January 5th: Jordan Stein in Conversation with Hilton Als

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Jordan Stein will discuss his new book Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo's Estocada and Other Pieces with Hilton Als.

The live event will stream directly on this page on Wednesday, January 5th at 7pm EST. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly afterwards. During the broadcast, please email your questions to Evan@192Books.com.

Jordan Stein—Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo's Estocada and Other Pieces
(published by Soberscove Press, Chicago, distributed by D.A.P., 2021)

In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929–89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with the 2,000-pound colossus of a painting for which she would become legendary, The Rose. The morning after it was carried out the front window, DeFeo was forced to destroy the only other artwork she’d started in six years, an enormous painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway wall. The unfinished Estocada—a kind of shadow Rose—was ripped down in unruly pieces and reanimated years later in her studio through photography, photocopy, collage and relief.

Drawing from largely unpublished archival material, Rip Tales traces for the first time Estocada’s material history, interweaving it with stories about other Bay Area artists—Zarouhie Abdalian, April Dawn Alison, Ruth Asawa, Lutz Bacher, Bruce Conner, Dewey Crumpler, Trisha Donnelly and Vincent Fecteau—that likewise evoke themes of transformation, intuition and process. Foregrounding a Bay Area ethos that could be defined by its resistance to definition, Rip Tales explores the unpredictable edges of artworks and ideas.

Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. With Will Brown, he is the author of Bruce Conner: Brass Handles (J&L Books, 2016), and with Jason Fulford, he coedited Where to Score (J&L Books, 2018). He has organized exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Artists’ Space, the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Matthew Marks Gallery, among others. In addition to working independently with institutions, he operates Cushion Works, an exhibition and program space in the Mission District.

Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic. He is an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine. He is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.