Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo's Estocada and Other Pieces

On the life and afterlives of Jay DeFeo's Estocada, a work created in the shadow of The Rose

In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929-89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with the 2,000-pound colossus of a painting for which she would become legendary, The Rose. The morning after it was carried out the front window, DeFeo was forced to destroy the only other artwork she'd started in six years, an enormous painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway wall. The unfinished Estocada--a k...