De Kooning Show Opens in Washington
Jonathan Ashley
De Kooning Show Opens in Washington
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - To many art viewers, artist Willem de Kooning made
paintings that are just bright squiggles.
But to Klaus Kurtess, a curator who has assembled a show called ``Willem
de Kooning: In Process,'' no artist has ever painted in such a ``rich,
complex, playful and malleable'' way.
The show, which opened Saturday at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, includes
20 paintings and nine drawings, most of them never exhibited before.
De Kooning, born in Holland in 1904, moved to the United States in 1926
and worked as a house painter before gaining recognition for his
exploration of abstract art along with contemporaries Jackson Pollock,
Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
Critics now rank him as a foremost member of the 20th century's first
distinctively American group of artists: the abstract expressionists.
Abstract painters describe the world in ways that ordinary people don't
see while often including concrete objects. Expressionists express
emotions in their work, though ordinary people must guess if they are sad,
happy or indignant.
De Kooning died in 1997 at age 93. Last year one of his many untitled
paintings, a series of vigorous red and blue brush strokes, sold in London
for $1.9 million, setting a new auction record for the Dutch artist.
De Kooning created many pictures of women, heavily distorted. A reason for
his settling in America, he once said, was that ``the girls looked
fantastic.'' But the way he showed them has been interpreted in many ways
- sexist, pornographic, affectionate, funny.
``They look vociferous and ferocious,'' he once said. ``I think it has to
with the idea of the idol, the oracle and above all the hilariousness of
it.''
The show runs until May 28.
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On the Net:
Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition site:
http://www.corcoran.org/dekooning/index.htm