The Rat Bastard Protective Association was an informal group of Beat

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

 and Funk

Funk art

Funk art is an art movement inspired by popular culture that used an unlikely mixture of materials and techniques, including found objects. It was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. The movement’s name is derived from the musical term ‘funky’, describing the...

 artists who worked and exhibited together in San Francisco, California from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. The association was founded by and the group's name was coined by Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography, among other disciplines.-Early life:...

 in 1959. Its original members include: Manuel Neri

Manuel Neri

Manuel Neri is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.- Biography :...

, Joan Brown

Joan Brown

Joan Brown was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement....

, Jay DeFeo

Jay DeFeo

Jay DeFeo was a visual artist associated with the Beat generation who worked c.1950-1989 in the San Francisco Bay Area....

, Wally Hedrick

Wally Hedrick

Wally Bill Hedrick was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s...

, Wallace Berman

Wallace Berman

Wallace Berman was an American visual and assemblage artist. He has been called the "father" of assemblage art and a "crucial figure in the history of postwar California art".-Personal life and education:...

, Jess Collins

Jess Collins

Jess Collins , simply known today as Jess, was an American visual artist.- Biography :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...

, George Herms, and Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner

Bruce Conner was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography, among other disciplines.-Early life:...

. Conner coined the name as a play on the Scavengers Protective Association, one of the Italian garbage collectors companies in San Francisco at the time and spoke of the profound influence the collectors' burlap bundles of trash swaying pendulously from their trucks had on his assemblage sculptures (which featured stuffed nylon stockings).