inspiring

it's hard to describe the experience of standing in front of Jay DeFeo's The Rose. it's imposing, vast, and intimidating. a friend and i went and saw it during the Jay DeFeo retrospective at the SFMOMA, and stared at it for over a half hour, maybe even an hour. i have no idea - we lost all sense of time studying it. we walked around it, as much as we could, squatted in front of it, leaned towards it, tried desperately to get as close as possible to it without touching it. people came and went. we stayed. we talked about it - at length. we couldn't find the words to describe what was happening, how we were feeling. we talked to the guard, who had the same experience we had - he was just drawn to it. though he had been "guarding" it for the length of the retrospective, he felt compelled to stare at it every day he worked.

it's easy to breeze through galleries and museums when you do it a lot. it's not often that something is so arresting that it compels you to stare for over a half hour. it was like watching an amazing piece of dance, but it didn't stop. the song never ended. the performer, The Rose, never got tired. it continued to unveil secrets, and rearrange itself to hide others. nothing i say here hasn't been said before, by people more eloquent, and erudite, than i. it's something that is meant to be experienced.

here is a video of the conservation effort of The Rose by the Whitney.