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Jess' MATRIX exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1975 |
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In 1949, Jess enrolled in the California School of the Arts (now the [[San Francisco Art Institute]]) and, after breaking with his family, began referring to himself simply as "Jess". He met [[Robert Duncan (poet)|Robert Duncan]] in 1951 and began a relationship with the poet that lasted until Duncan's death in 1988. In 1952, in San Francisco, Jess, with Duncan and painter [[Harry Jacobus]], opened the [[King Ubu Gallery]], which became an important venue for alternative art and which remained so when, in 1954, poet [[Jack Spicer]] reopened the space as the [[Six Gallery]].
Many of Jess's paintings and [[collage]]s have themes drawn from [[chemistry]], [[alchemy]], the [[occult]], and male beauty, including a series called ''Translations'' (1959–1976) which is done with heavily laid-on paint in a [[paint-by-number]] style. In 1975, the [http://www.thewadsworth.org/ Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art] displayed six of the "Translations" paintings in their [http://2gc0771gkd8m295j5p2hvgje72l.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Matrix-2.pdf MATRIX 2] exhibition.<ref>http://2gc0771gkd8m295j5p2hvgje72l.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Matrix-2.pdf</ref> Collins also created elaborate collages using old book illustrations and [[comic strip]]s (particularly, the strip ''[[Dick Tracy]]'', which he used to make his own strip ''Tricky Cad''). Jess's final work, ''Narkissos'', is a complex rendered 6'x5' drawing owned by the [[San Francisco Museum of Modern Art]].
A Jess retrospective (''Jess: A Grand Collage, 1951–1993'') toured the United States in 1993–1994, accompanied by a book of the same title. The book included pictures of some of the paintings and collages from the tour. Interspersed between the pictures were essays by various contributors including poet [[Michael Palmer (poet)|Michael Palmer]] who wrote an extended piece on Jess' ''Narkissos''.
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