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Lot Essay
"I am becoming freer I feel that I have found myself more, the sense that I have all my strength at my command. I think you can do miracles with what you have if you accept it. I am more certain the way I use paint and the brush." (Willem de Kooning, speaking in 1983, Willem de Kooning exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London, 1995, p. 199.)
In 1980 de Kooning made the last of the dramatic shifts in style that had characterized much of his artistic career. Entering what would prove to be the last phase of his art, de Kooning began to paint in a more deliberate, assured and reductive way than he had ever done before. His raw splashes of paint and the energetic semi-random sweeps of a heavily-laden brush were replaced in his new works by a series of assured meandering ribbons of paint tracing their way over an infinite white background. Simpler, but no less mysterious, these distinctive lines generate a sense of a cohesive and animated surface in much the same way as his earlier work but in a gentler and altogether more elegant and refined manner. Much of the former aggression and physical struggle of de Kooning's work is now gone in favor of a more 'pure' form of painting. This feature of de Kooning's late work reflects not only the artist's maturity and familiarization with his working practice but also the profound influence of Matisse.
For much of his life de Kooning had keenly felt himself to be living under the shadow of the influence of Picasso - "the one to beat" as he often referred him. While de Kooning's genius with line and the raw energy, violence even, of works like his Woman series had often outdone Picasso, overall de Kooning had never really rivaled Picasso's stature as the greatest living artist. By the late 1970s, such competitive considerations seem to matter less to de Kooning and he found himself becoming more beguiled by the example of artists whose late work had marked a new departure. 'Old man Monet' or 'Old man Cézanne' he often referred to, and especially, Henri Matisse. According to his assistant Tom Ferrara, Matisse was a regular topic of de Kooning's conversation throughout the 1980s. It was the pure 'uncomplicatedness' of Matisse's paintings, de Kooning told him that appealed.
As films of de Kooning working show, the artist worked swiftly and fluidly on his paintings of the 1980s. As always de Kooning often used passages from drawings and earlier paintings as well as photographs of other works in various states of completion, as the starting point for his work. He also retained the practice of working on several paintings at the same time. In addition, in the mid-1980s he began to use a technique he had long talked about using and had even, famously, persuaded Franz Kline to use in the 1950s; the magnification and projection of his own images as prompts for painting. Indeed, many of the lines that define the form of his paintings of the 1980s were directly traced from projected lines of earlier works directly onto his canvas.
These processes allowed again for the distilling of his earlier painterly practices into a more refined form, but de Kooning still continued the practice of painting and scraping off in the build-up of the surface of his paintings. He was however more reluctant to let these corrections show through the surface so clearly and often overpainted his amendments with the thick white background of these late paintings. It is this seemingly infinite white space of the backgrounds of the 1980s paintings that defines them. Having reduced his painterly means to what, in the end, he was always best at, the incisive and intuitive touch of his line, he set this against the open emptiness of an infinite white space. As a work like Untitled XXI illustrates, it is as if, in his work of the 1980s, de Kooning was finally reconciled with both himself and his innately gifted ability to draw. In the pure reductive forms of these works he not only developed a resolute assuredness but he also seemed finally, to be unashamedly reveling in the fundamental simplicity of his art.
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber
In 1980 de Kooning made the last of the dramatic shifts in style that had characterized much of his artistic career. Entering what would prove to be the last phase of his art, de Kooning began to paint in a more deliberate, assured and reductive way than he had ever done before. His raw splashes of paint and the energetic semi-random sweeps of a heavily-laden brush were replaced in his new works by a series of assured meandering ribbons of paint tracing their way over an infinite white background. Simpler, but no less mysterious, these distinctive lines generate a sense of a cohesive and animated surface in much the same way as his earlier work but in a gentler and altogether more elegant and refined manner. Much of the former aggression and physical struggle of de Kooning's work is now gone in favor of a more 'pure' form of painting. This feature of de Kooning's late work reflects not only the artist's maturity and familiarization with his working practice but also the profound influence of Matisse.
For much of his life de Kooning had keenly felt himself to be living under the shadow of the influence of Picasso - "the one to beat" as he often referred him. While de Kooning's genius with line and the raw energy, violence even, of works like his Woman series had often outdone Picasso, overall de Kooning had never really rivaled Picasso's stature as the greatest living artist. By the late 1970s, such competitive considerations seem to matter less to de Kooning and he found himself becoming more beguiled by the example of artists whose late work had marked a new departure. 'Old man Monet' or 'Old man Cézanne' he often referred to, and especially, Henri Matisse. According to his assistant Tom Ferrara, Matisse was a regular topic of de Kooning's conversation throughout the 1980s. It was the pure 'uncomplicatedness' of Matisse's paintings, de Kooning told him that appealed.
As films of de Kooning working show, the artist worked swiftly and fluidly on his paintings of the 1980s. As always de Kooning often used passages from drawings and earlier paintings as well as photographs of other works in various states of completion, as the starting point for his work. He also retained the practice of working on several paintings at the same time. In addition, in the mid-1980s he began to use a technique he had long talked about using and had even, famously, persuaded Franz Kline to use in the 1950s; the magnification and projection of his own images as prompts for painting. Indeed, many of the lines that define the form of his paintings of the 1980s were directly traced from projected lines of earlier works directly onto his canvas.
These processes allowed again for the distilling of his earlier painterly practices into a more refined form, but de Kooning still continued the practice of painting and scraping off in the build-up of the surface of his paintings. He was however more reluctant to let these corrections show through the surface so clearly and often overpainted his amendments with the thick white background of these late paintings. It is this seemingly infinite white space of the backgrounds of the 1980s paintings that defines them. Having reduced his painterly means to what, in the end, he was always best at, the incisive and intuitive touch of his line, he set this against the open emptiness of an infinite white space. As a work like Untitled XXI illustrates, it is as if, in his work of the 1980s, de Kooning was finally reconciled with both himself and his innately gifted ability to draw. In the pure reductive forms of these works he not only developed a resolute assuredness but he also seemed finally, to be unashamedly reveling in the fundamental simplicity of his art.
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber
Illustration from Edvard Lieber, Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the Studio, 2000 c Edvard Lieber