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Lot Essay
A pinnacle from the late flowering of his career, Untitled XXIX is a monumental testament to Willem de Kooning's prowess during his twilight years. Springing from a group of lush abstractions from 1975-78, its vibrant bursts of color and sensuous tactility of brushstrokes bespeaks the confidence of a man in the thrall of new love. Invigorated by his passion for a woman almost half his age and awakened anew to the possibilities of life, de Kooning at seventy-three was a man in his prime.
Ending a long creative dry spell in the spring of 1975, the artist embarked on a period of sustained productivity, executing canvas after canvas of sumptuous abstractions. Although notorious for allowing few works survival under the harsh scrutiny of his standards, the upwelling of images during this period evinced a mature assurance that surprised even the artist. He recalled in 1981, "I made those paintings one after the other, no trouble at all. I couldn't miss. It's a nice feeling. It's strange. It's like a man at a gambling table [who] feels that he can't lose. But when he walks away with all the dough, he knows he can't do that again. Because then it gets all self-conscious. I wasn't self-conscious. I just did it." (cited in M. Prather, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, 1994, p. 197).
Beginning in 1969 and in the years preceding these paintings, de Kooning worked primarily on sculpture. The tactile process of molding clay was wholly sympathetic with his sensuous approach to oil paint and the abstractions of 1975-78 embody a certain voluptuousness that only flesh could inform. The artist often closed his eyes while working clay, allowing the unconscious to filter through touch. The textual tremors that pervade Untitled XXIX render the work powerfully seductive, viscerally sexy. Allowing a variety of planes of paint to fold in and out of each other, Untitled XXIX evinces the jubilant mesh of pinks, burgundies, whites, blues and greens. Swelling and puckering like skin, scraped and flattened like a wound, Untitled features a repertoire of impasto effects that attest to the range of de Kooning's signature bravura. Reaching the apex of such painterly acrobatics with works such as Untitled, the artist bragged to his lover, Emilie Kilgore, "I get paint right on the surface. Nobody else can do that." (M. Stevens and A. Swan, De Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2006, p. 562). De Kooning admired Chaim Soutine and once stated, "I've always been crazy about Soutine - all of his paintings. Maybe it's the lushness of the paint. He builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance. There's a kind of transfiguration." (cited in M. Stevens, op. cit., p. 562). Indeed, Untitled XXIX has the pulse of a living organism, vital and burgeoning to the surface. The dialectic between abstraction and figuration that pervades the entire breadth of de Kooning's oeuvre come to a head in this work.
Although de Kooning had relocated to Springs, East Hampton in 1963, it was more than a decade later that the local environment truly invaded his artistic vision. He stated, "When I moved into this house, everything seemed self-evident. The space, the light, the trees - I just accepted it without thinking about it much. Now I look around with new eyes. I think it's all a kind of miracle". Perhaps the grassy lowlands and watery landscapes of Springs provided a comforting reminder of the aging Dutchman's origins. He spent hours contemplating nature, and one of his favorite pastimes involved bicycling to the beach at Louse Pont. He was intrigued by the way colors reflected off the surface of the water and of how forms emerged and dissolved without boundaries. Earth, sky, figure and landscape blended their essence without demarcating their contours.
Water also embodied a sort of epiphany to Kooning, in its ability to bring the evanescent sensations of a long life together, conveying the ever-flowing passage of time. The unprecedented liquidity and flow of paint in paintings such as Untitled XXIX attest to de Kooning's reveries by bodies of water, absorbing the flickering nuances of sun, atmosphere and foliage and absorbing such fractured images into the realm of experience and memory. Of these abstractions, Bernhard Mendews Burgi states, "the accumulation of sensations between earth and light and water and sky, distilled and detached from anecdotal experience, exploded in a rush of painting. What already applied to the abstract landscapes of the late 1950s and early 1960s became even more conspicuous in the series created between 1975 and 1980. They are not abstractions of the experiences of nature; they are abstract in following an uncurbed energy principle without beginning and end, allowing things to emerge, to rise to the surface in analogy to nature. Everything seems to be floating, flying, lying and falling in these paintings, their energy heightened by a pulsating rhythm. (cited in De Kooning Paintings: 1960-1980, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, 2005, pp. 24-26).
Whipping paint alla prima, de Kooning massaged its passages wet over wet, almost as if sculpting clay. Weaving and interlocking colors above, beneath and between each other, he created a mesh of surfacing and disappearing images not unlike one of the many transient blinks de Kooning may have witnessed on the waters at Louse Pont. Form, space and color dissolve, producing the simultaneous sensation of endless depth and surface tactility. Always a superb colorist whether using a palette of black and white in the abstractions of the late 1940s or acidic tones in the Women of the early 1950s, the bright summer hues of Untitled XXV miraculously translate the shimmering light, rippling water and bracing air of East Hampton into the substance of paint. There is transfiguration at work here, and a stirring of moods, desires, memories and sensations of a lifetime; Untitled XXV crystallizes into a memorial to this cherished artist, a lasting record for posterity.
Ending a long creative dry spell in the spring of 1975, the artist embarked on a period of sustained productivity, executing canvas after canvas of sumptuous abstractions. Although notorious for allowing few works survival under the harsh scrutiny of his standards, the upwelling of images during this period evinced a mature assurance that surprised even the artist. He recalled in 1981, "I made those paintings one after the other, no trouble at all. I couldn't miss. It's a nice feeling. It's strange. It's like a man at a gambling table [who] feels that he can't lose. But when he walks away with all the dough, he knows he can't do that again. Because then it gets all self-conscious. I wasn't self-conscious. I just did it." (cited in M. Prather, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, 1994, p. 197).
Beginning in 1969 and in the years preceding these paintings, de Kooning worked primarily on sculpture. The tactile process of molding clay was wholly sympathetic with his sensuous approach to oil paint and the abstractions of 1975-78 embody a certain voluptuousness that only flesh could inform. The artist often closed his eyes while working clay, allowing the unconscious to filter through touch. The textual tremors that pervade Untitled XXIX render the work powerfully seductive, viscerally sexy. Allowing a variety of planes of paint to fold in and out of each other, Untitled XXIX evinces the jubilant mesh of pinks, burgundies, whites, blues and greens. Swelling and puckering like skin, scraped and flattened like a wound, Untitled features a repertoire of impasto effects that attest to the range of de Kooning's signature bravura. Reaching the apex of such painterly acrobatics with works such as Untitled, the artist bragged to his lover, Emilie Kilgore, "I get paint right on the surface. Nobody else can do that." (M. Stevens and A. Swan, De Kooning: An American Master, New York, 2006, p. 562). De Kooning admired Chaim Soutine and once stated, "I've always been crazy about Soutine - all of his paintings. Maybe it's the lushness of the paint. He builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance. There's a kind of transfiguration." (cited in M. Stevens, op. cit., p. 562). Indeed, Untitled XXIX has the pulse of a living organism, vital and burgeoning to the surface. The dialectic between abstraction and figuration that pervades the entire breadth of de Kooning's oeuvre come to a head in this work.
Although de Kooning had relocated to Springs, East Hampton in 1963, it was more than a decade later that the local environment truly invaded his artistic vision. He stated, "When I moved into this house, everything seemed self-evident. The space, the light, the trees - I just accepted it without thinking about it much. Now I look around with new eyes. I think it's all a kind of miracle". Perhaps the grassy lowlands and watery landscapes of Springs provided a comforting reminder of the aging Dutchman's origins. He spent hours contemplating nature, and one of his favorite pastimes involved bicycling to the beach at Louse Pont. He was intrigued by the way colors reflected off the surface of the water and of how forms emerged and dissolved without boundaries. Earth, sky, figure and landscape blended their essence without demarcating their contours.
Water also embodied a sort of epiphany to Kooning, in its ability to bring the evanescent sensations of a long life together, conveying the ever-flowing passage of time. The unprecedented liquidity and flow of paint in paintings such as Untitled XXIX attest to de Kooning's reveries by bodies of water, absorbing the flickering nuances of sun, atmosphere and foliage and absorbing such fractured images into the realm of experience and memory. Of these abstractions, Bernhard Mendews Burgi states, "the accumulation of sensations between earth and light and water and sky, distilled and detached from anecdotal experience, exploded in a rush of painting. What already applied to the abstract landscapes of the late 1950s and early 1960s became even more conspicuous in the series created between 1975 and 1980. They are not abstractions of the experiences of nature; they are abstract in following an uncurbed energy principle without beginning and end, allowing things to emerge, to rise to the surface in analogy to nature. Everything seems to be floating, flying, lying and falling in these paintings, their energy heightened by a pulsating rhythm. (cited in De Kooning Paintings: 1960-1980, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, 2005, pp. 24-26).
Whipping paint alla prima, de Kooning massaged its passages wet over wet, almost as if sculpting clay. Weaving and interlocking colors above, beneath and between each other, he created a mesh of surfacing and disappearing images not unlike one of the many transient blinks de Kooning may have witnessed on the waters at Louse Pont. Form, space and color dissolve, producing the simultaneous sensation of endless depth and surface tactility. Always a superb colorist whether using a palette of black and white in the abstractions of the late 1940s or acidic tones in the Women of the early 1950s, the bright summer hues of Untitled XXV miraculously translate the shimmering light, rippling water and bracing air of East Hampton into the substance of paint. There is transfiguration at work here, and a stirring of moods, desires, memories and sensations of a lifetime; Untitled XXV crystallizes into a memorial to this cherished artist, a lasting record for posterity.