As ever, De Kooning. (late paintings of Willem de Kooning, traveling exhibition)

By the time "Willem de Kooning: the Late Paintings, The 1980s, began its inaugural run at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in October 1995, rumors of the circumstances besetting de Kooning himself, as well as, by implication, anything he produced since 1980, were swarming preemptorily between the public and the works on the walls. Nothing, it seemed, could dispel them totally: not optimal viewing conditions, which at SFMOMA included opening the skylights of the fourth-floor galleries for the first time so as to greet the paintings, done by daylight in the artist's East…