Willem de Kooning

The Dutch-born American painter Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was a leader of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

Before the 1940s the major advances in modern painting were forged on English and European soil. American artists, although aware of these advances, had not generally participated in their origin. After World War II, however, the United States, and in particular New York City, became a focal point for modernist developments. The most celebrated of these is known as abstract expressionism—abstract, because most of the new art eschewed all traces of visible reality; expressionism, because it appeared to have been created through uncontrolled and sometimes violent painterly gestures. Known also as action painting or painterly abstraction (historians have yet to agree on the most appropriate designation), abstract expressionism reached international scope and influence during the 1950s.

Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock are the best-known exponents of this new American style. Although their works inspired public ridicule at first, both artists are now recognized as major figures within the broader tradition of art history. For de Kooning this recognition is especially significant, because he always viewed himself as a link in the great tradition of painterly art that runs from the Renaissance to the present day.

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, Holland, on April 24, 1904. In 1916 he left school to work as a commercial artist, and he enrolled in evening classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native city, where he studied for eight years. During this period he became aware of the group called de Stijl, whose membership included Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, two of the most influential abstractionists of the early twentieth century.

Early Career

In 1926 de Kooning immigrated to the United States. He took a studio in New York City and supported himself by doing commercial art and house painting. In his own painting he began to experiment with abstraction but, like many artists during the Depression, was unable to devote full time to his work. The opportunity to do so came in 1935, when he worked for a year on the Federal Art Project of the Works Project Administration.

In the 1940s de Kooning's career as a painter began to accelerate. He participated in several group shows and in 1946 had his first one-man exhibition in New York City. Among sophisticated patrons and dealers this show established de Kooning as a major figure in contemporary American painting. In the same year he married Elaine Fried, and two years later he taught at the experimental Black Mountain College, which was then under the direction of the influential color abstractionist Josef Albers.

De Kooning's paintings from the 1930s and 1940s reveal many of the same stylistic vacillations that characterize his better-known productions of the period after 1950. In the early work de Kooning approached the problems of abstraction cautiously. Bill-Lee's Delight (1946), for instance, is ostensibly devoid of subject matter from the visible world. Rough-hewn masses sweep toward the center of the composition, where they collide, overlap, and twist into painterly space. Many of the planes, however, particularly those on the periphery of the painting, appear to be remnants of the human body; their undulating contours loosely recall arms, legs, and torsos that have been distilled into pictorial entities. In other words, the painting retains figurative allusions in spite of its apparent abstractness.

Retaining the Human Image

Bill-Lee's Delight indirectly reveals de Kooning's deep commitment to the image of the human body. Even earlier works show the character of this commitment more explicitly. Queen of Hearts (1943-1946) presents the three-quarter image of a seated woman whose head, breasts, and arms are drawn with loosely flowing contours. The figure is freely distorted and somewhat unsettling: the head is twisted, the facial anatomy is askew, and the limbs and breasts appear ready to twist off and float into space. In overall style the painting recalls European surrealism with its eerie interpretations of figurative content. It is also similar to the abstract, quasi-surrealist style of Arshile Gorky, with whom de Kooning had once shared a studio.

Some of de Kooning's finest paintings were executed in the period that ended in 1950; these include Ashville (1949) and Excavation (1950). Both works retain some figurative allusions, but they achieve a powerful, abstract flatness, thereby insisting upon their identity as paintings. Moreover, both canvases achieve this identity within a relatively restricted color range; this lends tautness to the compelling presence of each painting.

De Kooning since 1950

In spite of the achievement marked by paintings like Ashville and Excavation, de Kooning was evidently uncomfortable with the problems of abstraction. In 1950 he returned to the human figure, embarking upon his famous "Woman" series. Woman I (1950-1952) is probably the most famous of the series. The figure is executed in a tortured, aggressive manner and emerges like some demonic presence. Paint itself is likewise assaulted—dragged, pushed, and scraped—with a technique that, for many viewers, is the ultimate of abstract expressionist style. When the "Woman" paintings were shown in 1953 in New York City, they catapulted de Kooning to fame and notoriety. Although he was honored with numerous awards and retrospective exhibitions after that, his work periodically revealed doubts and uncertainties about its direction.

During the late 1950s de Kooning again abandoned the human figure in favor of abstraction. The paintings from these years are sometimes called "landscapes" because their open, expansive space is suggestive of the space of the natural environment. In Suburb in Havana (1958), for instance, broad, earth-colored diagonals reach into space and extend toward a blue mass that resembles both sky and water. Because of the explosiveness with which they open pictorial space, these landscapes count among de Kooning's most spontaneous and exhilarating achievements.

From the early 1960s de Kooning's development seemed problematic and uncertain. Once again he returned to the human figure and a second "Woman" series. These works display the master's characteristic blend of technical gusto and emotional fervor, but they evoked mixed opinions among his critics. Perhaps more historical perspective is needed before these paintings can be viewed objectively.

De Kooning's first retrospective took place in 1953 in Boston. In 1954 he enjoyed a second, at the Venice Biennale. The largest retrospective was held in New York City in 1969. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1960, and he received the Freedom Award Medal in 1964.

Since the 1960s de Kooning continued to be one of the most powerful representatives of abstract art. The period from 1981 to 1989 was one of the most fertile of his life, giving rise to over 300 works. Sadly, this burst of creativity proved to be his last. Alzheimer's Disease, diagnosed in 1990, prevented further work for the remaining seven years of his life. De Kooning died on March 19, 1997, at his home in East Hampton, New York.

Further Reading

Several monographs on de Kooning have been written, among them, Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Kooning (1959), and Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, De Kooning (1960). Also important is Hess's Willem de Kooning (1969), the catalog for the Museum of Modern Art's de Kooning retrospective of 1969. For a more general picture of de Kooning's relation to postwar American art see Barbara Rose, American Art since 1900 (1967). For more information, please see Harry F. Gaugh, De Kooning (Abbeville Press, 1983); Paul Cummings, Willem De Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1983); and Diane Waldman, De Kooning (Abrams, 1987). □

DE KOONING, WILLEM 1904-

Abstract expressionist artist

Recognition

In 1954 when the Museum of Modern Art mounted the exhibit for the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the most prestigious world display of contemporary art, only two artists were included: Ben Shahn, a proletarian painter and poster-art innovator, and Willem de Kooning. It was the second of three times during the 1950s that de Kooning's works had been included in the Venice Biennale, and it was a recognition of his preeminent place among contemporary American artists. In New York his works were included in the Whitney Museum Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting every year during the decade except for 1955, 1957, and 1958; his works were at the center of the influential Young American Painters exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum; and his three one-man shows at the Sidney Janis Gallery in Manhattan were among the most influential of the decade. No living American artist commanded more critical attention than de Kooning—not even his competitive friend Jackson Pollock.

Apprenticeship

De Kooning was born in Holland and studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques before moving to New York in 1926. He was a housepainter briefly before moving to Greenwich Village in New York, where he took a job as a commercial artist to support himself while he attempted more serious work on his own time. He joined the Federal Arts Project in 1935 and decided soon thereafter to abandon his work designing window displays for shoe stores and painting public murals to concentrate on a new kind of art called abstract expressionism (see entry). By 1950 he was the acknowledged master of this controversial art form, producing paintings that in the words of a Time reviewer "look like scribbles any kid could do" and selling them to museums and private collectors for several thousand dollars per scribbled-upon canvas.

Woman

In 1950 de Kooning began a work he called Woman I. Over a two-year period he painted daily and washed away images on the same canvas, never able to satisfy his vision. Then in June 1952 he finished his work and for the remainder of the year produced a series of increasingly grotesque and decreasingly recognizable paintings of women that was exhibited with great fanfare in March 1953 at the Sidney Janis Gallery. Critic Harry Gaugh referred to the works as a "coven of sympathetic witches."

Critics

The art world was divided in its response to de Kooning's new works. He was praised by the more conservative critics, who were struggling for a vocabulary to discuss abstract expressionism and were thankful to be able to discern a vaguely recognizable image in his works. More-devoted adherents of abstract expressionism criticized de Kooning for a lack of commitment to abstraction. Robert Coates in the New Yorker noted that de Kooning fails in his Woman series of paintings to "commit himself to either their representational or their abstract possibilities but hesitates constantly between the two, and the result is a splashy and confused muddle of pigment that obscures as much as it reveals of the subject."

Freedom of Abstraction

Two years before, in a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, De Kooning had answered those who criticized his paintings for their references to recognizable objects. He observed that when the abstractionists of the turn of the century came to prominence they brought with them a theory of what art should be that had negative qualities—it dictated what could not be included in art: "The question, as they saw it, was not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not to have."

Landscapes

After his Woman series de Kooning turned to trees and mountains as his subjects in a series of abstract landscapes, beginning with a 1955 painting called Woman as Landscape. That year Hurricane Diane hit the East Coast, causing 184 deaths and a record amount of damage, and de Kooning appropriated the event as a metaphor for his art. His transition paintings had a chaotic appearance, and they marked his movement by the end of the decade into pure abstraction.

Reputation

Among his contemporaries de Kooning was admired for his honesty, intensity, and dedication to his art. He established himself as a spokesman for and representative of the abstract-expressionist values, and he became so powerful a personage that he was accused by the end of the decade of dominating the profession and thus stifling the creativity of younger artists. Influential art critic Clement Greenberg attacked de Kooning for his respect of traditional values and for the lack of spontaneity in his paintings. De Kooning's response was that he had to think about his paintings, and it took intense concentration and often several attempts to achieve the effect he sought. His integrity won out. As Stevan Naifeh and Gregory White Smith point out in their biography of de Kooning's friend Pollock, "No artist was more respected or better liked … [de Kooning] was the embodiment of culture."

Sources:

Robert Coates, "The Art Galleries," New Yorker (4 April 1953): 94-96;

Harry F. Gaugh, De Kooning (New York: Abbeville Press, 1983);

Irving Sandier, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (New York: Icon / Harper & Row, 1978).

de Kooning, Willem (1904–97). Dutch-born painter (and latterly sculptor) who became an American citizen in 1961, one of the major figures of Abstract Expressionism. He went to America as a stowaway in 1926 and the following year settled in New York. His early work was conservative, but in 1929 he met Arshile Gorky, who became one of his closest friends and introduced him to avant-garde circles. During the 1930s and 1940s he experimented vigorously and by the time of his first one-man show in 1948 (at the Egan Gallery, New York) he was painting in an extremely energetic abstract style (often in black and white) close to that of Jackson Pollock. The exhibition established his reputation (although prosperity was still some years away) and after it he was generally regarded as sharing with Pollock the unofficial leadership of the Abstract Expressionist group. Unlike Pollock, de Kooning usually retained some suggestion of figuration in his work, and in 1953 he caused a sensation when his Women series (Women nos I–VI) was exhibited at his third one-man show, at the Sidney Janis gallery. Woman I (1950–2, MoMA, New York), with its grotesque leer and frenzied brushwork, shocked the public and dismayed those critics who believed in a rigorously abstract art. One of these was Clement Greenberg, but New York's other most influential critic of avant-garde art— Harold Rosenberg—supported de Kooning. Woman I became one of the most reproduced paintings in the USA and de Kooning was enormously influential on young painters at this time. By the end of the 1950s, however, he was beginning to be regarded as an elder statesman whose best days as a creative force were past. From the 1960s he had honours heaped on him. His paintings continued to mix abstract and semi-figurative work and in 1969 he began making sculpture—figures modelled in clay and later cast in bronze. He continued working well into his eighties, until he was incapacitated by Alzheimer's disease.

His wife, Elaine de Kooning (1919–89), was also a painter, notably of Expressionist portraits, and a writer on art. The couple married in 1943, separated amicably in 1957, and reunited in 1975. A collection of her writings, The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism, was published in 1994.

Willem de Kooning , 1904–97, American painter, b. Netherlands; studied Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. De Kooning immigrated to the United States, arriving as a stowaway in 1926 and settling in New York City, where he worked on the Federal Arts Project (1935). He began experiments with abstraction as early as 1928, but continued to produce realistic paintings throughout the 1930s, and he later oscillated between an abstracted figuration and pure abstraction. Influenced by Arshile Gorky , de Kooning forged a powerful abstract style and in the 1940s became a leader of abstract expressionism . In his monumental series of the early 1950s entitled Woman, he reintroduced a representational element. Woman I (1950–52; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City), with its startling ferocity, brought him considerable notice and some notoriety. He subsequently reverted chiefly to nonfigurative work, but during the 1960s, when he moved to Long Island, he also produced more paintings of women as well as many works with landscape elements. In this period de Kooning also created semiabstract sculptural figures in bronze and several lithographs. He created a dazzling group of painterly abstractions in the 1970s.

Slashed with color and formed with eloquent brushstrokes, de Kooning's often huge canvases are charged with explosive energy; many are widely considered some of the masterpieces of abstract expressionism. His last works, produced (1980–90) when he was increasingly affected by Alzheimer's disease, include hundreds of large canvases in elegantly composed configurations; their elements are pared down, and their limited, mainly primary colors form sinuously intertwining ribbons. In some sense, de Kooning's art endured amid his encroaching dementia until he stopped painting in mid-1990. He was married to the painter Elaine Fried de Kooning (1920–1989).

Bibliography: See biographies by H. F. Gaugh (1983), L. Hall (1993, repr. 2000), and M. Stevens and A. Swan (2004); studies by H. Rosenberg (1974), D. Waldman (1978 and 1988), D. Cateforis (1994), D. Sylvester et al. (1994), G. Garrels and R. Storr (1995), S. Yard (1997), K. Kertess et al. (1998), C. Morris (1999), E. Liever (2000), and S. F. Lake (2010).

de Kooning, Willem (1904–1997), painter.Born in Rotterdam, Willem de Kooning studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques from age twelve. He immigrated to the United States in 1926 and settled in New York the following year, initially supporting himself as a housepainter and commercial artist. He became a full‐time artist around 1936, first making portraits of unidentified men and then of women. His first solo exhibition, at New York's Charles Egan Gallery in 1948, consisted of painterly abstractions mostly in black and white. By 1950, de Kooning had emerged as a key figure in the Abstract Expressionism movement or “New York School,” although much of his work is arguably not abstract. He is best known for the large paintings of women he first exhibited in 1953. These depictions of women with exaggerated breasts and terrifying, toothy grins were realized with slashing brushstrokes that some critics read as violent assaults on the subjects. These works gave way to abstract urban landscapes in the mid‐1950s, made with strident tones and thick, gouged paint that evokes the gritty textures of New York City streets. By the late 1950s de Kooning had developed a distinctive gestural style that significantly influenced a subsequent generation of painters. In 1963 he moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, where he made paintings of women and landscapes inspired by the light of the Atlantic coast. In 1969 de Kooning began to make sculptures; he was also a supremely gifted draftsman. He developed Alzheimer's disease in the mid‐1980s.
See also Painting: Since 1945.

Bibliography

Harold Rosenberg , Willem de Kooning, 1974.
Marla Prather,, Richard Shiff,, and and David Sylvester , Willem de Kooning: Paintings (exhibition catalog), 1994.

Marla Prather

de Kooning, Willem (1904–97) US painter, b. Netherlands. De Kooning was greatly influenced by Picasso and Arshile Gorky. In 1948, he became one of the leaders of abstract expressionism. Unlike Pollock, he kept a figurative element in his work and shocked the public with violently distorted images, such as the Women series (1953). His emphasis on technique became known as action painting.

http://www.nga.gov

Kooning, Willem de. See de Kooning.

Kooning, Willem de. See DE KOONING.