“DeFeo may not have become known to a wider audience in her lifetime in part because her work is difficult to fit into the story of postwar art. The current show deals in subtleties, revealing that long past the build-up of “The Rose,” DeFeo’s work remained deeply layered. This is why it’s especially disappointing to read Walead Beshty’s romantic, hopelessly gendered essay in the catalogue, in which he personifies her subjects as lovers, her experiments as mystical infatuations. His interest in her art and archives is their proximity to her body, not her mind.”