Download PDF Version Revolt Magazine, Volume 1 Issue No.4

artist, “Father of MTV,” conceptual prankster and
founder of the Rat Bastard Protective Association,
a group of Beat and Funk artists, felt that “This
final form was not ever finished, it had to take
an uncontrolled event to make it stop.” Conner
documented this “transplant” in his 7 minute
film, The White Rose (1967) Jay DeFeo’s Painting
Removed by Angelic Hosts (1967), to the sounds of
Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.
DeFeo stopped refining it three months later.
Renamed from Deathrose which she thought “just
a little melodramatic,” now to The White Rose,
feeling “ the rose was so much an aspect of life as
of death,” she eventually just went with The Rose,
“the unity with both of those opposite ideas.”
The Rose had its first public showing in 1969 at
the Pasadena Art Museum, traveled to the San
Francisco Museum of Art and was afterwards
installed in the new wing at the San Francisco Art
Institute, where it was bolted to a concrete wall in
the McMillan Conference Room.
“I had done absolutely nothing from the time I
finished The Rose until 1970. I was repairing
my personal life as well as my psyche after the
heavy experience that the painting of The Rose
was. I needed that time to restore some kind of
equilibrium and gain some kind of perspective on
my life’s work and get some feeling of what could
naturally come after that.”
With the emergence of Minimalist and Pop Art
during the ‘60s, not seeing herself as part of the
feminist movement and maybe being too tightly
pegged as a “Beat” artist, DeFeo began feeling as
if the art world had moved on and was showing
little interest in her work. She bought a Hasselblad
camera and immersed herself into photography.
She continued to seek museum placement for
The Rose. By 1972, it was showing signs of
hair line cracks, nicotine grime, scratch marks,
graffiti, coffee stains, loose chunks of paint, with
the canvas sagging from its weight. DeFeo knew
she’d have to find help to cover these now needed
repairs. Conner screened his film, which had
already helped to keep The Rose in the public eye,
for grassroot fundraising campaigns. Events were
organized. DeFeo received a $1,500 National
Endowment grant. News about the The Rose
resurfaced in the San Francisco press as they
covered the story of DeFeo’s restoration efforts.
The museum conservation team started to clean
and repair The Rose, encasing it in a structure
of wax, starch paste, polyvinyl acetate, packing
material, mulberry tissue, cotton sheeting and
plaster reinforced with chicken wire. Money ran
out. A particle board wall was eventually built
in front of it for student exhibitions. The Rose
remained hidden for the next twenty years.
As the art world “rediscovered” DeFeo, her new
work began to see momentum by 1975 with a run
of successful one-person shows that followed.
Curatorial consultant Leah Levy joined her efforts
The Rose, 1958–66, Oil with wood and mica on canvas, 128 7/8 x 92 1/4 x 11 in. (327.3 x 234.3
x 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The Jay DeFeo Trust, Berkeley, CA, and purchase with funds
from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation 95.170, © 2012 The Jay
DeFeo Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photograph by Ben Blackwell.
to find a permanent home for The Rose. DeFeo
took a teaching position at Mills College and
climbed Mount Kenya, a lifelong dream.
The Rose continued to remain an obscure mystery.
After DeFeo’s death in 1989, The Jay DeFeo Trust
was established and the search for a permanent
location for The Rose continued. Would a museum
take the risk of putting out money, not knowing
if the painting was salvageable or not? DeFeo’s
patrons and the “Friends of the Rose” were
committed and determined. They felt deeply
captivated and transformed by The Rose. They
praised her as a true innovator. Her struggle had
now become their own struggle to bring The Rose
back to life.
In 1992, Lisa Phillips, the Whitney Museum’s
curator, contacted the estate about a possible loan
of The Rose for their upcoming exhibition, Beat
obviously in no condition to be shown. The estate
contacted Lisa Lyons at the Lannan Foundation
in Los Angeles for possible conservation support.
J. Patrick Lannan had been an avid collector of
DeFeo’s work and had originally wanted to buy the
unfinished Deathrose, which he had nicknamed
“The Endless Road.” Three small square windows
were cut into the plaster covering, and, to
everyone’s surprise, it hadn’t turned into “slime”
or “goo” or become coated with mold. Two years
later, the Lannan Foundation redirected its mission
away from the acquisition of art.
David Ross, director of the Whitney, told Levy,
“It’s one of the greatest masterpieces of postwar
American art. It had to be rescued.” The Whitney