Willem de Kooning

Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Gregory, Los Angeles
Christie's, New York, November 7, 1989, lot 69
Gagosian Gallery, New York (acquired from the above) 
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Pasadena Art Museum, extended loan, May 1968 - circa 1972
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; London, Tate Gallery; New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Willem de Kooning, September 1968 - September 1969, cat. no. 88, p. 126, illustrated in color and cat. no. 76, illustrated (Amsterdam)
New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Willem de Kooning in East Hampton, February - April 1978, cat. no. 5, p. 34, illustrated
East Hampton, Guild Hall Museum, Willem de Kooning: Works from 1951-1981, May - July 1981, cat. no. 18
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture, December 1983 - September 1984, pl. no. 218, p. 204, illustrated in color
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; London, Tate Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, May 1994 - May 1995, cat. no. 52, p. 183, illustrated in color

Hans Namuth, "Willem de Kooning, East Hampton, Spring 64," Location, Vol. 1, no. 2, Summer 1964, p. 29, illustrated (in the artist's studio)
Harold Rosenberg, "De Kooning," Vogue, September 15, 1964, p. 149, illustrated
Gabriella Drudi, Willem de Kooning, Milan, 1972, pl. no. 124, illustrated
Harold Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1973, pl. no. 151, illustrated in color
Diane Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1988, pl. no. 86, p. 113, illustrated
Steven Polcari, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience, Cambridge, 1991, p. 296, illustrated
Debra Scherer, "Mito De Kooning," Vogue Italia, Milan, June 1994, p. 24, illustrated in color
Leo J. O'Donovan, "Hallelujah Painting: Willem de Kooning," America, August 27, 1994, p. 24, illustrated

 ``Flesh was the reason paint was invented.’’
Willem de Kooning, 1950

In 1963, de Kooning completed his move from New York City to Springs on Long Island, leaving behind both the pace of the city as well as the intensity of the artistic community of the 1950s.  This change in environment and mood corresponded to a shift in the artist’s aesthetic concerns in subject matter and style. In the paintings of the 1960s, such as the masterful Clam Diggers, the pastoral replaces the urban, and reflective contemplation replaces aggressive assertiveness. The icon of de Kooning’s oeuvre is his massive and startling Woman I (1950-52), which challenged the art world from its first viewing in 1953 and was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art that same year.  Yet, the female figure arguably plays a more important role in his oeuvre as a mutable and fertile presence that serves as a testing ground for de Kooning’s investigations of the moment, moving forward as every artist wishes to do toward the next inspiration, the next insight.

Throughout his oeuvre, the female figure was the touchstone in de Kooning’s integration of figurative elements within the Modernist picture plane, creating a mature style in which he thoroughly embraced both figuration and abstraction in a manner unique among his contemporaries.  The mid-century was a unique period in art history during which painters challenged the role of art and expanded the boundaries of what art depicted. De Kooning’s pivotal role as a leader during this period centered on his refusal to completely abandon the human figure while at the same time creating one of the most influential styles of Abstract Expressionism. De Kooning’s insistence in the late 1940s and early 1950s on the validity of figuration as well as abstraction produced reactions ranging from mystification to vilification, since modern art’s liberation from the traditional Humanist standards was seen as a victory by artists such as Kandinsky, who wanted art to be ``a music without words.’’  De Kooning had a natural antipathy to conforming to codified movements, ranging from the traditions of past art to the strictures of contemporary doctrine. In his famous 1951 discourse on What Abstract Art Means to Me, de Kooning disapproved of European Modernist art’s tendency to state ``not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint.’’ (Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, vol. XVIII, no. 3, Spring 1951, pp. 4-8).  He cited instead Marcel Duchamp’s art as open and liberating, allowing each artist to pursue his own desires. Also, de Kooning was a very practical sort, as reflected by his love of the tactile nature of oil and charcoal, just as much as in his straight-forward approach to content. In a famous quote in 1963, de Kooning stated ``It is really absurd to make an image, like a human image with paint today,…But then all of a sudden it was even more absurd not to do it. …I put it in the center of the canvas.’’ (David Sylvester, Location, Vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 1963, pp. 45-53).

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, de Kooning painted a series of Seated Women, a classic motif throughout art history from Giotto’s Madonnas to Matisse. His early figures sit lightly in relative composure with soft features reminiscent of Ingres. Modernity intrudes with de Kooning’s distorted proportions and his palette of intense almost jarring green, pink, and orange. Throughout the 1940s, Surrealism and Cubism is the forum within which de Kooning merged figure and ground, rendering Women that shift at sharp angles with jagged outlines within a foreshortened perspective. In the 1950s, the impact of de Kooning’s violently abstracted, monumental and confrontational Women struck a visceral chord with the public. Their raw animation captured the energy and tumult of post-war American society in general, and the tensions and ferment of New York and American Abstract Expressionism in particular.  If the archetype of the American artist of the mid-century was a rugged individualist whose art was an extension of his personal psyche, then de Kooning was as closely associated with the female figure as Jackson Pollock was with his drip technique.

With his move to the expansive, sun-drenched landscape of Long Island, de Kooning’s life and art underwent significant changes. Removing himself from the hotbed of the artistic community where he was the center of attentive accolades and intrusive criticism alike, de Kooning welcomed the more contemplative and private surroundings of the countryside. He felt freer to paint what he wanted to paint, and experimented in new mediums such as sculpture and printmaking.  De Kooning’s paintings of the 1960s exhibit a reinvestigation of the pastoral tradition of Northern European art in landscape and the Western art tradition of the nude as tactile flesh. Clam Diggers is often cited as one of the earliest great achievements in this news series of nubile and playful women. [Dated as 1964 in the literature, a Hans Namuth photograph from July 1963 shows Clam Diggers in the artist’s studio in what some writers consider a finished state]. This re-examination of a familiar motif proclaimed anew de Kooning’s role as ``the supreme painterly painter of the second half of the century and the greatest painter of the human figure since Picasso.’’ (David Sylvester in Exh. Cat., Washington, D. C., National Gallery of Art, Willem de Kooning Paintings, 1994, p. 25 and footnote 15 , p. 180).

De Kooning adopted the pastoral with a new highly-keyed palette, embracing hues that emit a dazzling light, while his famously liquid paint handling reflected a sensuality that mirrored the looser, more relaxed eroticism of the permissive 1960s. Younger, slimmer, gentler and more frolicsome, the female nudes of Clam Diggers inhabit their painterly milieu with an expansive ease, their flesh rosily dappled by the sun. A master in the medium of oil, de Kooning renders his lush pigment as robust flesh, as the aggressive 1950s Women, who are part Madonna and part vamp, gave way to a more baroque conception of beauty and voluptuousness – the female nude in idyllic nature. De Kooning acknowledged the inspiration of more classical artists when he was interviewed about his recent work in 1964, stating ``Yes, maybe they do look like Rubens. Yes, Rubens, with all those dimples.’’ (Charlotte Willard, ``In the Art Galleries’’, New York Post, 23 August 1964, p. 44)

More modern inspirations could also be found for the young nymphs of Clam Diggers, in which bright flicks of color convey the iris of a smiling eye and the soft red of a toothless mouth. In de Kooning‘s Women, mouths had always been prevalent, acknowledged by the artist as a point of reference to ``hang on to’’ in his compositions. Now the toothy aggression of Woman I, who is part Madonna and part vamp, is replaced by inviting and seductive mouths with models such as Marilyn Monroe. The two female figures float in an undetermined space, inspired in part by a March 1964 photograph of jumping cheerleaders which hung in de Kooning’s studio. The figures are in mid-air, with their legs extended and pointed downward and their torsos distorted by their billowing clothes, an interesting metaphor for the lush quality of de Kooning’s tactile paint in Clam Diggers.  The artist’s propensity to model his paint surface is classically caught in three-dimensional form with the sculptures begun in 1969, one also titled Clamdigger, in which there is no intermediary between the artist and his medium.

De Kooning’s love of oil paint did not diminish over time, even in the 1960s with the advent of more modern materials such as acrylic. Oil stayed moist and malleable longer than acrylic, and de Kooning increased this propensity by adding safflower oil, water and other solvents to extend its liquidity. As Marla Prather has noted, de Kooning also sanded the gesso surface of his canvases and chose vellum and certain types of paper for their smooth and harder surface. These techniques enhanced the slick, slippery nature of de Kooning’s paint surface and stroke, which in turn has a conceptual kinship to de Kooning’s own propensity for change and transition. (Exh. Cat., National Gallery of Art, Ibid., p. 35).

The fluidity of de Kooning’s pigment was particularly suited to the series of Women begun in 1963 on Long Island. As the artist said in 1964, ``I’m working on a water series. The figures are floating, like reflections in the water. The color is influenced by the natural light. That’s what is so good here.’’ (Charlotte Willard, Ibid., p. 44)  Scholars from Diane Waldman in 1977 to Lynne Cooke in 1993 have agreed with Marla Prather when she highlighted Clam Diggers as the seminal work in this important series. ``Because of the liquid, tractable medium and pearly, low-contrast colors…, everything in Clam Diggers seems unstable, as the paint envelops the figures that seem dematerialized by light and water. De Kooning established no landscape setting to anchor the women in space: `I try to free myself from the notion of top and bottom, …from realism! Everything should float. When I go down to the water’s edge on my daily bicycle ride I see the clam diggers bending over, up to their ankles in the surf, their shadows quite unreal, as if floating. This is what gave me the idea.’’… De Kooning thought of this painting as a key (``I wouldn’t let that go for anything’’) from which he made other works,…’’ (Prather in Exh. Cat., National Gallery of Art, Ibid., p. 174)

Clam Diggers is often compared to Two Women in the Country (1954, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D. C.) which has a similar side-by-side composition of two women, pressed to the picture plane and merging into their environment. Both paintings – from markedly different periods in his career - are classic testaments to de Kooning’s genius for figure/ground compositions, his abiding love for the commonalities of paint and flesh, and his ability to revisit motifs throughout his oeuvre with a freshness and willingness to reinvent himself.