Jay DeFeo was part of a vibrant San Francisco art community
of Beat authors, musicians, and painters committed to nonconformity and spontaneous
personal expressions. DeFeo’s Untitled (for B.C.) is a collage
of several photographs, carefully cut and reassembled into a hybrid object that
references DeFeo herself. The component photographs depict things from her
studio— an antique telephone mouthpiece, scissors, a spray can, and an old shoe thoroughly chewed
by her dog. Yet, each object and its placement indirectly reference the
artist’s body—the mouthpiece at the top of the composition, objects held in the
hand placed in the middle, and her shoe at the bottom. Together, they fashion a
picture suggestive of

both DeFeo’s body and her artistic practice.