Welcome to Painterland
The Rat Bastard Protective Association was an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists who lived and worked in and around a building dubbed "Painterland" at 2322 Fillmore Street in mid-century San Francisco.
The artists who counted themselves among the Rat Bastards — including Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Michael McClure, and Manuel Neri — exhibited a unique fusion of radicalism, provocation, and community that had a significant impact on subsequent artistic developments across the United States.
"One of the virtues of art historian Anastasia Aukeman's highly anticipated book is its focus on a distinctive mode of post-war artmaking in California: neo-Dada assemblage, or 'junk' and 'funk.' … A fascinating history of that far-out and foundational era." Lauren O'Neill-Butler
"Richly detailed…. Aukeman has written eloquently and thoroughly about the milieu in which this iconoclastic group of artists, poets, musicians, and publishers thrived." Hyperallergic
"Fills a real void in the literature, not only on Bruce Conner and the cultural and intellectual context within which he worked for half a century, but on other remarkable artists in his milieu." Kristine Stiles
"The author has done astonishingly thorough research in very scattered materials to put together the most comprehensive account of the artists, the group activities, the gallery scene, and the whole avant-garde art world of San Francisco in this period." Bruce Robertson
Research
In the course of her research, Aukeman discovered a treasure trove of contact sheets from photographer Jerry Burchard — rare, high-quality black-and-white images of the Rat Bastards in their milieu.
Exhibitions
Aukeman organized the group's first exhibitions in nearly 60 years — at The Landing, Los Angeles (2016–17) and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York (2017).
- Publisher
- University of California Press, 2016
- ISBN
- 978-0-520-28945-1
- Format
- Hardcover · 352 pages · second printing
- Awards
- Wyeth Foundation for American Art publication grant · Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award
Painterland, 1958–65
Archival photographs from the book research archive. Courtesy the Estate of Jerry Burchard unless noted.
Curating the RBPA
