In 1927 he moved to a studio in Manhattan and came under the influence of the artist, connoisseur, and art critic John Graham and the painter Arshile Gorky. For the woman’s disconnected arms and head, he used the broad sharp blade of a tool such as a metal scraper to apply a layer of white lead paint directly over the white gesso ground, followed by a thin wash of pink paint. Willem de Kooning, (born April 24, 1904, Rotterdam, Netherlands—died March 19, 1997, East Hampton, New York, U.S.), Dutch-born American painter who was one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the form known as Action painting. please verify rights. By the early 1930s he was exploring abstraction, using biomorphic shapes and simple geometric compositions—an opposition of disparate formal elements that prevails in his work throughout his career. Susan Lake, Willem de Kooning: the Artists’ Materials, The Getty Conservation Institute, 2010, © 2021 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The network of charcoal lines that suggest multiple and alternative positions for the figure’s eyes and mouth are not pedimenti, visible earlier revisions to the composition, but were inscribed directly on the surface of the paint. All the images inside are from nature anyway.”. Over the preliminary drawing, de Kooning blocked in the rectangles of the background, applying the different colored paints around the reserved area of the figure. In The Wave, Willem de Kooning divided large areas of cool marine colors with contoured lines to create shapes that suggest distorted figures. The figure’s yellow dress does not reveal the careful buildup of distinct paint layers used for the background, but a paint cross-section shows how fibers from dense underlying scribbles in charcoal were mixed with the dilute wash of yellow paint when it was applied. On February 20, the artwork became the subject and backdrop to a discussion of de Kooning’s technique and artistic vision with artist Joan Levy Hepburn … By 1955, however, de Kooning seems to have turned to this symbolic aspect of woman, as suggested by the title of his Woman as Landscape, in which the vertical figure seems almost absorbed into the abstract background. Medium analysis corroborates this report: seven paint samples from this painting correlate with naturally aged samples of safflower oil mixed with artists’ tube paints. 13. The artist’s more gestural method of paint handling may be seen as moving toward the methods he would develop in the 1960s. Detail. Untitled. gals25-c-24jan02-dd-ho willem de kooning untitled (the commuter) 1971-72 oil on paper mounted on canvas courtesy of … He had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York in 1948 and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948 and at the Yale School of Art in 1950–51. Willem de Kooning returned to New York in the fall of 1956, not long after Jackson Pollock’s fatal car crash. Identification of the pigments in Woman, Sag Harbor reveals that de Kooning’s paints are not elaborate mixtures but a rather restricted palette of a few colors and their pastels. Examination of the gray paint near the lower right with a microscope shows a fragment of brown glass mixed into the paint. Whereas de Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s and again from 1947 to 1949, and the biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols, it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In fact, close examination reveals that all of the visible charcoal lines were inscribed either directly on the surface of the paint or just below the translucent upper layer. In Queen of Hearts,the charcoal lines suggest multiple and alternative positions for the figure’s eyes, shoulders, arms, and breasts. Our building and plaza are temporarily closed. de Kooning: A Retrospective is on view at The Museum of Modern Art through January 9, 2012. In 1978, he told an interviewer that he used safflower oil because it “stays wet a long time, it doesn’t dry like linseed oil, I can work longer.”. The pronounced texture in Woman, however, is as much due to de Kooning’s methods of applying his paints as it is to the paints and their additions themselves. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-de-Kooning, The Art Story.org - Biography of Willem de Kooning, New Netherland Institute - Biography of Willem de Kooning, Guggenheim - Biography of Willem de Kooning, Willem de Kooning - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project. While she did paint abstract canvases, much of her work is rooted in the everyday reality of the life that she lived and experienced. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. In 1916 he was apprenticed to a firm of commercial artists and decorators, and, about the same time, he enrolled in night classes at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques, where he studied for eight years. About 1963, the year he moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, de Kooning returned to depicting women in such paintings as Pastorale and Clam Diggers. Though Castagna possesses the knowledge and expertise necessary to identify a work by de Kooning, he points out that he is not an official authenticator, as other media … His later works, such as …Whose Name Was Writ in Water and Untitled III, are lyrical, lush, and shimmering with light and reflections on water. The fluid red and blue curves of Willem de Kooning’s The Key and the Parade of 1985 have been a vivid presence in the NYU Law Library since the painting went on display last fall as a loan from The Willem de Kooning Foundation. For her, “the pose is the person.” She often did multiple drawings in graphite or charcoal while creating paintings of the same subject. A paint cross-section taken from the woman’s skirt confirms a heavy buildup of paint, in layers limited to a range of warm whites, grays, and black, below the upper layer of pink. The network of charcoal lines that partially contours the figure’s body and scrawls across the paint surface is of crucial importance both here and in de Kooning’s other paintings of this period. Willem de Kooning is widely known for his masterful yet highly idiosyncratic working methods. Corrections? Once he had thoroughly combined a number of his tube paints on a glass palette, he would scoop the blended paints into a bowl and then add safflower cooking oil, water, and a solvent, whipping the ingredients with a brush to a fluffy consistency. During the 1930s and ’40s de Kooning worked simultaneously in figurative and abstract modes, but by about 1945 these two … As the quality of his later work declined, his vintage works drew increasing profits. Tom Ferrara is an artist who exhibits regularly in New York City. From this sample and others taken from the painting, it is evident that de Kooning worked on the background over an extended period of time, building up the paint layers in distinct stages. As such they seem to imply that de Kooning’s method involved early but still visible revisions, with each body part drawn in charcoal, painted, redrawn, and repainted several times. De Kooning with drink Pollock used drawing to create a painting. In the same years de Kooning also painted a series of solitary male figures, either standing or seated, against undefined backgrounds; many of these are unfinished. But de Kooning had brushes that literally were as tall as I am, six feet tall, something like that. Willem de Kooning De Kooning, here in East Hampton in 1953, did not take up permanent residence on Long Island until 1963, when he built his famous studio adjoining his home. Analysis of the pigments and binding media of these three paintings confirms that de Kooning forged his unique artistic vision by manipulating both conventional and non-art materials in extreme ways, whether he was using artist’s paints straight from the tube, coarsening retail house paints with charcoal and ground glass, or applying a flurry of oil paints, cooking oil and water onto has canvases. Gorky became one of de Kooning’s closest friends. Queen of Hearts, oil and charcoal on fiberboard. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The Case For Mark Rothko. The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko. When de Kooning moved to East Hampton, he said that he was so moved by the light and color of his new location that he began to make his own mixtures of colors in order to incorporate the feeling of the outdoors. Most of the paintings in the exhibition resembled Untitled - compositions painted in black and white, with vaguely recognizable shapes and complex plays of figure and ground. Woman, 1948, oil and charcoal on fiberboard. Paint cross-section from the figure’s skirt shows that the artist physically mixed the yellow paint with fibers from dense underlying scribbles in charcoal. Rothko, No. This sample and several others taken throughout the painting show that the colored paints used for the figure, and the off-whites around the star in the upper left corner, were added only in the final stages of the painting’s composition. RELATED LINKSConservationArtist Interview ProgramMoving-image ArtSculpture Garden and PlazaConservation Blog, Contact Conservation at HMSG: hmsgcollections@si.edu. In addition, de Kooning mixed significant quantities of plaster of Paris into the off-white paints used to render the figure’s torso and the perimeter of the star in the top left corner, and he added palette scrapings to many of the final paint layers. 211 (Orange) Mark Rothko's No. These early works have strong affinities with those of his friends Graham and Gorky and reflect the impact on these young artists of Pablo Picasso and the Surrealist Joan Miró, both of whom achieved powerfully expressive compositions through biomorphic forms. The somewhat coarse gritty surface of this painting is, in part, the result of the artist mixing granular materials into inexpensive commercial paints. He reexplored the theme in the mid-1960s in paintings that were as controversial as his earlier women. The controversial claim is made by psychologists who studied renowned artists, from the founder of French impressionism, Claude Monet, to the abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning. These works confirm a shift in his technical methods that had begun around 1960. The works are influenced by sources ranging from Paleolithic fertility fetishes to American billboard advertisements, and the attributes of this particular figure seem to include both the vengeful power of the goddess and the hollow seductiveness of the calendar pinup. De Kooning's paintings of the 1930s and early 1940s are abstract still-lifes characterised by geometric or biomorphic shapes and strong colours. The paler pinks, oranges, and yellows are cadmium colors mixed with significant amounts of white. Other articles where Woman is discussed: Action painting: …brushstrokes of de Kooning’s “Woman” series, begun in the early 1950s, successfully evolved a richly emotive expressive style. In 1926 de Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter. He was employed by this work-relief program until July 1937, when he was forced to resign because of his alien status. Paint cross-section from the upper left corner reveals that the artist arrived at the final color scheme only after significant revisions over an extended period of time. Parallel with these works he also created lyrically coloured abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and Elegy. Elaine de Kooning was best known for her expressive, gestural portraits and for her ability to capture the individuality of her subject’s entire body. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest information about the museum's upcoming exhibitions, events, programs, and reopening. Medium analysis of the paints in Woman, 1948, proves that de Kooning was no longer using artists’ paints, and instead had turned to a range of commercial oil paints available to the public during the 1940s. While quick brushstrokes are certainly also characteristic of his earlier works, the greater speed with which he applied the more fluid paint of the door series is apparent to the eye following the rapid movement of the brush where it hit the panel, skidding, twisting, and often abruptly turning when it was lifted. In 1920 he went to work for the art director of a large department store. Omissions? As he worked, de Kooning moved the position of the woman’s eyes and breasts, retaining evidence of the earlier versions, and this clearly was an intentional decision. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In October 1935 de Kooning began to work on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project. De Kooning took to heart the ideas of Action Painting, not only in painting in a gestural style, but in the desire to immerse herself in and identify herself with her subject. The increased liquidity and slipperiness of de Kooning’s binding medium, and his use of a smooth support, allowed him to move his brush quickly across the face of the painting, mixing his paints on the surface wet-into-wet. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images Lisa de Kooning, Daughter of Artist Willem de Kooning, Dies - East Hampton, NY - The sculptor devoted her life to philanthropy, and to keeping her father's legacy alive for future generations. Remarks that de Kooning made in 1964, the year of Woman, Sag Harbor, suggest that in paintings of this period he was continuing to search for a way to convey the very substance of his new environment, and that the images of this period relate in some way to his watery surroundings: “Now I go on my bicycle down to the beach and search for a new image of the landscape. Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 3/No. Unlike Queen of Hearts, where the artist used the smooth side of the fiberboard to achieve a smooth finish, he now employed the rough side of a fiberboard panel without a ground layer to diminish the board’s prominent screen pattern. By the time de Kooning painted Woman, Sag Harbor, he had discontinued his use of house paints and instead was adding safflower cooking oil to artists’ oil paints, mixed in bowls, as be seen in this photograph of the artist working in his studio. Now we're starting to really embrace with the physicality of the medium and things are starting to happen. de Kooning was a huge fan of really, really long brushes. Willem de Kooning’s first paintings of female figures were made in 1940, some of them inspired by Elaine Fried, who he would later marry. That identification, in conjunction with pigment analysis, supports conjecture that the paints in this picture are artists’ tube paints. As with other works of the period, de Kooning also mixed and rubbed charcoal into and onto the paint surfaces, deliberately smudging the brighter colors. Using supports primed with smooth, opaque white grounds, pigments mixed with large amounts of white, and an increasingly fluid paint medium, he exploited the potentials of his materials to create paintings evocative of the water-surrounded environment of Long Island. In the 1980s de Kooning was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease, and a court declared him unfit to manage his estate, which was turned over to conservators. Analysis of the pigments and binding media of these three paintings confirms that de Kooning forged his unique artistic vision by manipulating both conventional and non-art materials in extreme ways, whether he was using artist’s paints straight from the tube, coarsening retail house paints with charcoal and ground glass, or applying a flurry of oil paints, cooking oil and water onto has canvases. Portrait of Dutch-born American artist Willem de Kooning as he poses in his studio, dressed in blue and white striped overalls, Springs, Long Island, New York, late October, 1983. De Kooning, meanwhile, used painting to arrive at drawing-like cartoons. In 1946, too poor to buy artists’ pigments, he turned to black and white household enamels to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, Light in August (c. 1946) and Black Friday (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas Zurich (1947) and Mailbox (1947–48) are white with black. The woman’s schematically rendered breasts, shoulders, and multiple arms, for example, as well as the star in the upper left corner, are conceived in opaque off-white paints combined layer upon layer in almost sculptural masses. Between 1964 and 1966, de Kooning painted a series of large female images on hollow-core doors, one of them Woman, Sag Harbor, 1964. The Willem de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art fills the building’s entire sixth floor with nearly two hundred works, but it is still too small. In these works, which have been read as satiric attacks on the female anatomy, de Kooning painted with a flamboyant lubricity in keeping with the uninhibited subject matter. A new clue has emerged to explain how an unassuming New Mexico couple wound up in possession of a stolen Willem de Kooning painting worth more than $100 million. He turned more and more during his late years to the production of clay sculpture. 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