Your name.
JAY DE FEO: Oh, my name! Well, okay. On my birth certificate I am Mary Joan De Feo. The middle name is spelled J-o-a-h although it's pronounced "Joanne." I'm called by members of my family not Mary but Joan, the middle name. And the Jay came about by strictly accidental circumstances in junior high school when all of us little girls were having a lot of fun giving each other nicknames. And one of my old friends, Pat Kelly, seemed to think Jay was what I ought to have as a nickname.
PAUL KARLSTROM: J-a-y?
JAY DE FEO: Yes. And so, it just sort of hung on. And as I think I've told you before I kept the initial because mainly it stood for everything. You know, it stood for my real name as well as the J-a-y nickname. although I sign J-a-y, I answer to anything these days.
PAUL KARLSTROM: You mentioned Nell Sinton's version of . . . .
JAY DE FEO: You can tell the story! [Laughter] You told it to me!
PAUL KARLSTROM: I'll tell it very briefly and then you can either disagree or agree with it. But Nell Sinton said that when you were applying for the traveling grant at Berkeley you were advised that a male would have a better chance of getting the fellowship, and that it would be to your advantage to be sexually ambiguous on this one. And that if you applied as J. De Feo, there would be a question whether you were male or female.
JAY DE FEO: You're begging to be corrected, aren't you?
PAUL KARLSTROM: That's what Nell told me.
JAY DE FEO: [Laughter] Well, of course, the way Nell told me the story was, and I didn't remember this until she told it to me. But I think it's probably a good point. In fact, I think it was only ten years ago that she told me this. Now my understanding of it was, at the time, that the two regular fellowships (one to a man and one to a woman) that were usually offered for graduates with M.A. degrees were not offered that particular year at the University. Instead, all they had to offer for art scholarships or fellowships was an inter-departmental fellowship. But not one that was usually offered by the department itself. So that's all I knew about it. And I got it! But it was Nell who told me later that the reason I got it was that my teachers suggested to the committee -- by a sin of omission I think -- that my name was Jay De Feo. And it was automatically suggested by that name that I was a male, not a female.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Aha! That make a little difference.
JAY DE FEO: That's my version of what Nell said.
PAUL KARLSTROM: The question of gender is involved.
JAY DE FEO: Yes, that's right. I never heard about that from my instructors. I must say this, Paul, they did everything they could to help me. That's for sure. And I really felt that they were doing everything that they could to give me a helping hand in that direction. Regularly, as I understood it, they gave one to a woman and one to a man from the department. Now that was my understanding. But otherwise, if it were up to inter-departmental committee, they would automatically lean more towards giving it to a man. Because they just assume that maybe a woman would not continue in the field.
PAUL KARLSTROM: Better risk?
JAY DE FEO: Yes, better risk.
PAUL KARLSTROM: But, at any rate, I'm sure that, for whatever reason, your talent had a lot to do with it.
JAY DE FEO: I got my walking papers. My get-out-of-town traveling fellowship. [Laughter] That was probably what was in back of it all.
PAUL KARLSTROM: 1951, the Sigmund Martin Heller Traveling Fellowship.
JAY DE FEO: One-way ticket. [Laughter]
PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, one-way ticket out of the University of California, but I hope it was a return ticket from Europe.
JAY DE FEO: In those days $1,000 (that's all it was) seemed like an awful lot of money. Not really enough to go to Europe, to say the least. Well, just maybe a year or two prior to that, maybe you could've made it for a year on $1,000 in Europe. But it was just after the war and in a year or two the cost of living had gone up enormously there. So I did need a little extra help. My grandmother on my father's side chipped in and I think my mother helped me too. And while I was there I got an additional loan which had to be paid back eventually.
END OF SESSION ONE.
Last updated... September 19, 2002