Curated by Michael Duncan and Christopher Wagstaff

Finally, with Jay DeFeo’s epic work making a grand tour, a definitive edition of Robert Duncan’s The H. D. Book becoming available, and Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian’s recent collection of Jack Spicer’s poetry spiking the cultural punch, certain elemental structures of the San Francisco Renaissance are coming into focus. Using as its launchpad the dynamic domesticity of Duncan and his longtime companion, the still too little celebrated collagist Jess (Collins), this show of thirty-five artists from their magic circle—many too long in the shadows, with Lilly Fenichel, Miriam Hoffman, and Lawrence Jordan among them—should underscore the visual concordance of that groovily finicky heyday.

Travels to the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, Jan. 14–Mar. 29, 2014; Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington, DC, Apr. 26–Aug. 17, 2014; Pasadena Museum of California Art, Sept. 14, 2014–Jan. 11, 2015.

— Bruce Hainley