Jay Defeo and the Rose

Rating:
Summary: Jay DeFeo Lives
Review: Jay DeFeo spent many years of her life painting one picture, first called DEATHROSE, then just plain THE ROSE, and it grew so heavy with paint that it had to be hauled out of her studio on Fillmore Street in San Francisco on a crane. The proceedings were filmed by the artist Bruce Conner, a longtime friend of DeFeo's, and assembled by him into a film called THE WHITE ROSE: JAY DEFEO's PAINTING REMOVED BY ANGELIC HOSTS (actually Bekins movers).

After a few showings, the painting was stored at the San Francisco Art Institute and eventually plastered over to stabilize its shifting masses of paint and also to protect it from student graffiti. For many years it hid behind this plaster and its absence became a giant statement. DeFeo herself began to think of Conner's film as a kind of displaced substitute for her work, and Jane Green and Leah Levy, the editors of the present volume, are astute enough to let this fact speak for itself. In a great act of showmanship, Lisa Phillips, a Whitney curator, not only restored the painting but bought it for the Whitney where it can be viewed today (sometimes).

This book contains many essays by people who were close to DeFeo, as well as some by those who never met her. Bill Berkson's essay imagines the 1960 "Sixteen Americans" show by Dorothy Miller (which featured DeFeo, as well as her husband Wally Hedrick, in addition to giving national exposure to the likes of Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg), but was missing THE ROSE, which DeFeo did not send saying it was not yet finished. Lucy Lippard's essay considers similarities between DeFeo's production and that of her contemporaries Eva Hesse and the Lees--Lee Bontecue and Lee Lozano, relating her depressing years of inactivity (1966-1970) to the nascent women's art movement. It is provocative to say the least. The University of California Press has printed many fine photos to go with the book, including some color images which I had never seen.