Rarely has an artist been so closely associated with a single work as is Jay Defeo with her painting "The Rose". In this major study of "The Rose" in particular and of Jay DeFeo in general, 11 art and cultural historians and writers unfold the story of the creation and rescue of her masterpiece.

Foreword: Beside The Rose: DeFeo's Work at the Whitney Museum Marla Prather Acknowledgments Introduction Jane Green and Leah Levy COLOR GALLERY The Legendary Rose David A. Ross The Story of The Rose Martha Sherrill Think of Jay DeFeo Dancing to Count Basie Playing "One O'clock Jump" Walter Hopps Without The Rose: DeFeo in Sixteen Americans Bill Berkson Transplanting The Rose Lucy R. Lippard Photographing The Rose Sandra S. Phillips PORTFOLIO Valentine's Day Greil Marcus Conserving The Rose Niccolo Caldararo Vectors of Emergence, Lines of Descent Richard Candida Smith Art and the Limits of Language: A Critical Approach to The Rose Carter Ratcliff Chronology Judith Dunham List of Illustrations with Photo Credits Selected Bibliography on The Rose Contributors Index

"A gorgeous and moving book about a grand American masterpiece."—Thomas Hoving"Is The Rose erupting or imploding, or is it doing both simultaneously—swallowing up and disgorging a life, an era, an entire mythos? The current volume, at last grappling with the whole of Jay DeFeo's great billowing fever dream of a masterpiece, plugs a gaping hole in the history of contemporary American art, and does so with a sense of moment and scale and flair worthy of its mind-blowing subject."—Lawrence Weschler"An original and highly effective combining of 'readings' of the work of Jay DeFeo, a leading figure of the Beat generation. The various perspectives of the authors come smoothly together in their recognition of her supreme artistic ambition and desire to approach transcendence through art. New images and insights demythologize The Rose, now a genuine icon of the heroic abstract expressionist ethos identified with the era, enabling its creator to emerge as an individual and thereby richly enhancing our understanding of both the art and the artist."—Paul J. Karlstrom, editor of On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950"Eight years in the making, Jay DeFeo's The Rose was hidden behind a wall for over two decades and uncovered only after the artist's death. This book presents an account of its remarkable birth, burial, rescue, and resurrection through the words of conservators, curators, art historians, friends of the artist, and critics. The volume's sensitively written essays bring The Rose back to life in all its enigmatic complexity. It is a story unparalleled in contemporary art history, by turns riveting, heartbreaking, and exhilarating."—Eleanor Heartney, author of Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads