For much of the 1970s, the artist Stephen Kaltenbach (born 1940) developed a monumental painting called Portrait of My Father inside a rented Northern California barn where he lived without plumbing or insulation. Sustained by a formidable love for his father, experience with psychedelics, and a blooming spiritual life, it took him nearly seven years to finish. The work is mind-boggling from across the room, a nearly 10-by-15-foot photorealistic depiction of a man on death’s door, and from up close, as each trippy beard whisker explodes a window onto eternity. Since 2001, the painting has held pride of place at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

But equally astounding is that Portrait was rendered by a Conceptual artist; a man who turned his back on a rising career in newly-named SoHo as an artwork in and of itself. This study is the definitive history of the painting and the intentionally oppositional choices that led to its implausible creation. It consists of an epic interview with the artist conducted and annotated with context and corrections by curator and writer Jordan Stein (Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts), who also offers an introduction, alongside a trove of archival material.