Of dogs and other people
Subtitle: the art of Roy De Forest
By: Susan Landauer ; with an introduction by Michael Duncan
Contributors: Duncan, Michael, 1953- writer of introduction; Oakland Museum of California
Publisher: Oakland Museum of California in association with University of California Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 199
ISBN-13: 9780520292208
Subjects: Animals in art; Biography; Artists
Other titles: Art of Roy De Forest
Description: "Roy De Forest's brightly colored, crazy-quilted jungles dotted with nipples of paint and inhabited by a cast of characters uniquely his own (a perennial favorite being his wild-eyed, pointy-eared dogs) appeal to a broad spectrum of viewers from young to old, from the casual visitor to the most sophisticated art aficionado. OMCA's project aims to reassess De Forest's art-historical position, placing him in a national rather than solely regional/West Coast context. Landauer positions De Forest as part of a bicoastal alternative current of American art that has been poorly documented and deliberately ran counter to better publicized tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s, notably Pop, Minimalism, and post-painterly abstraction. Despite the playfulness of his work, close study of De Forest's art reveals deep layers of meaning. He was a fan of popular science fiction and adventure stories, but he was also well versed in Australian aboriginal art, ukiyo-e prints, poetry, literature, and the history of philosophy. He enjoyed secreting obscure art-historical references into his work: animals might assume postures found in Medieval or Renaissance art, or a drawing that appears to depict a comic-book character may in fact refer to Titian's triple-headed allegory of Prudence. This engaging publication presents gorgeous color reproductions of 150 of De Forest's finest artworks, plus a variety of figure illustrations that illuminate the artist's diverse sources and freewheeling social and creative milieu in Northern California"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-192) and index.

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest, organized and presented by the Oakland Museum of California, April 29-August 20, 2017"--Title page verso.
Table of contents: title: Origins; title: Postwar San Francisco; title: In pursuit of the marvelous; title: Valley of the dots : the early years at UC Davis; title: The phantasmagoric artist; title: Framing the journey : sculpture and late work.