THE CONSERVATION OF BEAT ART, WITH A FOCUS ON JAY DEFEO

Abstract

The Beat Generation artists of the mid-twentieth century executed their paintings on various supports with a variety of pigmented media (including house paints), unpigmented media (including caulking and adhesives) and coatings. Paintings were reworked with tools other than brushes, resulting in surfaces of an unconventional nature. Constructions were added to produce assemblage and collage. Conservators are faced with the problem of stabilizing work which contains components that may be intrinsically unstable, while maintaining the integrity of the artist’s intent. The paper describes a representative selection of paintings, with a focus on the work of Jay DeFeo, and the treatments developed to deal with them.