Lot Essay
Between the years of 1953 and 1955, Willem de Kooning created sixteen paintings of women and a larger number of drawings. These became his most famous images, establishing his position as a preeminent painter and enabling appreciation of Pop art and other painting styles that immediately followed. The choice of the woman image surprised the critics but was, in de Kooning's view, a logical conclusion to the researches he had been pursuing. As he told David Sylvester in 1963:
The Women had to with the female painted through all the ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent: I couldn't go on.... It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationship, light - all this silly talk about line, color and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of. (D. Sylvester, 1963, p. 46)
De Kooning's pictures returned him to figurative investigations precisely at the moment when abstraction was becoming popular. It allowed him to demonstrate his interest in the figure and in the sexuality of women and, by the way in which he painted, it pursued the expressive brushstroke that he had experimented with in the recent landscape pictures. The paintings are relatively modest in size, and his strokes and gestures are proportionate to the subject. They become dramatic and more forceful as he moves through the series of small paintings and studies. The present work is related to the painting Woman V, 1952-1953 in the collection of the Australian National Gallery, Canberra (figure 1), where the image is absorbed into what Thomas Hess characterized as de Kooning's insistent "ambiguity," shown by the relative lack of distinction between subject and background. In the present work, the forms are studied in isolation and the components of the figure shown unadorned. De Kooning's inventiveness in representing the woman's breasts (bikini-clad?) is more marked here than in the painting. Paul Cummings wrote of these works:
Most all of the women drawings are filled with lines which seem to suggest fleeting images caught briefly by the artist's eye during the process of making the drawing. Are they imagined or dream images? Captured on the page, they suggest an automatic motor response to unknown stimuli. These furtive lines emphasize the drawing process. The image is tested, and the figure is set into the composition, by the activity of these lines. De Kooning is an artist who rides his imagination, pushing it to increase his experience. (P. Cummings, The Drawings of Willem de Kooning, in Willem de Kooning, New York 1983, p. 18)
The vitality of these drawings has not diminished and they remain fierce and dramatic, and state their psychological conflicts and bravado without hesitation. De Kooning talked about them in 1960 and said: "I look at them now and they seem vociferous and ferocious. I think it had to do with the idea of the idol, the oracle, and above all the hilariousness of it" (M. Schapiro, as quoted in T. Hess, "Content Is a Glimpse," de Kooning, New York 1968, p. 149). Meyer Schapiro also recalled de Kooning thinking of women shoppers with "their grimace and predacity" (H. Gaugh, De Kooning, New York 1983, p. 42); in this drawing and others of the series this vexation that de Kooning felt is translated into a brilliant rendition of the female through the brilliance of the paint.
(figure 1): Woman V (1952-1953)
(Australian National Gallery, Canberra)
( c 1997 Willem de Kooning Revocable Trust/Artists Rights Society, New York)
The Women had to with the female painted through all the ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent: I couldn't go on.... It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationship, light - all this silly talk about line, color and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of. (D. Sylvester, 1963, p. 46)
De Kooning's pictures returned him to figurative investigations precisely at the moment when abstraction was becoming popular. It allowed him to demonstrate his interest in the figure and in the sexuality of women and, by the way in which he painted, it pursued the expressive brushstroke that he had experimented with in the recent landscape pictures. The paintings are relatively modest in size, and his strokes and gestures are proportionate to the subject. They become dramatic and more forceful as he moves through the series of small paintings and studies. The present work is related to the painting Woman V, 1952-1953 in the collection of the Australian National Gallery, Canberra (figure 1), where the image is absorbed into what Thomas Hess characterized as de Kooning's insistent "ambiguity," shown by the relative lack of distinction between subject and background. In the present work, the forms are studied in isolation and the components of the figure shown unadorned. De Kooning's inventiveness in representing the woman's breasts (bikini-clad?) is more marked here than in the painting. Paul Cummings wrote of these works:
Most all of the women drawings are filled with lines which seem to suggest fleeting images caught briefly by the artist's eye during the process of making the drawing. Are they imagined or dream images? Captured on the page, they suggest an automatic motor response to unknown stimuli. These furtive lines emphasize the drawing process. The image is tested, and the figure is set into the composition, by the activity of these lines. De Kooning is an artist who rides his imagination, pushing it to increase his experience. (P. Cummings, The Drawings of Willem de Kooning, in Willem de Kooning, New York 1983, p. 18)
The vitality of these drawings has not diminished and they remain fierce and dramatic, and state their psychological conflicts and bravado without hesitation. De Kooning talked about them in 1960 and said: "I look at them now and they seem vociferous and ferocious. I think it had to do with the idea of the idol, the oracle, and above all the hilariousness of it" (M. Schapiro, as quoted in T. Hess, "Content Is a Glimpse," de Kooning, New York 1968, p. 149). Meyer Schapiro also recalled de Kooning thinking of women shoppers with "their grimace and predacity" (H. Gaugh, De Kooning, New York 1983, p. 42); in this drawing and others of the series this vexation that de Kooning felt is translated into a brilliant rendition of the female through the brilliance of the paint.
(figure 1): Woman V (1952-1953)
(Australian National Gallery, Canberra)
( c 1997 Willem de Kooning Revocable Trust/Artists Rights Society, New York)