{"data":{"id":"10075","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":10075,"topgoose_id":14359,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":10075,"title":"The Rose","display_artist_text":"Jay DeFeo","display_date":"1958–1966","accession_number":"95.170","dimensions":"Overall: 128 7/8 × 92 1/4 × 11 in. (327.3 × 234.3 × 27.9 cm)","medium":"Oil with wood and mica on canvas","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Gift of The Jay DeFeo Foundation and purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJay DeFeo, \u003cem\u003eThe Rose\u003c/em\u003e, 1958–1966. Oil with wood and mica on canvas, overall: 128 7/8 × 92 1/4 × 11 in. (327.3 × 234.3 × 27.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of The Jay DeFeo Foundation and purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and the Judith Rothschild Foundation 95.170. © The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eJay DeFeo began this monumental work simply as an “idea that had a center to it.” Initially, the painting measured approximately 9 x 7 feet and was called \u003ci\u003eDeathrose\u003c/i\u003e, but in 1959, the artist transferred the work onto a larger canvas with the help of friends. She continued to work on \u003ci\u003eThe Rose\u003c/i\u003e for the next seven years, applying thick paint, then chiseling it away, inserting wooden dowels to help support the heavier areas of impasto. Now nearly eleven feet tall and weighing almost a ton, the work’s dense, multi-layered surface became, in DeFeo’s words, “a marriage between painting and sculpture.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFirst exhibited in 1969, \u003ci\u003eThe Rose\u003c/i\u003e was taken to the San Francisco Art Institute, where it was covered with plaster for support and protection, and finally stored behind the wall of a conference room. Legend grew about the painting, but it remained sealed until 1995, when Whitney curator Lisa Phillips had it excavated and restored by a team of conservators, who created a backing strong enough to support the heavy paint. DeFeo resisted offering an explanation or interpretation of the work, although she did acknowledge that despite the work’s enormous size and rough surfaces, there was a connection to “the way actual rose petals are formed and how they relate to each other in the flower.”\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Concrete relief panel with a radiating sunburst pattern and rough cracked texture.","alt_text":"A grayish-white crater of hard, rough material drawn to a center point","visual_description":null,"on_view":true,"created_at":"2017-08-30T17:19:51.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-06T06:00:14.551-04:00","images":[{"id":100918,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/10075/95_170_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"3946","type":"artist"}]}}}}