Jess Collins

Jess was born Burgess Franklin Collins in Long Beach, California. He was drafted into the military and worked on the production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project.{{Cite web |title=Jess |url=https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/jess/ |access-date=2024-01-25 |website=SFMOMA |language=en-US}} After his discharge in 1946, Jess worked at the Hanford Atomic Energy Project in Richland, Washington, and painted in his spare time, but his dismay at the threat of atomic weapons led him to abandon his scientific career and focus on his art.

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". In the late 1940s, Jess met Robert Duncan and the painter Lyn Brockway, and became active in numerous exhibitions, poetry gatherings, and creative endeavors through their circle. He met Robert Duncan in 1951 and began a relationship with the poet that lasted for 37 years until Duncan's death in 1988.{{Cite web |last=McDowell |first=Tara |date=2019-10-15 |title=A Household of Minor Things: The Collections of Robert Duncan and Jess |url=https://lithub.com/a-household-of-minor-things-the-collections-of-robert-duncan-and-jess/ |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=Literary Hub |language=en-US}} 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 collages 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 Wadsworth Atheneum displayed six of the "Translations" paintings in their Matrix 2 exhibition.{{cite web |url=http://2gc0771gkd8m295j5p2hvgje72l.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Matrix-2.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2014-02-21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307060723/http://2gc0771gkd8m295j5p2hvgje72l.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Matrix-2.pdf |archive-date=2014-03-07 }} In the late 1950s, Jess also filled Pauline Kael's home on Oregon St in Berkeley, CA, with fantastical and Romantic murals, which still adorn the walls today.{{Cite web |last=Dinkelspiel |first=Frances |date=2016-05-09 |title=The Jess murals at former Pauline Kael house are saved |url=http://www.berkeleyside.org/2016/05/09/the-jess-murals-at-former-pauline-kael-house-are-saved |access-date=2024-03-31 |website=Berkeleyside |language=en-US}} Collins also created elaborate collages using old book illustrations and comic strips (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 to 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 who wrote an extended piece on Jess's Narkissos.

Sections of Jess's paintings 'Arkadia Last Resort' were used by Faithless in 2004 for the front covers to their single "I Want More".

In 2008, an exhibition of Jess's drawings was held at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco.[http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/Gallery_Paule_Anglim/Jess.html Gallery Paule Anglim, Artist profile Jess] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120331032329/http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/Gallery_Paule_Anglim/Jess.html |date=2012-03-31 }}, February 6 - March 1, 2008

In 2014 and 2015, a traveling exhibit titled "An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle" toured across the country to warm reception.{{Cite news |last=Cotter |first=Holland |date=2014-01-16 |title=The Company They Kept |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/arts/design/robert-duncan-and-jess-and-their-wonderland-of-art.html |access-date=2025-01-30 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} The exhibit explored what it was like for the couple to be "young, gifted, and odd" in San Francisco after World War II.{{Cite web |last=Staff |first=The Week |date=2014-02-19 |title=Exhibit of the week: An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle |url=https://theweek.com/articles/450637/exhibit-week-opening-field-jess-robert-duncan-circle |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=theweek |language=en}} The two men lived and worked for decades from their historic Victorian home in the Mission District, which was lined with more than 5,000 books, 5,300 music records, and countless works of visual art.

• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA{{Cite web|url=https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/96.492/|title=Jess, Narkissos, 1976-1991|last=|first=|date=|website=SFMOMA|archive-url=|archive-date=|url-status=|access-date=2019-01-22}}
• The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA{{Cite web|url=https://art.famsf.org/jess-burgess-franklin-collins/enamord-mage-translation-6-200587|title=The Enamord Mage: Translation #6 - Jess (Burgess Franklin Collins)|date=2015-05-08|website=FAMSF Search the Collections|language=en|access-date=2019-01-22}}
• The Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA{{cite web|title=The Collection|url=http://www.dirosaart.org/about/the-collection/|website=dirosaart.org|date=16 June 2010 |access-date=2016-11-03}}
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY{{Cite web|url=https://www.moma.org/artists/2913?locale=en|title=Jess {{!}} MoMA|website=The Museum of Modern Art|language=en|access-date=2019-01-24}}
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY{{Cite web |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/626876?searchField=All&sortBy=relevance&who=Jess$Jess&ft=*&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=1 |title=Caesar's Gate IV |date= 1955 |website=www.metmuseum.org |access-date=2019-01-24}}
• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY
• The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.97502.html|title=Ex. 5 - Mind's I: Translation #12|website=www.nga.gov|access-date=2019-01-24}}
• The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA{{Cite web|url=https://www.crockerart.org/collections/american-art-after-1945/artworks/feignting-spell-1954|title=Feignting Spell, 1954|website=Crocker Art Museum|access-date=2019-01-24}}

{{Reflist}}

• O! Tricky Cad & Other Jessoterica. Edited by Michael Duncan. (Siglio, 2012) {{ISBN|978-1-938221-00-2}}
• Jess: To and From the Printed Page. John Ashbery, Thomas Evans, Lisa Jarnot; (Independent Curators International, 2007) {{ISBN|0-916365-75-1}}
• Jess, a Grand Collage, 1951-1993. (Buffalo Fine Arts / Albright Knox Art Gallery, 1993) {{ISBN|0-914782-85-1}}

• [http://jesscollins.org/ Jess Collins Trust]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927063648/http://www.sfai.edu/People/Person.aspx?id=147&navID=6§ionID=2&typeID=1 San Francisco Art Institute: Jess Collins, BFA 1951] from San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2004 [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/07/BAGIC44V2V1.DTL] by Kenneth Baker
• [http://www.askart.com/askart/j/burgess_collins_jess/burgess_collins_jess.aspx Ask/ART: Jess]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060907032811/http://ici-exhibitions.org/Exhibitions/jess/jess.html Jess: To and From the Printed Page] exhibition of Jess's impastos from his "Translation" series together with many of his collages and designs, as well as the books and magazines in which they were reproduced
• [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4r29q8b4/ Guide to the Jess Papers] at The Bancroft Library
• [http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/caltechnews/articles/v41/jess.html Pulled Through Time: A "Caltech News" Reporter Traces the Life of an Elusive Artist]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120331032329/http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/Gallery_Paule_Anglim/Jess.html Gallery Paule Anglim]
• [http://sigliopress.com/about-jess/ "Jess: Master of Collage Aesthetic"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150225021329/http://sigliopress.com/about-jess/ |date=2015-02-25 }} by Michael Duncan at Siglio Press

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Category:1923 births

Category:2004 deaths

Category:American gay artists

Category:American collage artists

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:Artists from Long Beach, California

Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni

Category:Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area

Category:LGBTQ people from California

Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people