Willem de Kooning

Broad rhythmic gestures create sweeping luminous brushstrokes in Willem de Kooning's 1966 Untitled (Woman).  The present work emerged from the artist’s many earlier series of Women, his famously iconic theme which is the foundation of his experimentations between figuration and abstraction. In contrast to the more urban works of the 1950s, the females in the work of the 1960s appear more tranquil and their integration into their surroundings more lush and laconic.  Their superstructure is no longer overt; whiplash line is replaced by large areas of freely brushed color.  There is a clear shift to a luminous pastel palette borrowed from nature and landscape, which coincided with de Kooning's move out of Manhattan to Springs, 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 transition in the artist's aesthetic concerns regarding subject matter and style.  In the present work reflective contemplation replaced aggressive assertiveness.

With his move to the expansive sun drenched landscape of Long Island, de Kooning's life and art underwent significant changes.  De Kooning welcomed the more private surroundings of the countryside and accepted them as an invitation to paint what he wanted to paint.  His works from the 1960s represent both a reinvestigation of the pastoral tradition of Northern European art in landscape and the Western art tradition of the nude as tactile flesh.  The present work is an extremely abstracted figure in which some of the broad brushstrokes do not suggest anatomy at all, as they melt into the figure's sunny environs.  The head and face, outlined in blue and green, are the clearest reference to figuration.  The red lips and blue eye catch the viewer's attention and draw us into the composition. In de Kooning's Women, the mouths had always been prevalent, acknowledged by the artist as a point of reference to "hang onto" in his compositions. Here, the soft pliant red smile is inviting and a stark contrast to the toothy aggression of the mouths in many of de Kooning's more violent and raw women from the 1950s.  The woman's head is cocked slightly with relaxed seduction referencing earlier works such as Woman Sitting from 1943-1944 which signal the influence of a grander tradition of portrait painting as in the work of Ingres.

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 eroticism of the permissive 1960s.  The figure in the present work seems to float on the canvas, her rosy flesh dappled by sunlight.  A master in the medium of oil, de Kooning renders his lush pigments as robust flesh giving way to a more baroque conception of beauty and voluptuousness.  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, allowing de Kooning to enhance the slick, slippery nature of his paint surface and stroke.

The fluidity of de Kooning's pigment was particularly suited to the series of Women begun in 1963 on Long Island, as the artist achieved the integration of figure and landscape in large part by the means of painterly technique.  In Untitled (Woman), he created an atmospheric play of light as it graced the figure within her landscape of dune, sea grass, sand and sky.  De Kooning stated, " I am 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, "In the Art Galleries", New York Post, 23 August 1964, p. 44) The present work is a testament to de Kooning's career-long ability to negotiate the slippery boundaries between figure and ground, abstraction and representation, while celebrating the fluidity of oil paint that allowed de Kooning's forms to seemingly dematerialize within light and color.