"This volume is the first major study of The Rose and of Jay DeFeo in general. In the collection, eleven distinguished art and cultural historians - Bill Berkson, Niccolo Caldararo, Richard Candida Smith, Walter Hopps, Lucy R. Lippard, Greit Marcus, Sandra S. Phillips, Marla Prather, Carter Ratcliff, David A. Ross, and Martha Sherrill - unfold the story of the creation, as well as the tricky and painstaking rescue, of DeFeo's radiant masterpiece. While providing new material on The Rose and exposing many myths surrounding both the artist and her great work, these essays also place Jay DeFeo in relation to artists of her time, including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Bontecou, and Eva Flesse.

The book, which adds significantly to the scholarship of postwar American art, includes nearly eighty halftones, thirteen color plates, and Judith Dunham's detailed Rose-related chronology."--Jacket.