Jay DeFeo and The Rose

by Jane Green (Editor), Marla Prather (Foreword by), Jay DeFeo

Rarely is an artist so closely associated with a single work as is Jay DeFeo with her monumental painting The Rose. Begun in the late 1950s, when DeFeo, a central figure of the Beat generation of San Francisco, was just starting to garner widespread national recognition, the visionary work occupied the artist for eight years. Massive in scale, layered with nearly two thousand pounds of paint, the overpowering painting was already famous before its first exhibition in 1969 at the Pasadena Art Museum. It was next exhibited in San Francisco, then stored at the San Francisco Art Institute, where it languished for twenty-five years before a historic conservation restored it to public view. The Rose now resides in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This volume is the first major study of The Rose in particular and of Jay DeFeo in general. In the collection, eleven distinguished art and cultural historians―Bill Berkson, Niccolo Caldararo, Richard Cándida Smith, Walter Hopps, Lucy R. Lippard, Greil Marcus, Sandra S. Phillips, Marla Prather, Carter Ratcliff, David A. Ross, and Martha Sherrill―unfold the story of the creation, as well as the tricky and painstaking rescue, of DeFeo’s radiant masterpiece. While providing new material on The Rose and exposing many myths surrounding both the artist and her great work, these essays also place Jay DeFeo in relation to artists of her time, including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Bontecou, and Eva Hesse. The book, which adds significantly to the scholarship of postwar American art, includes nearly eighty halftones, thirteen color plates, and Judith Dunham’s detailed Rose -related chronology.

Genres: Art

194 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2003

About the author

Jane Green is an art historian and has worked on exhibitions at Mills College Art Museum and the Berkeley Art Museum.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to have known Jay DeFeo and see The Rose before it went into hibernation for twenty years. While this book is more about the painting than Jay, some of her individuality comes out, especially in Walter's essay, "Think of Jay DeFeo Dancing to Count Basie Playing 'One o'clock Jump.'"

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful book with some stunning reproductions and rare photo documentation. The story of the restoration of The Rose is pretty gripping, and fascinating in its detail... where it bogs down for me is in its 1) lack of an in-depth bio (which I suppose would be another book entirely) & 2) its attempts to place DeFeo in a loftier art/historical context; as of a defense of the worthiness of DeFeo I suppose- in my case rather redundant, as I need no convincing of her genius. And who the hell let Griel Marcus in?