{"id":1893152,"date":"2026-04-20T19:36:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1893152"},"modified":"2026-04-20T19:36:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:36:31","slug":"james-hayward-dead-west-coast-painter-of-thick-monochromes-dies-at-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1893152","title":{"rendered":"James Hayward Dead: West Coast Painter of Thick Monochromes Dies at 82"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-539902562.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tJames Hayward, a West Coast painter whose abstractions earned him a loyal cult following among artists, died on April 16. He was 82, according to a brief obituary posted by his studio over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\n\tHayward may not be among the most well-known names to emerge from the postwar period, but many artists knew and loved his work. Mike Kelley, for example, once praised him as \u201cone of the few truly important West Coast painters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis process was marked by a certain eccentricity that differentiated his art from a lot of similar work. From the mid-1970s onward, Hayward largely produced monochrome abstractions. But where many single-color canvases from the era were characterized by the smooth, even application of paint, Hayward purposefully left his materials chunky and thick.<\/p>\n

\n\tReferring to the phrase \u201cmonochrome abstraction,\u201d Hayward told Artillery<\/em> of his work, \u201cPeople ask what does that mean\u2014you know, lay people? I say, well basically I make one-color paintings of basically nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA positive Artforum<\/em> review of an exhibition at Los Angeles\u2019s Richard Telles Fine Art in 2012 noted that Hayward\u2019s paint \u201callegedly applied in the dark, offered a surprising degree of variety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the period preceding the monochromes, Hayward had predominantly created paintings composed of two expanses of color that were divided down the middle. But, he said, \u201cI realized that I never again wanted to paint on this side or that side of any more god damn lines.\u201d Thus followed a prolonged period of making paintings that he termed \u201cautomatic,\u201d aligning them with Surrealist art that was supposedly produced by yielding all intentionality to the inner workings of the mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn in San Francisco in 1943, Hayward attended San Diego State University. \u201cI wasn\u2019t good at drawing people,\u201d he said of his undergraduate education. \u201cI was glad to discover at college that you didn\u2019t have to draw people to be an artist.\u201d He went on to study in the University of California, Los Angeles\u2019s graduate program, completing his education there in 1969.<\/p>\n

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Work by James Hayward from a 2024 exhibition at the Pit.<\/span>Alan Shaffer Photography<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWhile New York\u2019s Sidney Janis Gallery was among the first to commercial spaces to give him a commercial exhibition, nearly all of his solo shows have been held on the West Coast, with San Francisco\u2019s Modernism gallery having given him more than 10 one-person exhibitions. In recent years, Hayward\u2019s art has increasingly appeared in blue-chip settings: LA\u2019s Roberts Projects and the Pit gallery, as well as New York\u2019s Miles McEnery Gallery, have staged exhibitions of his art in the past decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis work is now held by institutions across the US, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. <\/p>\n

\n\tFor much of his career, Hayward made his art on a horse farm in Moorpark, where he painted well into his later years and wrote a book of autobiographical anecdotes called Indiscretions. Asked about the title, Hayward told Flaunt<\/em>, \u201cDiscretion is the better part of valor, but indiscretion is the better part of adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-539902562.jpg?w=1024″] James Hayward, a West Coast painter whose abstractions earned him a loyal cult following among artists, died on April 16. He was 82, according to a brief obituary posted by his studio over the weekend. Hayward may not be among the most well-known names to emerge from the postwar period, but many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1893152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1893152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1893152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1893152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1893152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}