Kooning, Willem de

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[[Image:Kooning_woman_v.jpg|thumb|Willem de Kooning's ''Woman V'' (1952-53), [[National Gallery of Australia]]]]
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'''Willem de Kooning''' (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an [[Abstract expressionism|abstract expressionist]] painter, born in [[Rotterdam]], The [[Netherlands]]. In the post [[World War II]] era, de Kooning painted in the style that is referred to as Abstract expressionism, [[Action painting]], and the [[New York School]]. Like all [[Modern art]], the intent of these forms of art was to produce not beauty, but critical reflection. The intent was to awaken in the viewer (or hearer) a recognition of the specific, usually social or political, concern of the artist.
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'''Willem de Kooning''' ([[April 24]], [[1904]] – [[March 19]], [[1997]]) was an [[abstract expressionist]] painter, born in [[Rotterdam]], The [[Netherlands]].  
+
Abstract Expressionism preceded [[Tachisme]], [[Color Field painting]], [[Lyrical Abstraction]], [[Fluxus]], [[Pop Art]], [[Minimalism]], [[Postminimalism]], [[Neo-expressionism]], and the other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements. Other abstract expressionist painters include [[Jackson Pollock]], [[Franz Kline]], [[Arshile Gorky]], [[Mark Rothko]], [[Hans Hofmann]], [[Robert Motherwell]], [[Philip Guston]], and [[Clyfford Still]], among others.
  
 
==Biography==
 
==Biography==
 +
De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about five years old, and he was raised by his mother and a stepfather.<ref>Encyclopedia Britannica Online, [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9029596/Willem-de-Kooning Willem de Kooning.] Retrieved January 7, 2008.</ref> His early artistic training included eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques.<ref>Marcia Brennan, ''Modernism's Masculine Subjects: Matisse, the New York School, and Post-Painterly Abstraction'' (MIT Press). ISBN 026202571X</ref> In the 1920s, he worked as an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store.<ref>Barbara Hess, ''Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse'' (Taschen), p87. ISBN 3822821357</ref>
  
−
In the post [[World War II]] era, de Kooning painted in the area of abstract expressionism, sometimes labeled [[action painting]], (meaning that he handled the paint spontaneously; dribbling, splattering or smearing it on). Others in this movement include [[Jackson Pollock]], [[Franz Kline]], [[Arshile Gorky]], [[Mark Rothko]], and [[Clyfford Still]]. Later, de Kooning experimented with other art movements.
+
In 1926, De Kooning entered the [[United States]] as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS ''Shelly,'' which was sailing to Newport News, Virginia. He then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, eventually settling in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter until moving to a studio in Manhattan in 1927. In 1929, he met the artist and critic [[John D. Graham]], who would become an important stimulus and supporter.<ref>Ibid, 15.</ref> He also met the painter [[Arshile Gorky]], who became one of De Kooning's closest friends.
  
 +
In October 1935, De Kooning began to work on the WPA ([[Works Progress Administration]]) [[Federal Art Project]], and he won the [[Logan Medal of the Arts]] while working together with Colombian [[Santiago Martínez Delgado]]. They were employed by the work-relief program until July 1937, when they resigned because of their alien status. De Kooning supported himself during the early [[Great Depression|Depression]] by commercial jobs, but this period of about two years provided the artist with his first opportunity to devote full-time to creative work. He worked on both the easel-painting and mural divisions of the project (the several murals he designed were never executed).
  
−
De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about five years old, and he was raised by his mother and a stepfather. In 1916 he was apprenticed to a firm of commercial artists and decorators, and, about the same time, he enrolled in night classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques, where he studied for eight years. In 1920, he went to work for the art director of a large department store.
+
In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, De Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including ''Two Men Standing,'' ''Man,'' and ''Seated Figure'' (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically colored abstractions, such as ''Pink Landscape'' and ''Elegy''. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized ''Woman'' and ''Standing Man'', along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about 1945, the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in ''Pink Angels.''
  
−
In 1926, de Kooning entered the [[United States]] as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS ''Shelly'', to Newport News, Virginia. He then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter. In 1927 he moved to a studio in Manhattan and came under the influence of the artist, connoisseur, and art critic [[John D. Graham]] and the painter [[Arshile Gorky]]. Gorky became one of de Kooning's closest friends.
+
In 1938, De Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, who would later become [[Elaine de Kooning]] when they were married in 1943. She also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. He had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the [[Charles Egan Gallery]] in New York in 1948, and taught at [[Black Mountain College]] in North Carolina in 1948, and at the Yale School of Art in 1950/51.
  
−
From about 1928, de Kooning began to paint still life and figure compositions reflecting [[School of Paris]] and Mexican influences. By the early 1930s he was exploring abstraction, using biomorphic shapes and simple geometric compositions, an opposition of disparate formal elements that prevails in his work throughout his career. These early works have strong affinities with those of his friends Graham and Gorky and reflect the impact on these young artists of [[Pablo Picasso]] and the Surrealist [[Joan Miró]], both of whom achieved powerfully expressive compositions through biomorphic forms.
+
==Mature works==
−
 
 
−
In October 1935, de Kooning began to work on the WPA ([[Works Progress Administration]]) [[Federal Art Project]], and he won the [[Logan Medal of the arts]] while working together with Colombian [[Santiago Martinez Delgado]]. They were employed by this work-relief program until July 1937, when they resigned because of their alien status. This period of about two years provided the artist, who had been supporting himself during the early Depression by commercial jobs, with his first opportunity to devote full time to creative work. He worked on both the easel-painting and mural divisions of the project (the several murals he designed were never executed).
 
  
−
In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, de Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including ''Two Men Standing'', ''Man'', and ''Seated Figure'' (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically colored abstractions, such as ''Pink Landscape'' and ''Elegy''. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized ''Woman'' and ''Standing Man'', along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures.  By about 1945 the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in ''Pink Angels''. In 1946, too poor to buy artists' pigments, he turned to black and white household [[enamel paint|enamels]] to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, ''Light in August'' (c. 1946) and ''Black Friday'' (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas ''Zurich'' (1947) and ''Mailbox'' (1947/48) are white with black. Developing out of these works in the period after his first show were complex, agitated abstractions such as ''Asheville'' (1948/49), ''Attic'' (1949), and ''Excavation'' (1950; [[Art Institute of Chicago]]), which reintroduced color and seem to sum up with taut decisiveness the problems of free-associative composition he had struggled with for many years.
+
In 1946, too poor to buy artists' pigments, he turned to black and white household [[enamel paint|enamels]] to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, ''Light in August'' (c. 1946) and ''Black Friday'' (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas ''Zurich'' (1947) and ''Mailbox'' (1947/48) are white with black. Developing out of these works in the period after his first show were complex, agitated abstractions such as ''Asheville'' (1948/49), ''Attic'' (1949), and ''Excavation'' (1950; [[Art Institute of Chicago]]), which reintroduced color and seem to sum up with taut decisiveness the problems of free-associative composition he had struggled with for many years.
  
−
In 1938, de Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, later known as [[Elaine de Kooning]], whom he married in 1943. She also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. He had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the [[Charles Egan Gallery]] in New York in 1948 and taught at [[Black Mountain College]] in North Carolina in 1948 and at the Yale School of Art in 1950/51.
+
De Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s and again from 1947 to 1949. The biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols. But it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In the summer of that year he began ''Woman I'' (located at the [[Museum of Modern Art]], [[New York City]]), which went through innumerable metamorphoses before it was finished in 1952.  
  
−
==Mature works==
+
During this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the [[Sidney Janis]] Gallery in 1953, causing a sensation chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow [[Abstract Expressionism|Abstract Expressionists]] were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The appearance of aggressive brushwork and the use of high-key colors combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]ian insights. Some of these paintings also seemed to hearken back to early [[Mesopotamia|Mesopotamian]]/[[Akkadia|Akkadian]] works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes.
−
De Kooning had painted women regularly in the early [[1940s]] and again from 1947 to 1949. The biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols.  But it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In the summer of that year he began ''Woman I'' (located at the [[Museum of Modern Art]], [[New York City]]), which went through innumerable metamorphoses before it was finished in 1952.  
 
  
−
During this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the [[Sidney Janis]] Gallery in 1953 and caused a sensation, chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow Abstract Expressionists were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The savagely applied pigment and the use of colors that seem vomited on his canvas combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]ian insights. He also had many paintings that seemed to hearken back to early Mesopotamian / Akkadian works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes.
+
The ''Woman''' paintings II through VI (1952-53) are all variants on this theme, as are ''Woman and Bicycle'' (1953; [[Whitney Museum of American Art]], New York) and ''Two Women in the Country'' (1954). The deliberate vulgarity of these paintings contrasts with the French painter [[Jean Dubuffet]]'s no less harsh ''Corps de Dame'' series of 1950, in which the female, formed with a rich topography of earth colors, relates more directly to universal symbols.
  
−
The ''Woman''' paintings II through VI (1952-53) are all variants on this theme, as are ''Woman and Bicycle'' (1953; [[Whitney Museum of American Art]], New York) and ''Two Women in the Country'' (1954). The deliberate vulgarity of these paintings contrasts with the French painter [[Jean Dubuffet]]'s no less harsh ''Corps de Dame'' series of 1950, in which the female, formed with a rich topography of earth colours, relates more directly to universal symbols.
+
From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, De Kooning entered a new phase of nearly pure abstractions more related to landscape than to the human figure. These paintings, such as ''Bolton Landing'' (1957) and ''Door to the River'' (1960) bear broad brushstrokes and [[calligraphy|calligraphic]] tendencies similar to works of his contemporary, Franz Kline.
  
−
By 1955, however, de Kooning seems to have turned to this symbolic aspect of woman, as suggested by the title of his ''Woman as Landscape'', in which the vertical figure seems almost absorbed into the abstract background. There followed a series of landscapes such as ''Police Gazette, Gotham News, Backyard on Tenth Street, Parc Rosenberg, Suburb in Havana, Door to the River'', and ''Rosy-Fingered Dawn at Louse Point'', which display an evolution from compositional and coloristic complexity to a broadly painted simplicity.
+
In 1963, De Kooning moved permanently to [[East Hampton]], [[Long Island]], and returned to depicting women while also referencing the landscape in such paintings as ''Woman, Sag harbor'' and ''Clam Diggers''.
  
−
About 1963, the year he moved permanently to [[East Hampton]], [[Long Island]], de Kooning returned to depicting women in such paintings as ''Pastorale'' and ''Clam Diggers''. He re-explored the theme in the mid-1960s in paintings that were as controversial as his earlier women. In these works, which have been read as satiric attacks on the female anatomy, de Kooning painted with a flamboyant lubricity in keeping with the uninhibited subject matter. His later works, such as ''Whose Name Was Writ in Water'' and ''Untitled III'', are lyrical, lush, and shimmering with light and reflections on water. He turned more and more during his late years to the production of [[clay]] sculpture.
+
Willem de Kooning was diagnosed with a degenerative illness, which in all probability was [[Alzheimer's disease]].<ref>Barbara Hess, ''Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse'' (Taschen), p87. ISBN 3822821357</ref> After his wife, Elaine, died on February 1, 1989, his daughter, Lisa, and his lawyer, John Eastman were granted guardianship over De Kooning.<ref>Ibid.</ref>
  
−
In the 1980s, de Kooning was diagnosed with [[Alzheimer's disease]], and a court declared him unfit to manage his estate, which was turned over to conservators. As the style of his later works began to take on an abrupt change, his vintage works drew increasing profits; at [[Sotheby]]'s auctions ''Pink Lady'' (1944) sold for [[US dollar|US$]]3.6 million in 1987 and ''Interchange'' (1955) brought $20.6 million in [[1989 in art|1989]]. His wife, the former Elaine Fried, died from lung cancer, aged 71, in 1989.
+
==Legacy==
 +
As the style of his later works continued to evolve into early 1989, his vintage works drew increasing profits; at [[Sotheby]]'s auctions ''Pink Lady'' (1944) sold for [[US dollar|U.S.$]]3.6 million in 1987, and ''Interchange'' (1955) brought $20.6 million in [[1989 in art|1989]].  
  
−
There is much debate over the relevance and significance of his later paintings, which became clean, sparse, and almost graphic, while alluding to the biomorphic lines of his early works. Some say his mental condition and attempts to recover from a life of [[alcoholism]] had rendered him unable to carry out the mastery indicated in his early works, while others see these late works as prophesizing the clean, surface-oriented  painters of the [[1990s]] and 21st century - and having a direct correlation to contemporary painters such as [[Brice Marden]]. Still others who knew de Kooning personally claim that his late paintings were being taken away and sold before he was able to finish them.
+
There is much debate over the relevance and significance of his 1980s paintings, many of which became clean, sparse, and almost graphic, while alluding to the biomorphic lines of his early works. Some have said his very last works, most of which have never been exhibited, present a new direction of compositional complexity and daring color juxtapositions,  Some speculate that his mental condition and attempts to recover from a life of [[alcoholism]] had rendered him unable to carry out the mastery indicated in his early works, while others see these late works as boldly prophetic of directions that some current painters continue to pursue. Unfortunately, gossip has tainted the scant critical commentary afforded these last works, which have yet to be seriously assessed.
  
−
Willem de Kooning has served as inspiration for the Welsh band [[Manic Street Preachers]] for three songs: "Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning)", "His Last Painting" (about his battle with Alzheimer's), and the song "Door to the River" (named after the painting).
+
==Notes==
 +
<references/>
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
−
* Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50253062&tab=holdings ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,''] (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
+
* Brennan, Marcia. ''Modernism's Masculine Subjects: Matisse.'' MIT Press. ISBN 026202571X
−
* Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50666793&tab=holdings ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,''] (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
+
* Hess, Barbara. ''Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse.'' Taschen. ISBN 3822821357
 +
* Herskovic, Marika. ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey.'' New York School Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
 +
* Herskovic, Marika. ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists.'' New York School Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
 +
* Lieber, Edvard. ''Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio.'' Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000. ISBN 0-8109-4560-6
  
−
==See also==
+
==External links==
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* [[Abstract expressionism]]
+
All links retrieved May 6, 2023.
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* [[Action painting]]
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* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3810 Photo of William de Kooning]  
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* [[Elaine de Kooning]]
 
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* [[Impasto]]
 
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* [[Women in art]]
 
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* [[Woman III]]
 
  
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==External links==
 
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* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3810 Photo]
 
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* [http://www.zappa-analysis.com/kooning/index.html Links to reproductions]
 
  
 
[[category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
[[category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
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{{credits|Willem_de_Kooning|139038434}}
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[[category:Artists]]
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[[category:Image wanted]]
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{{credits|Willem_de_Kooning|163887173}}

Latest revision as of 15:38, 6 May 2023

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist painter, born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In the post World War II era, de Kooning painted in the style that is referred to as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Like all Modern art, the intent of these forms of art was to produce not beauty, but critical reflection. The intent was to awaken in the viewer (or hearer) a recognition of the specific, usually social or political, concern of the artist.

Abstract Expressionism preceded Tachisme, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Fluxus, Pop Art, Minimalism, Postminimalism, Neo-expressionism, and the other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements. Other abstract expressionist painters include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, and Clyfford Still, among others.

Biography

De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about five years old, and he was raised by his mother and a stepfather.[1] His early artistic training included eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques.[2] In the 1920s, he worked as an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store.[3]

In 1926, De Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS Shelly, which was sailing to Newport News, Virginia. He then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, eventually settling in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter until moving to a studio in Manhattan in 1927. In 1929, he met the artist and critic John D. Graham, who would become an important stimulus and supporter.[4] He also met the painter Arshile Gorky, who became one of De Kooning's closest friends.

In October 1935, De Kooning began to work on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project, and he won the Logan Medal of the Arts while working together with Colombian Santiago Martínez Delgado. They were employed by the work-relief program until July 1937, when they resigned because of their alien status. De Kooning supported himself during the early Depression by commercial jobs, but this period of about two years provided the artist with his first opportunity to devote full-time to creative work. He worked on both the easel-painting and mural divisions of the project (the several murals he designed were never executed).

In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, De Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including Two Men Standing, Man, and Seated Figure (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically colored abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and Elegy. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized Woman and Standing Man, along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about 1945, the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in Pink Angels.

In 1938, De Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, who would later become Elaine de Kooning when they were married in 1943. She also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. He had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York in 1948, and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948, and at the Yale School of Art in 1950/51.

Mature works

In 1946, too poor to buy artists' pigments, he turned to black and white household enamels to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, Light in August (c. 1946) and Black Friday (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas Zurich (1947) and Mailbox (1947/48) are white with black. Developing out of these works in the period after his first show were complex, agitated abstractions such as Asheville (1948/49), Attic (1949), and Excavation (1950; Art Institute of Chicago), which reintroduced color and seem to sum up with taut decisiveness the problems of free-associative composition he had struggled with for many years.

De Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s and again from 1947 to 1949. The biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols. But it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In the summer of that year he began Woman I (located at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City), which went through innumerable metamorphoses before it was finished in 1952.

During this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953, causing a sensation chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow Abstract Expressionists were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The appearance of aggressive brushwork and the use of high-key colors combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest Freudian insights. Some of these paintings also seemed to hearken back to early Mesopotamian/Akkadian works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes.

The Woman' paintings II through VI (1952-53) are all variants on this theme, as are Woman and Bicycle (1953; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) and Two Women in the Country (1954). The deliberate vulgarity of these paintings contrasts with the French painter Jean Dubuffet's no less harsh Corps de Dame series of 1950, in which the female, formed with a rich topography of earth colors, relates more directly to universal symbols.

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, De Kooning entered a new phase of nearly pure abstractions more related to landscape than to the human figure. These paintings, such as Bolton Landing (1957) and Door to the River (1960) bear broad brushstrokes and calligraphic tendencies similar to works of his contemporary, Franz Kline.

In 1963, De Kooning moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, and returned to depicting women while also referencing the landscape in such paintings as Woman, Sag harbor and Clam Diggers.

Willem de Kooning was diagnosed with a degenerative illness, which in all probability was Alzheimer's disease.[5] After his wife, Elaine, died on February 1, 1989, his daughter, Lisa, and his lawyer, John Eastman were granted guardianship over De Kooning.[6]

Legacy

As the style of his later works continued to evolve into early 1989, his vintage works drew increasing profits; at Sotheby's auctions Pink Lady (1944) sold for U.S.$3.6 million in 1987, and Interchange (1955) brought $20.6 million in 1989.

There is much debate over the relevance and significance of his 1980s paintings, many of which became clean, sparse, and almost graphic, while alluding to the biomorphic lines of his early works. Some have said his very last works, most of which have never been exhibited, present a new direction of compositional complexity and daring color juxtapositions, Some speculate that his mental condition and attempts to recover from a life of alcoholism had rendered him unable to carry out the mastery indicated in his early works, while others see these late works as boldly prophetic of directions that some current painters continue to pursue. Unfortunately, gossip has tainted the scant critical commentary afforded these last works, which have yet to be seriously assessed.

Notes

  1. ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Willem de Kooning. Retrieved January 7, 2008.
  2. ↑ Marcia Brennan, Modernism's Masculine Subjects: Matisse, the New York School, and Post-Painterly Abstraction (MIT Press). ISBN 026202571X
  3. ↑ Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse (Taschen), p87. ISBN 3822821357
  4. ↑ Ibid, 15.
  5. ↑ Barbara Hess, Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse (Taschen), p87. ISBN 3822821357
  6. ↑ Ibid.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Brennan, Marcia. Modernism's Masculine Subjects: Matisse. MIT Press. ISBN 026202571X
  • Hess, Barbara. Willem de Kooning 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse. Taschen. ISBN 3822821357
  • Herskovic, Marika. American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey. New York School Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
  • Herskovic, Marika. New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists. New York School Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
  • Lieber, Edvard. Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000. ISBN 0-8109-4560-6

External links

All links retrieved May 6, 2023.

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