Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
November 3, 2012 – June 9, 2013
Whitney Museum of American Art
February 28 – June 2, 2013
Jay DeFeo’s reputation as an imporatant painter was established before the eight year period (1958-1966) in which she poured her entire vision and energy into a single work –The Rose. Perhaps the most mythic of the great Abstract Expressionist paintings, The Rose rivals masterworks by Pollock, Still, or Rothko. In 1959 DeFeo refused the invitation to exhibit The Rose in Dorothy Miller’s 16 Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, choosing instead to work on the painting for seven more years.
DeFeo remarked at the time:
“Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime.” 1
In 2003, curator Marla Prather succinctly captured the scope of DeFeo’s commitment to the work:
[DeFeo] was twenty-nine years old when she began the painting, turned thirty-seven the year she completed it, and reached forty before she began making art again… After 1974, then the painting was encased in plaster, she never saw the work again… 2
The two videos below are part of the Voices and Images of California Art series produced by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the first video, Bruce Conner discusses the development of The Rose. Conner famously documented the removal of the painting from DeFeo’s apartment in his 1967 film The White Rose.
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The Rose, is a near perfect union of image and physicality. Ironically, the overwhelming physical nature of the painting caused it to vanish. The work languished in storage for decades, until The Whitney Museum rescued, restored, and exhibited the work in 2003. The second video discusses the eventual rescue and conservation of 2300 pound painting.
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More audio and video about Jay DeFeo and The Rose are available in an interactive feature on the SFMOMA website. Extensive information about the artist is available at http://www.jaydefeo.org
Notes
1 Jay DeFeo, 1959 statement in Sixteen Americans exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art: quoted in Jay DeFeo and The Rose, University of California Press, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003, p 42.
2 Marla Prather, Beside The Rose, DeFeo’s Work at the Whitney Museum, Jay DeFeo and The Rose, University of California Press, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003, p ix.