This article was downloaded by: [University of Connecticut]On: 08 October 2014, At: 11:10Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of ArtHistoryPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/skon20

Jay De Feo's Forgotten Roses: TheWise and Foolish VirginsFrida Forsgren aa Languages and Translation , University of Agder , Serviceboks422, Kristiansand, 4604, NorwayPublished online: 23 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Frida Forsgren (2009) Jay De Feo's Forgotten Roses: The Wise andFoolish Virgins, Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 78:3, 131-141, DOI:10.1080/00233600903326110

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233600903326110

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Jay De Feo’s Forgotten Roses: The Wise

and Foolish Virgins

Frida Forsgren

Introduction

IN 2012�2013 THE Whitney Museum of

American Art will feature a retrospective

exhibition of Jay De Feo’s works. In view of

this, it should be noted that two of her lesser-

known monumental paintings are perma-

nently placed in Norway, the diptych The

Wise and the Foolish Virgins. These paintings

were made in the very years when the artist

also painted The Rose and, as the following

discussion will make clear, these shed im-

portant light on her oeuvre in general as well

as on its relationship to the works she saw and

studied in Florence.

Jay De Feo (1929�89) looms large in the

male-dominated beat milieu in both New York

and San Francisco. In being the only promi-

nent female artist active in the San Francisco

Bay Area in the 1950s and ’60s, she constitutes

the exception to the rule in an almost exclu-

sively male environment. She is a woman who

invents a room of her own, artistically and

personally, and who in a striking and un-

expected manner bridges traditional and in-

novative motives and techniques. In an age

when writers and visual artists are exploring

new and experimental artistic languages based

on free flow, spontaneity and the absurd, De

Feo in many ways returns to the origins of

Western art. The works she created in the late

1950s and throughout the 1960s embody

traditional and archetypical forms and they

show an involvement with eternal Christian

and Humanist topics, making her a consider-

able artistic force in the San Francisco Bay

Area. Her most acclaimed painting, The Rose,

made in her studio flat on 2322 Fillmore Street

SF in the years 1958�66 , is the most famous

example of her return to ancient Western

iconography and symbolism (Fig. 1). Equally

typical of her potent new style is her lesser-

known diptych The Wise and the Foolish

Virgins kept in the Norwegian Wennesland

collection (Figs. 2 and 3), and paintings such

as Daphne, The Annunciation (Fig. 4), Perse-

phone, The Veronica and Origin to mention but

a few examples. In the scholarly literature,

however, De Feo’s works are generally seen as

reflections of beat aesthetics; they are char-

acterized as spontaneous, process oriented and

intense, whereas few attempts have been made

to historicize her oeuvre. The Rose was the

centrepiece of the Whitney Museum of Amer-

ican Art’s exhibition »Beat Culture and the

New America, 1950�1965« (November 9

1995�February 4 1996) and the painting’s

fame is such that it tends to overshadow the

rest of her oeuvre not least due to its enormous

size and complex, romantic history.1 The Rose

has moreover been interpreted mainly in

relation to Cabbalistic ritual and as an embo-

diment of the oriental mandala shape with

which it shares certain formal features,2

whereas links to Western European art and to

#Taylor & Francis 2009 ISSN 0023-3609 K O N S T H I S T O R I S K T I D S K R I F T 2 0 0 9 , V O L 7 8 , N O 3

D O I : 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 0 0 2 3 3 6 0 0 9 0 3 3 2 6 1 1 0

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

traditions that are more in evidence have been

understudied. More particularly I wish to

argue that the forms and themes of her works

from the 1950s and ‘60s in a compelling

manner draw on the classic visual vocabulary

of Medieval and Renaissance iconography.

A room with a view

Mary Joan De Feo, called Jay, was born in New

Hampshire in a Catholic Italo-American fa-

mily that later settled in California. She

received her first artistic training from her

schoolteacher Mrs Emery and a neighbour

who ironically was called Michelangelo. She

completed her MA in Fine Arts at California at

the University of Berkeley, and she here

became the first female student to receive the

prestigious Sigmund Martin Heller Travelling

Fig. 1. Jay De Feo, The Rose, 1958�1966, oil on canvas

with wood and mica, 319�108 cm, The Whitney

Museum of Art. – The Estate of Jay De Feo.

Fig. 2. Jay De Feo, The Wise Virgin, Dipptych, 1958, oil

and house paint, charcoal on paper glued to canvas,

328�108 cm, The Kristiansand Cathedral School. –The Estate of Jay De Feo.

132 F R I D A F O R S G R E N

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Fellowship in 1951 .3 The jury mistook the

initial J in her application for referring to a

man’s name and thus awarded her the scholar-

ship. Given the difficult conditions for female

American artists at the time, it is probable that

the jury would have been hesitant to send a

young woman artist alone to Europe.4 The

scholarship sent Jay on a two-year adventure,

first to New York where she studied the new

American abstract expressionist art, and then

later to Europe where she particularly studied

ancient and modern European art. She went to

London, Paris, Spain, Portugal, and North

Africa in an old battered Renault, and even-

tually arrived in Florence where she stayed for

Fig. 3. Jay De Feo, The Foolish Virgin, Dipptych, 1958,

oil and house paint, charcoal on paper glued to canvas,

328�108 cm, The Kristiansand Cathedral School. –The Estate of Jay De Feo.

Fig. 4. Jay De Feo, The Annunciation, 1957�1958, oil on

canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago. – The Estate of

Jay De Feo.

J A Y D E F E O ’ S F O R G O T T E N R O S E S 133

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

more than six months in a rented room at the

Pensione Bartolini on the River Arno. The

Pensione was the favourite lodgings of English

middle-class travellers on their cultural tour to

Italy, like the characters Charlotte Bartlett and

Lucy Honeychurch who also lodged here in

E.M. Forster’s novel A Room With A View.

At the Pensione Bartolini Jay stayed in a

spacious room with a view onto the river. In

the traditionally frugal Italian room of cubic

shape and whitewashed walls, Jay began her

experiments in quest of her own style, while

being exposed to the massive impact of

Florentine Renaissance art and architecture.

The colours of the houses and the busy life of

the streets contrasted with the barrenness of

the walls of her room, hung with a simple

crucifix only. This contrast manifests itself,

I propose, in the many sketches and finished

works from her time in Florence; her repeated

use of the characteristic Florentine colours

ochre, terracotta, brown, the frequent appear-

ance of geometrical shapes such as the square

and the circle, the lonely crucifix contrasted to

abstract shapes on the canvas.5 Also the themes

and shapes seen in her later paintings from the

Bay Area beat period clearly resonate with her

experiences from and the experiments during

the months in Florence. We find in the

paintings an intriguing preoccupation with

geometrical shapes such as the circle, the

square, the triangle and the crucifix form, as

well as the reflection of religious or mythical

themes in works such as The Rose, The

Annunciation, Origin, Jewel and Daphne. But

these shapes need not only be of Oriental

origin, and in terms of the works’ titles her six

months in Florence would seem to be of

particular relevance. De Feo particularly em-

phasizes how the experience of the centrality,

space and shape of Renaissance architecture is

fundamental to her development as an artist.

Thus I wish to underscore that her major work,

The Rose, shares close visual affinities with

forms advocated in and produced by Renais-

sance aesthetics.

Florence and The Rose

The Rose was begun in Jay De Feo’s home on

Fillmore Street around 1958 , five years after

she returned from Europe, and her initial idea

was to create something that had a centre, that

radiated from a centre, in her own words:

»I got the notion of an idea that had a centre to

it«.6 She was, in other words, attracted by what

Rudolf Arnheim terms »the power of the

centre«.7 We see her preoccupation with

centrality in work after work, in the small

pieces of jewellery she produced, in the collages

and in her more monumental painted work

such as in The Jewel initiated in the same year.

The Jewel does not approach three-dimension-

ality as The Rose eventually would, but the

painting has strong compositional similarities

with its pendant. The Jewel is also monumental

in scale, measuring 304 .8 �139 .7 cm, depict-

ing a forceful explosion of rays emerging from

the centre. It moves from white in the centre to

warm patches of brown, orange, red and

black.8 The Jewel was finished in 1959 and

De Feo from now on devoted most of her

creative time to The Rose � a process that would

become a year-long creative obsession. As is

the case with The Jewel, The Rose is a massive

rectangular painting showing a series of rays

emanating from a central point. The colours

are grey and gritty, and the structure is tactile

and sculptural. Jay De Feo describes The Rose

as the final work in a triptych of floral motives

made at several stages in her oeuvre. The two

previous paintings were Origin, a symbol of

beginning, and Veronica,9 said to describe a

pass from bullfighting, but also suggestive of

134 F R I D A F O R S G R E N

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Veronica’s sudarium. The Rose was originally

called The Deathrose, then The White Rose,

until it became just The Rose. Eventually all her

time went into the process of creating The

Rose, and most of her money went to buy the

Bay Area Pearl White paint she used to build

the structure of the massive work. To her the

process was as important as the finished result,

and people visiting her flat say watching her

work was like watching an evolving perfor-

mance. The painting was placed in a separate

bay window in her flat, as in a separate

architectural space, or as in a lateral chapel in

a church. Eventually the painting became an

integral part of the room itself � here she spent

hours, weeks, months and years to shape it

according to her initial idea. Originally a two-

dimensional painting, it grew to become a

virtual three-dimensional architectonic instal-

lation of layers of paint and of mica. The Rose

underwent several working stages, it had an

archaic phase, an organic phase, a baroque

phase, a rococo phase, followed by its final

classical phase, but despite these differences,

the central thrust governed every stadium, as

did the principle of the squaring of the circle.

Let us return for a moment to Jay De Feo’s

trip to Europe and listen to her first thoughts

about coming to Florence. She describes

her meeting with Florence after months on

the road through southern Europe as a true

discovery. Upon coming to the Tuscan capital

Florence she says: »that’s when I discovered

the Renaissance. That’s what really became

an exciting thing to me stylistically.«1 0 She

furthermore states: »The city itself absolutely

fascinated me . . . . I wasn’t a chronic mu-

seumgoer there, but I absolutely fell in love

with the floor plan of the city. Just as a total

piece of architecture. I daily bicycled around

the place � the streets, the buildings, the

architecture itself impressed me terribly.«1 1 In

an interview with Paul Karlstrom for the

Smithsonian Archives of American Art Jay

De Feo further stresses the impact Florence

and Florentine Renaissance architecture had

on her.1 2 On being asked whether any parti-

cular period in art history appealed to her, she

answered:

JAY DE FEO: I was very interested in

primitive painting. Also, the notes that I saved

specifically were the architectural notes from the

Renaissance, from Dr. Horn. The floor plans of

the cathedrals, for instance, were very interest-

ing to me, as you might imagine. Although

I had no notion then of what it might eventually

mean to me.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You were interested in

Brunelleschi and Alberti and all the heavies?

JAY DE FEO: Oh yes! Architecture.

PAUL KARLSTROM: More so than painting?

JAY DE FEO: More so than painting. Well, it’s

the architecture that came through heavy to me.

The monumentality of the architecture. If you

can see the architecture of a culture, you can

practically read the culture.

We here clearly see in De Feo’s own words how

Renaissance architecture was fundamental to

her development as an artist. The geometrical

floor plans of the churches and particularly the

works of the architects Filippo Brunelleschi

and Leon Battista Alberti in Florence, and

elsewhere, had a tremendous impact on her

art. Alberti was the first theorist to describe the

one-point-perspective construction in his

seminal treatise Della Pittura (1436). And his

theories describing how to construct a three-

dimensional simulachrum of the physical

world as seen through a window are governed

by perspective and lines converging in a central

point. His theories revolutionized how reality

was reproduced on canvas in the fifteenth

century. The prominent features of Renais-

sance architectural style as the fusing of the

J A Y D E F E O ’ S F O R G O T T E N R O S E S 135

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

square and the circle, the one-point perspec-

tive construction, solidity, mass, volume and

space, and perhaps most importantly the

emphasis on the centre, these are issues that

from now on will occupy Jay De Feo’s visual

vocabulary, of which The Rose of course is the

most evident example (see Fig. 1).

Clearly, the massive painted sculpture mea-

suring 328 �234 cm and weighing near 2000

pounds is an embodiment of solid space, a

square structure from which a radiant circle

emerges in a forceful explosion. It is the

modern equivalent of Brunelleschi’s central

plan in the Pazzi chapel, a fusion of the earthly

and heavenly spheres in one body (Fig. 5). Also

the sense of monumentality, of solid space,

which could be said to be the essence of Leon

Battista Alberti and Filippo Brunelleschi’s

architectural designs, is clearly present in The

Rose. It has a pure, harmonious structure, yet

oozes monumentality. And Florence was

where Jay De Feo first conceived the idea to

create something that radiated from a centre,

an obsession which became her main focus

during her San Francisco beat period.

The rays emerging from the centre in

The Rose divide the painting into modular,

repetitive sections, echoing the modules of

Brunelleschi’s Florentine churches. Both in

San Lorenzo (Fig. 6) and in Santo Spirito the

architect broke up the cruciform plan into

smaller sections governed by the same math-

ematical ratios, which he then repeated

rhythmically. The series of repetitions creates

the harmonious whole, and each module

leads the gaze to the centre of the space.

The painting furthermore recalls the impres-

sion of gazing up into a Renaissance church

dome; each beam draws you inwards and

upwards to the centre of the dome. A similar

sense of visual centrality can be observed in

Brunelleschi’s two churches in central Flor-

ence. As you walk up the central aisle in San

Lorenzo and Santo Spirito all lines converge

in a central point, drawing you visually towards

the centre. The pietra serena mouldings, the

columns’ capitals, the geometrical lines in the

pavement, all form perspective lines ending at

the altar, at the most holy place of the church.

The Rose’s physical structure even echoes the

Fig. 5. Filippo Brunelleschi, The Pazzi Chapel, 1441,

Florence. – Scala.

Fig. 6. Filippo Brunelleschi, San Lorenzo, 1319,

Florence. – Scala.

136 F R I D A F O R S G R E N

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

contrast in Brunelleschi’s churches of architec-

tural elements in grey (pietra serena) with

whitewashed walls (chalk), as does its sense of

solidity and monumentality.

Vitruvian woman

The Rose underwent several creative phases

during the years of its creation. These various

phases were documented by Jay herself, her

artist husband Wally Hedrick and their mutual

friend, the artist Wallace Berman.1 3 In Ber-

man’s art magazine Semina several of these

documentary photos were published and they

show Jay posing before The Rose. Sometimes

the images show her in the act of painting,

sometimes she relaxes in front of the massive

structure and sometimes she poses in the nude,

her arms and legs being stretched out to form a

star, quite like Leonardo’s iconic image of the

Vitruvian man (Fig. 7). She imposes Vitruvian

woman on Vitruvian man. Whether this is a

purposeful parallel to the chief symbol of

Renaissance man’s integral fusion with cosmos

or not, it certainly creates a strong and

thoughtful image of the artist and her pro-

found relationship with her painting. In this

photo, Jay is inscribed in her painting, being

inserted into it as an integral part of the work

itself and the world it represents. Though the

power of the centre is most evident in The Rose,

centricity also is a feature in other of De Feo’s

Florentine-inspired works, a case in point

being her diptych The Wise and the Foolish

Virgins.

The wise and the foolish virgins

In 1958 , before Jay began devoting almost all

her creative energy to The Rose for a period of

eight years, she executed two monumental

paintings evolving around the same visual

themes, that is centrality and the rose motif.

The Wise and the Foolish Virgins (see Figs. 2

and 3), as they are called, form a diptych and

have been tucked away at the Norwegian

High School, Kristiansand Cathedral School

Gimle, since the early 1970s, when they were

bequeathed to the school by its former pupil

Dr. Reidar Wennesland. Dr. Wennesland was

De Feo’s doctor and friend in San Francisco,

and closely followed her artistic process. He

supported her with paint and artistic equip-

ment and bought several of her works and

also offered to buy The Rose when De Feo was

forced to remove the colossus from her flat in

1965 . The Wise and the Foolish Virgins

originally hung at Dr. Wennesland’s medical

studio, then at his house on Russian Hill in

San Francisco before he donated them to his

old school in Norway along with a sizeable

collection of paintings, sculptures and

sketches from the Bay Area beat scene.1 4

Fig. 7. Wallace Berman, Portrait of Jay De Feo, 1959,

toned gelatin-silver print with collage, 22,86�19,5 cm,

Whitney Museum of American Art.

J A Y D E F E O ’ S F O R G O T T E N R O S E S 137

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

Before the paintings left for Norway they were

exhibited at the Dilexi Gallery, and later at an

informal exhibition organized by Dr. Wennes-

land in 1970 .1 5 Originally the paintings were

part of a whole series of rose paintings, huge

drawings which were ultimately destroyed.1 6

Maybe De Feo’s initial project was to design

ten roses in all, to match the ten virgins in the

Gospel of Matthew, statues she had seen on

the portals of French cathedrals, or in Italian

murals? The Wise and the Foolish Virgins

today form a diptych and are striking visual

counterparts. In the Wise Virgin a white rose

gently unfolds from its centre (see Fig. 2),

while in the Foolish Virgin the black rose

destructs around a central core (see Fig. 3).

The wise, white rose delicately evolves from a

brittle stem, while the black, foolish rose is

mounted on a coarser stem. Both paintings

are monumental in scale (each 1287⁄8�92

1⁄4inches/328 �108 cm), and are executed in

pencil, charcoal, oil and house paint on paper

mounted on canvas. The paintings’ theme

departs from the Biblical parable of the wise

and the foolish virgins (Matthew 25 : 1�13)

who patiently waited for their bridegroom

with their lamps. Five of them had brought

extra oil for their lamps, the other five had not.

In the parable, the five virgins who are

prepared for the arrival of the bridegroom

are rewarded and the five who are not prepared

are scolded and excluded.1 7 The parable has a

clear apocalyptic theme: the Christian should

be prepared for the day of reckoning; if not one

shall not be among the chosen ones. As an

iconographic theme the parable particularly

occurs in medieval art in central and northern

Europe, as in the sculptures decorating the

portals of French and German Gothic cathe-

drals, and further north in churches in the

Scandinavian countries. It was the most

popular parable from the Gospels in the

thirteenth century.1 8 These delicately sculpted

virgins are seen for example at Amiens Cathe-

dral, at Cathedrale Saint-Etienne d’Auxerre, in

Bourges, at Notre-Dame of Laon, Notre Dame

de Paris, Notre-Dame de Reims, in Sens and at

Notre-Dame de Strasbourg in France and in

the German cathedrals of Freiburg, Lubeck

and at the Erfurt Cathedral and the Cathedral

of Magdeburg. Jay De Feo must certainly have

seen some of these elongated and graceful

sculptures on her trips around southern

France and her three-month stay in Paris.

Her slender roses echo the delicate fragility of

the Gothic virgins. De Feo’s virgins contain the

same contrasts and dualities as the Biblical

parable, the relationship between light and

darkness, wisdom and foolishness, purity and

impurity, but her virgins are given a modern

and symbolic form. The ten virgins have

become two, and the virgins’ bodies are

metaphorically expressed as slender roses. We

here observe how in a striking manner she

connects past and present, and opens up the

Catholic mystery by referring to this tradi-

tional medieval iconographic theme. The

Annunciation dating from the same period

(1957�59) is another painting which in the

same manner balances tradition and innova-

tion (see Fig. 4).1 9 The refined abstract oil

painting echoes the fluttering wings of the

Angel Gabriel approaching Mary, his strong

torso and his uplifted wings rendered in an

abstract, yet concrete form. As in The Wise and

the Foolish Virgins, she takes a well-known

traditional iconographical motive and gives it

a new, modern language.

Jay as symbolist

The works discussed above show that Jay De

Feo is a Western symbolist painter, rather than

an Eastern-inspired mystic. She is rooted

138 F R I D A F O R S G R E N

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

visually in the Western tradition of image

making, rather than in the experimental world

of her fellow beats or Bay Area artists. The

shapes, images, light and colours seen on her

travels in Europe in 1951�53 make up the

formal and spiritual vocabulary of her

work. She says that the light she experienced

in Europe, particularly in Paris, was striking.

»The atmosphere was so entirely different

there . . . . I was very taken with this kind of

softness � a greyness, a blueness about the

atmosphere.« She also dwells on the grittiness

and greyness of the buildings, the crumbly

walls and the atmosphere of the town, likening

it to ready-made abstract expressionistic

paintings.2 0 She was equally fascinated with

how most historic European towns look as if

they are an organic part of the terrain, an

integral part of the earth and the sky.2 1 In the

Florence Series we clearly see how the impres-

sions of light and colours put a strong stamp

on her work, and the sense of greyness and the

grittiness are manifest in several of her monu-

mental works such as The Rose, Incision

and The Annunciation. The muddy colours,

the layers of paint, often endow her painted

works with a sense of tactility and a plasticity

approaching the three-dimensionality of

sculpture and architecture.

Jay De Feo’s work undeniably suggests

eternal, human and religious topics, though

she is hesitant to admit that there are any

clear and direct references in her symbolic

work. The crucifix in her pensione room

served as an inspiration and as a strong visual

sign, but to her it did not have any religious

significance, as she makes clear in the follow-

ing passage:

It was just part of the decor that influenced

me. I don’t want to be misunderstood to the

point that I was taking it and using it in a

religious way. It appealed to me as a form, and

later, of course, it became the absolute founda-

tion of the painting, The Rose. That simple

cross.2 2

Beyond doubt, we see that the crucifix, in the

manner of the square, the circle, the triangle,

or the many archetypical geometrical forms

experienced in the architecture of European,

and particularly Florentine, churches and

palaces, become important cultural codes in

De Feo’s visual vocabulary. She fastens on and

employs these shapes as archetypal forms,

rather than religious images in an ordinary

sense. At the same time her first-hand

experience of Medieval and Renaissance

sculpted and painted iconography during

her travels in southern Europe manifests itself

throughout in her artistic vocabulary. We

observe this in the works discussed above, in

The Wise and the Foolish Virgins, echoing

French thirteenth-century portal sculptures,

in The Annunciation, alluding to the many

representations of the Archangel Gabriel

approaching Mary, seen at the Uffizi and

elsewhere, and finally in The Rose, which

incorporates a visual reference to the mandala,

to the Renaissance church, to the crucifix, to

the dome, to eternity. Jay De Feo’s works have

in them a sense of timelessness and wonder; in

a poignant way she manages to bridge past and

present. Though abstract, symbolical and often

not easily accessible, her works communicate

on an archetypical, genuine level. The following

passage, which describes the effect of The Rose,

testifies to how her work often enthrals the

beholder in an intuitive and intense manner:

. . . in the painting of The Rose I had the

feeling that that painting kind of reached

everybody on some level or another. There

wasn’t a person that came into that studio

when I was working on the painting, whether

they were an artist, a layman, or a painter or

whatever, that didn’t respond to it on some

J A Y D E F E O ’ S F O R G O T T E N R O S E S 139

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

subjective level. Maybe they didn’t like it, or

maybe they did, but nobody ever said, »What is

it?« or »What does it mean?« Everybody

seemed to know what it meant for them and

it seemed to transcend a verbal explanation.2 3

Whether characterized as American expres-

sionist, as beat or as a symbolist, Jay De Feo’s

work definitely reflects her Florentine begin-

nings. The small crucifix in her room at the

Pensione became the foundation stone for her

monumental Rose, and Alberti and Brunel-

leschi’s Quattrocento architecture is reflected

in her archetypical vocabulary. The very

colours and textures of European cities are

moreover echoed in her gestural, painterly

style. Similarly, the lesser-known rose paint-

ings, The Wise and the Foolish Virgins, display

strong parallels to the Medieval European

iconographic theme, aesthetically as well as

thematically. They illustrate how De Feo

adheres to the Western canon of image

making by connecting directly to its powerful

visual history.

Endnotes1 . There are countless references to the painting’s legendary

status, see for instance the collection of essays: Jane

Green and L. Levy, Jay De Feo and The Rose, University of

California Press, Berkeley, 2003 . Images of the artist in

front of the monumental painting were published in the

1960s in magazines such as Holiday, Art in America and

Look. The removal of The Rose is furthermore eternalized

in Bruce Conner’s cult movie The White Rose from 1965 .

2 . See R. Berg, »Jay De Feo: The Trancendental Rose«,

American Art, Vol. 12 , No. 3 , Autumn 1998 , pp. 68�77

and C. Ratcliff, »Romance of the Rose«, Modern Painters,

Spring 2003 .

3 . Biographical details are found in the interview with Jay

De Feo conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom at the artist’s

home in Larkspur, California, on 3 June 1975 . The

interview is in the Archives of American Art, Smithso-

nian Institution where it can be consulted digitally

(Hereafter AAA 1). Jay De Feo was subsequently

interviewed by Paul J. Karlstrom on 18 July 1975 (cited

hereafter as AAA 2) and on 23 January 1976 (cited

hereafter as AAA 3). The latter two interviews have not

been digitalized.

4 . Susan Landauer discusses the difficulties female artists

had in finding acceptance among their fellow male artists

and teachers; see S. Landauer, San Francisco School of

Abstract Expressionism, University of California Press,

Berkeley, 1996 , p. 16 .

5 . Jay De Feo’s works from Florence have been discussed in:

Exh. cat., Jay De Feo: The Florence View and related works

1950�1954 , Museo ItaloAmericano, San Francisco,

California, 1997 .

6 . AAA 3 , p. 7 .

7 . Cf. Rudolf Arnheim, The Power of the Center: A Study of

Composition in the Visual Arts, University of California

Press, Berkeley, 1982 .

8 . On the differences and similarities between The Jewel

and The Rose, Jay De Feo states: »Like many of my

paintings, I started a pair of two opposite ideas. In The

Rose, everything kind of recedes into the center, and the

Jewel, which I didn’t quite finish, was actually started in

very deep reds and came out from the center toward the

edges.« AAA 2 , p. 3 . The Jewel is in the collection of Los

Angeles County Museum of Art.

9 . AAA 1 , p. 10 .

10 . AAA 2 , pp. 4�5 .

11 . AAA 2 , p. 5 .

12 . AAA 1 . Consulted on the internet, therefore not possible

to give page number.

13 . Wallace Berman took a whole series of photographs of

Jay De Feo in front of her paintings, for instance in front

of The Rose and The Eyes. These were published in

Berman’s Semina Four. R. Solnit, Secret Exhibition: Six

California Artists of the Cold War Era, City Lights Books,

San Francisco, 1990 , p. 69 .

14 . The Wennesland collection contains more than 500

items comprising Bay Area art from the 1950s, ’60s and

’70s, early twentieth-century art, Tibetan art, eighteenth-

century engravings, pre-Columbian art, African art and

Catholic art. On the collection see Frida Forsgren, San

Francisco Beat Art in Norway, Forlaget Press, Oslo, 2008 .

On Reidar Wennesland as an art collector particularly see

G. Hennum, Pa Sporet av Beatbohemene, Aschehoug,

Oslo, 1998 .

15 . AAA 3 , p. 23 . Wennesland’s collection was exhibited at

the American Salvage Co. 33 Filbert St. for three weeks

from 27 March 1970 , before it left for Norway.

16 . AAA 3 , p. 7 . »I had been working on some very large

drawings of roses. Huge ones. Eleven foot ones, a couple

of them were in the Dilexi show. And the rest of them

were finally destroyed.«

17 . Matthew 25 :1 : »Then shall the kingdom of heaven be

likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and

went forth to meet the bridegroom. 2 And five of them

were wise, and five were foolish. 3 They that were foolish

140 F R I D A F O R S G R E N

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4

took their lamps, and took no oil with them. 4 But the

wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 5 While

the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 6

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the

bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. 7 Then all

those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the

foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our

lamps are gone out. 9 But the wise answered, saying, Not

so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye

rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. 10 And

while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they

that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and

the door was shut. 11 Afterward came also the other

virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. 12 But he

answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the

hour wherein the Son of man cometh.« Cited from: The

Bible. Authorized King James Version, with an introduc-

tion by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, Oxford

University Press, Oxford and New York, 1997 .

18 . See E. Male, Religious Art in France: The Thirteenth

Century. A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources,

Bollinger Series XC.2 , Princeton University Press, Prin-

ceton, 1984 , pp. 202�203 .

19 . Jay De Feo, The Annunciation, 1957�59 . Oil on canvas,

1203⁄4�74

1⁄2 inches. Art Institute of Chicago.

20 . AAA 2 , p. 2 . »When I got over there to Paris, I was very

impressionable about everything. Even just the old

crumbly walls � all that kind of stuff. They looked like

ready-mades abstract expressionist paintings. The old

buildings and everything. The whole atmosphere of the

town. The greyness impressed me.«

21 . AAA 2 , p. 9 . »I realized how entire cities looked like they

were part of the terrain. They belonged there.«

22 . AAA 2 , p. 6 .

23 . AAA 2 , p. 26 .

Summary

The article discusses the American Abstract

Expressionist or beat artist Jay De Feo, arguing

that her work engages with European and

especially Florentine Medieval and Renais-

sance art. De Feo was awarded a scholarship

in the early 1950s and spent two years on the

road in Europe. As the article argues, her six-

month stay in Florence in particular was vital

for her formation as an artist. This is evident in

for example her most famous work, The Rose,

and in the lesser-known The Wise and the

Foolish Virgins, today owned by a Norwegian

High School.

Frida Forsgren

Languages and Translation

University of Agder

Serviceboks 422 , Kristiansand

4604 Norway

E-mail: frida.forsgren@uia.no

J A Y D E F E O ’ S F O R G O T T E N R O S E S 141

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f C

onne

ctic

ut]

at 1

1:10

08

Oct

ober

201

4