We have of course featured The Rose before, but here it is again in all its glory…
Jay De Feo: The Rose, 1958-65 - Oil with wood and mica on canvas (The Whitney)
“The Rose, the monumental work that the Whitney Museum helped save and now owns, almost literally illustrates DeFeo’s transformative process. For the first seven years of her work on it (1958-65), the painting occupied a bay window area in her apartment, with its back toward the main windows and light streaming in from the side windows. At first it was called Deathrose (“Death Throes”, as Lucy Lippard noticed, “Death Rows,” or “Death Rays”), with a burst of rays focused off-center like The Eyes. The painting at that point had an asymmetrical focal point into which everything vanished. But gradually, as DeFeo chipped away at it and added to it, the painting took on life, was centered on an even larger canvas, and ultimately became The Rose, nurtured by the light coming through the windows at its back and sides and the artist at its front.”
(Source: newyorkartworld.com)
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