About The Rose: Creation and Community in Jay DeFeo's Circle - Elizabeth Ferrell

"Its [sic] such a beautiful idea - it will be so hard for me to give it up - she confessed. "I know it sounds corney [sic] but even though its [sic] always going to a part of me somehow - I don't know - just giving up this material object will be unbearable"

"Through the use of back lighting, Burchard's photographs depicts the studio as a dark, hushed, and mysterious chamber. "The Rose" rises altar-liked behind DeFeo's ethereal silhouette, it's starburst pattern emitting an otherworldly glow. Conner described DeFeo's studio in similarly mystical terms:
"The room became a temple and the ritual object of the footstool raised Jay to greater spiritual heights. Making "The Rose", Conner claims converted the mundane living room area into a temple - a liminal space where the concrete, earthly realm touches the spiritual and transcendent."

Through deep archival research and nuanced analysis, Elizabeth Ferrell examines the creative exchange that developed with and around "The Rose", a monumental painting on which the San Francisco artist Jay DeFeo (1929–1989) worked almost exclusively from 1958 to 1966.

From its early state to its dramatic removal from DeFeo’s studio, the painting was a locus of activity among Fillmore District artists. Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Wally Hedrick, and Michael McClure each took up "The Rose" in their photographs, films, paintings, and poetry, which DeFeo then built upon in turn. The resulting works established a dialogue between artists rather than seamless cooperation. Illustrated with archival photographs and personal correspondence, in addition to the artworks, Ferrell’s book traces how "The Rose" became a stage for experimentation with authorship and community, defying traditional definitions of collaboration and creating alternatives to Cold War America’s political and artistic binaries.

Yale University Press, 2022
English
Hardcover, 248 pages
189mm x 260mm