At FLAG Art Foundation, a Rose Is So Much More Than a Rose

Of all flowers, the rose is arguably the most ubiquitous across art, inspiring everything from poetry and literature to painting and sculpture. At FLAG Art Foundation, the sweeping group show “A Rose Is” (on view through June 21) reassesses the multifaceted meanings and uses of the rose motif within visual art across numerous mediums.

“The rose became a vehicle to talk about consumerism, ecology, mortality, nuclear proliferation, politics, sentimentality, sexuality,” said curator and FLAG Art Foundation Director Jonathan Rider. “I like the idea that the show is ostensibly about one thing, but that one thing is a rabbit’s hole.”

Interrogating the rose’s place as a symbol and a reference point, the exhibition traces the flower through the work of more than three dozen artists, including Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois, Jay DeFeo, Anselm Kiefer, and James Rosenquist, just to name a few.

We spoke with Rider about the impetus behind the show, and what went into creating an exhibition of this scale.

What about the rose proved such a potent conceptual starting point for you?

We removed much of the existing architecture on FLAG’s ninth floor for Lubaina Himid’s solo exhibition “Make Do and Mend,” which then left me with a space flooded with light, but very few remaining walls—one of which was fifty feet long. That wall called for a monumental artwork, which led me to a 24-foot-long Cy Twombly painting from 2008 titled The Rose III. That painting, and its balance of exploding rose imagery and loosely scrawled text (an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1926 poem The Roses), became the jump-off point for a group exhibition looking at the rose in contemporary art and visual culture.

From there, I began seeking out artworks that complicate our idea of the rose, which is such a ubiquitous motif in art, literature, and pop culture, and has so many social meanings. What eventually became “A Rose Is” includes 37 artists and artist duos, each of whom address a different aspect of what a rose is, which can be so many things all at once.

Did the scope of the show evolve in any way during the show’s production?

A checklist comes together based on what artworks are available for loan, and some loans have requirements that ultimately shape an exhibition. Beyond the Twombly painting, we have two larger, more immersive installations: Anna Jermolaewa’s The Penultimate (2017/2025), which was recently included in the artist’s Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and Sara Cwynar’s video Rose Gold (2017). These pieces need breathing room to be experienced fully, which informs how we use the rest of FLAG’s space, which artworks go where, cool sightlines, and what conversations are interesting. With the idea that you only have one opportunity to hang an exhibition—to get it right—navigating it all can be tricky.

What drew you to some artists’ work over others—what was most important?

With the idea that each artwork should complicate how we see the rose, I wanted to include a range of ideas, approaches, and practices that are not just emblematic of depicting a beautiful rose—that’s not the show I wanted to make—but that present different and differing interpretations.

Kay Rosen created a new, monumental text piece titled A Rose Is (1978/2025) that opens the show, and references a performance she had made in 1978, which was inspired by Gertrude Stein’s 1913 poem Sacred Emily (for Emily Dickinson), which contains a line “rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”

Taryn Simon’s Framework agreement for economic cooperation. Quito, Ecuador, January 12, 2012, 2015, Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015)—which I had first seen in 2015 at her solo show at Gagosian—is a large-format photo where the artist has recreated floral centerpieces that would bear witness to the signings of political accords, contracts, treaties, and decrees. Peter Hujar’s photograph Candy Darling on her Deathbed (1973), made at the performer’s invitation on the occasion of her inevitable passing due to terminal illness, is equal parts glamorous and devastating. Surrounded by lavish flower arrangements—as if in her dressing room after a show—Darling is recumbent under dramatic lighting, wrapped in hospital bed sheets, her make-up just so, with a single long-stem red rose lying next to her failing body. And each piece in “A Rose Is” has an equally fascinating backstory.

Are there any pieces you would consider your favorites that you can share with us?

James Lee Byars’s Rose Table of Perfect (1989), is a pretty spectacular artwork; it comprises a one-meter-diameter sphere studded with 3,333 red roses, which are not meant to be replaced nor renewed over the course of the exhibition’s run. They’re simply intended to decay over time. It’s so rare to see that concentration of roses, thousands of them, and their scent at the opening was overpowering. For a show about roses, the element of scent was important. But in less than a week, the once-red roses have faded to purple, brown, and black, and they now smell a bit heady, like potpourri.

The Twombly painting, the third in a suite of five works that depict the lifecycle of a rose bloom, is the fulcrum in the series where the roses go from full bloom and begin to die. Twombly’s roses will never diminish, while Byars’s roses are literally fading in front of your eyes. Katie Paterson’s Ideas (A garden of plants that bloom only once in their lifetime (2024) and Haim Steinbach’s going going gone (2003), build on this conversation, and suddenly, the show becomes about mortality, time, and trying to stave off both.

Did anything surprise you over the course of bringing this exhibition together?

I’ve been surprised that so many people have people in their lives named Rose. I had a Grandma Rose. Or that a rose is their mother’s favorite flower or scent. I’ve seen a lot of rose tattoos. I like the idea that this subject means a lot to so many people and that their experience of it is in many ways part of this show.

“A Rose Is” at FLAG Art Foundation is on view through June 21, 2025.