when de kooning was king - a book review
e
friend de Kooning and erased it, and then exhibited it as
"An Erased de Kooning".)
NYTIMES
December 12, 2004
When de Kooning Was King
By RED GROOMS
DE KOONING
An American Master.
By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.
Illustrated. 731 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.
WHEN we get the chance to look at the whole life and work of
Willem de Kooning, the upheaval in American art in the
middle of the 20th century comes into clearer focus. That
alone makes ''De Kooning: An American Master,'' by Mark
Stevens and Annalyn Swan, an important book. Several
biographies in recent years -- of Jackson Pollock, Mark
Rothko and Arshile Gorky, among them -- brought parts of
that history to life. But in this book an enormous picture
develops.
Stevens, a critic, and Swan, a journalist, both with many
years of experience in the art world, have done deep
research, but they don't push it in our faces. We hear
arguments among painters and critics and the street buzz
about the development of Abstract Expressionism. But de
Kooning's persistence as an outsider to almost any theory or
definition -- he called theory ''baloney'' -- sharpens our
understanding of the era. He was very smart -- you could not
be around him much without sensing that intelligence -- and
no one could corner him. Just when Rothko and Barnett Newman
are explaining that abstraction is about removing
representation from painting, de Kooning insists he will
exclude nothing, but include more, especially the human
figure. When Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art
challenges painters at a meeting to find a catchy name for
their movement and Robert Motherwell suggests
''Abstract-Expressionist,'' de Kooning, who has the last
word, says only ''it is disastrous to name ourselves.'' In
life and in art he was like that; no matter where you look,
he's there and then he's not.
These downtown painters wanted to make modern art their own
preserve, and the public was drawn into the fracas. The book
can get dramatic. Greenwich Village -- especially the
painters' hangouts, the Waldorf Cafeteria, the Cedar Tavern
-- looks like a cockpit where visionaries fight for the
world's soul. So many contentious, brilliant and outrageous
characters shout for attention that at times the story seems
unreal. So does de Kooning: triumphs in art are followed by
scenes of revolting sordidness, and then, at the end, there
is salvation and the miracle of all that new work. Also,
while Stevens and Swan don't sensationalize the bohemian
life, it is delicious. Trying to sort out, or even count,
the bright young women who fall into bed with de Kooning is
impossible. The photographer Rudy Burckhardt, who had a loft
next to de Kooning's in the 30's and saw his personal life
up close, said that de Kooning ''never had one woman and
then another woman. It was all mixed up.'' It is as good as
reading about Errol Flynn.
De Kooning's youth in Rotterdam, where he was born in 1904,
is a revelation. When he was a child his parents divorced
and his mother married a failed barkeeper; the family was
scratch poor. At 12 de Kooning got a job with one of the
best interior decorating companies in the Netherlands, and
the owners enrolled him in an art academy. For four years he
worked eight hours a day, six days a week, followed by hours
of art instruction at the academy. In such a professional
studio during the Art Nouveau era he had an artist's basic
training through his hands: grinding pigments, mixing
paints, tracing, lettering, stenciling and, most important,
drawing. Then for several years he worked with a commercial
artist who, de Kooning always said, opened his eyes to the
whole world of art. That grounding in commercial work made
him a superb craftsman and gave him a very democratic
outlook. I once heard him say Norman Rockwell was a good
painter.
In 1926 de Kooning sailed to America as a stowaway. During
his early years here he made a living working for decorating
companies, doing his own painting in off hours. Then he met
Gorky, an Armenian immigrant who had found his own way in
art with no training at all, and Gorky became his mentor or
idol. To Gorky painting was a vocation requiring total
commitment. He said a young artist had to choose his own
models to learn from, from any era in history. He was the
first person de Kooning had ever seen learning classical
techniques by trying to recreate masterpieces, old or new.
It would be hard to overestimate Gorky's influence. When de
Kooning claimed years later that he was using Rubens in his
own work, for instance, there is no doubt he was; you can
see it. Like no one else he could fuse the classical and the
modern into a classical modernism.
Gorky's standard made de Kooning's life a terrible struggle
for the next 15 years. One of the great strengths of this
book is its sense of an artist in his studio. At times the
authors disappear, and rather than just read about de
Kooning we watch him apply paint, scrape it off and attack
again, trace sections of a painting and pin them on other
parts to see how they work, stare at pictures for hours,
destroy canvases, fly into rages of frustration and fling
furniture about. He had a loft on Broadway just below 13th
Street in the late 50's, and from across the street we could
see him working. Painting was his addiction; it was what he
did for hours and hours every day.
In the late 40's, while some of his contemporaries found
their own art, he seemed to recede farther from his goal and
into deeper destitution until his black-and-white
abstractions of 1948 caused a sensation among other
painters. And in 1950 his great picture ''Excavation'' was
seen by even his fiercest critics as a masterpiece. The Art
Institute of Chicago bought ''Excavation''; the Museum of
Modern Art bought ''Woman I,'' on which he worked almost in
despair before and after ''Excavation''; and private
collectors began to take an interest. A show at the Sidney
Janis Gallery in 1956 thrust him into the public eye, and
after Pollock died in a car crash that year de Kooning was
increasingly recognized as the leader of the pack.
But in those very years he was paying a high price for the
long labor of finding himself in art. He dropped into long
periods of binge drinking; it is shocking to find a man of
this stature living in squalor and lying all night in a
gutter. And he had very little money; he never did grasp the
art market and, when it began to change so rapidly in the
50's, he was oblivious of it. He told friends he was dying.
The darkness that fell on him as he rose to success is a
little terrifying to read about. It culminated in the
appearance of Pop Art, which surfaced in the late 50's and
was canonized by a Janis show in 1962. That movement's
announced aim was to replace Abstract Expressionism, and it
made the 60's a bleak time for many of the Abstract
Expressionists.
I think that what got de Kooning through it was his
unfailing commitment to classical modernism -- his strength
from the beginning. In 1956 one of his lovers, Joan Ward,
gave birth to de Kooning's only child, Lisa, and, while de
Kooning continued his philandering, he eventually moved to
the working-class enclave of Springs near East Hampton to be
close to the child, who enchanted him. And there he began to
develop a whole new style in art -- voluptuous, erotic (he
said the landscape itself merged with a woman's body), lyrical.
He was also lucky. Two men came along to rescue him. In 1962
Joseph Hirshhorn, the great Connecticut collector, took up
de Kooning and began to buy like a wholesaler. He not only
put money in de Kooning's pocket; he paid off debts for him
and made it possible for de Kooning to build in Springs a
marvelous studio he designed for himself. It was a
magnificent space -- large, high and light, with an
industrial feel, ample and well heeled, where he could
scatter canvases while he worked on them. It was emblematic
of his modern vision of life; you can see that vision in the
earliest lofts he designed for clients in New York in the
late 20's and for himself in the 30's. It was an immensely
satisfying experience to see him in the Springs studio.
Then, in 1967, Xavier Fourcade, a young art dealer working
at Knoedler, the oldest gallery in New York, invited de
Kooning to sign on. His contract assured him of a regular
income and he was presented to collectors in the company of
European masters. Fourcade worked full time promoting de
Kooning: in addition to a series of New York shows over two
decades -- including a large retrospective at the Modern --
he arranged major shows in Europe that drew international
media attention and seeded de Kooning work in museums
everywhere. Fourcade and Hirshhorn share a lot of the
responsibility for the de Kooning celebrated in the media
for the rest of the century.
His life in Springs was hardly orderly. There was the same
parade of bright young women as lovers well into his 70's --
by now a few of them were little more than a third of his
age. And the bingeing went on, sometimes joined in by young
assistants he hired to help manage the studio. But the
painting also continued. The exploration of color and
texture in the late works is extraordinary and there is
great fluidity in them that connects clearly to the Art
Nouveau material he worked on in his youth at the commercial
studio in Rotterdam.
Finally, throughout this sweeping history there runs one of
the most elusive love stories of the last century. Stevens
and Swan weave it into their account as it occurred
chronologically, but it stands out in the mind as floating
above everything else. It is the story of de Kooning and the
only woman his friends thought he ever fell in love with,
the only one he married, Elaine. The two were so talked
about in the 70's and 80's that everyone has a kind of
tabloid view of them. Here Elaine comes out as a very
different person than all the popular versions. The book's
take on her is right; her personality was larger than life,
like de Kooning's.
She began an affair with de Kooning in 1938 and they were
married in 1943. By the late 40's the marriage was clearly
over and its collapse contributed powerfully to de Kooning's
near despair at that time. It is no accident that over the
next 40 years we hear their friends habitually talking about
''Bill and Elaine'' as an item, although they were not. Ruth
Kligman, who lived with Pollock for some time, was no less
formidable than Elaine. After Pollock died, she had an
affair with de Kooning that everyone knew about, but no one
we meet in the book talks about Bill and Ruth that way. Ward
was Lisa's mother and was with him or near him for years as
he grew closer to his daughter, but no one talks about Bill
and Joan.
Elaine was the one he chose. In the hard years of struggle
she lived, and painted, with him, often in cramped quarters,
and there is no doubt that she shared the physical and
psychological torment of that time as no one else did.
Repeatedly in the long years after they separated, incidents
remind us that he needed her in ways he needed no one else.
At the very end, when he was old and life at the Springs
studio fell into increasing chaos, with no one managing the
assistants and hangers-on, he asked Elaine for help and,
after more than 20 years of separation, she moved to a
cottage in Springs and took over the studio for him. What
Stevens and Swan call ''Alzheimer's-like dementia'' was
descending on de Kooning (it is hard to tell the difference
between the like and the real thing) and he probably never
realized that Elaine died of lung cancer before he himself
died in 1997, just a month short of 93.
Altogether, de Kooning's life traces a great arc across a
century like some of the liquid swirls in his late
paintings. He was such a wild man, and always a vagabond,
but his achievement grows greater and greater as his story
unfolds. It is interesting that Stevens and Swan call him
''an American master.'' He did not even become a citizen
until 36 years after he illegally entered the country. And
many of his competitors complained that he was too European
to ever break with the past the way they could. But these
authors are right: he is an American master. I think he
could not have done what he did if he had stayed in Europe;
America was his fate. After all, if he had not come here, he
would not have met Gorky, and that made all the difference.
Red Grooms's most recent show was ''New Works in Wood'' last
summer at Marlborough Gallery in New York City.
Like a Chef in His Kitchen
De Kooning also began to develop a new medium to increase
the visceral sensation of touch in his paintings. . . . He
created thick, succulent swirls of paint that sometimes
appeared almost geologically encrusted upon the canvas.
Increasingly, over the years, the paint would take on a
vitality of its own, as if it were the essential clay of
life. This new, more physical quality was the result of de
Kooning's novel use of safflower oil, water and benzine with
the pigment. At the time he began using the medium, de
Kooning was seeking a richer, more lush look, which he
referred to as a ''blubbery'' quality. Before leaving the
city, he had gone for advice to his old friend Leonard
Bocour, of Bocour Paints, who had been making his own oil
paint since the 30's. De Kooning told him he wanted a paint
that was rich and very slow to dry, so he could run wet
color into wet color and build up the physicality of his
surfaces. Bocour suggested that de Kooning try slow-drying
safflower oil, instead of the usual linseed oil, and sent
him to the local grocery store to buy some. Not only did de
Kooning switch to safflower oil, he also made up the mixture
using benzine. When Mary Abbott told him the fumes were
unhealthy, however, he substituted kerosene. Since the
mixture separated, he had to emulsify it by whipping it up
like salad dressing each time he wanted to use a particular
color. De Kooning sometimes resembled a busy chef in his
kitchen. ''He'd use teacups and mix the colors himself,''
said a studio assistant of the time. ''You emulsify it and
shake it up. He would maybe have 30 or 40 different things
on his central palette table.'' In many of his later
pictures, the juicy brushstrokes would trail off into
bubbly, foamy ridges. Here, the oil and water had separated
in the drying process, leaving behind small bubbles. It was
a further, textural effect that de Kooning welcomed -- ''a
funny texture,'' said Mary Abbott, ''kind of like the top of
a pudding.''
From ''De Kooning: An American Master.''
Joel Olson
<
(Pollack, it is said, once bought a small drawing by his
friend de Kooning and erased it, and then exhibited it as
"An Erased de Kooning".)
NYTIMES
December 12, 2004
When de Kooning Was King
By RED GROOMS
DE KOONING
An American Master.
By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.
Illustrated. 731 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.
...
>
For a long time I was put off by the 1 or 2 of his paintings most commonly seen,
those harsh caricatures of a woman. Only recently have I come across other,
more reasonable works of his. (I forget where).
http://images.google.com/images?q=de+Kooning&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search
-----------
Silence is so accurate. - Mark Rothko
-----------
Blues Ma
e
I do like the colors and that Excavation thing. You must
remember, this is abstact expressionism. It is abstract,
and expresses something, I'm not sure what.
>
>> <http://images.google.com/images?q=de+Kooning&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search>
Blues Ma
Almost as pointless as Picasso.
e
>> > Very no class of me to say, but most of his stuff puts me in mind of a
>> > demented Where's Waldo sketch.
>> I do like the colors and that Excavation thing. You must
>> remember, this is abstact expressionism. It is abstract,
>> and expresses something, I'm not sure what.
> Couldn't pay me enough to hang the shit in my home.
> Almost as pointless as Picasso.
Picasso was a lout.
(Now eating an acorn squash.)
Blues Ma
Ain't he still dead ?
e
>>Picasso was a lout.
>>(Now eating an acorn squash.)
> Ain't he still dead ?
From time to time his heirs poke him with a stick, and he
doesn't move. He's either dead or extremely disinterested.
Blues Ma
But he's eating acorn squash right now ?
e
> e wrote:
>>>>Picasso was a lout.
And, posting on Usenet.
Joel Olson
<<
http://images.google.com/images?q=de+Kooning&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search
Very no class of me to say, but most of his stuff puts me in mind of a
demented Where's Waldo sketch.
>>
<
I do like the colors and that Excavation thing. You must
remember, this is abstact expressionism. It is abstract,
and expresses something, I'm not sure what.
>
issues
------------
Is that outfit of yours reversible? Try it inside out, Ginger.
You have nothing to lose. - Dame Edna
------------
e
> I do like the colors and that Excavation thing. You must
> remember, this is abstact expressionism. It is abstract,
> and expresses something, I'm not sure what.
> issues
And, from the looks of it, very serious issues. As Patty
would probably ask, "Whose issues?"