Willem De Kooning

Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Berman, Maryland
Sotheby's, New York, November 10, 1988, Lot 22 (Estate of Dr. Edgar Berman)
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Recent Paintings, April 1956
Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, Willem de Kooning: Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper, 1972

This work is in very good condition overall. There are scattered oil bleeds which are to be expected with oil medium on paper. There are scattered pin holes in each corner and a few areas of paper skinning at the edges, related to rubbing from the linen liner. The ridges and thick impasto of paint appear slightly flattened in some areas, possibly related to the mounting process. In the yellow areas and pink and white areas, there are traces of scattered charcoal and fine sandy particles mixed with the oil surface. There is a horizontal incision that appears to be from an artist's tool located beginning at 5 ½ in. down from the left corner and running horizontally to 5 3/8 in. down from the right corner, possibly also associated with the mounting or artist's studio. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. This work is framed in an antiqued black wood frame with gilt gold facing on the inner and outer rim, and a linen liner.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Cedar Street bursts with the vitality of Willem de Kooning's storied ability to bridge the gap between abstraction and figuration, just as nimbly as he could capture both the essence of the urban and the pastoral. The composition is a veritable compilation of the tone, strokes and intensity that energize the Urban Landscape paintings of de Kooning's mid-1950s oeuvre. The palette, sweeping lines and 'all-over' composition embody de Kooning's ability to evoke the rhythms, chance randomness and visual hum of his city environment. With its reference to the storied Cedar Tavern, which originally opened on Cedar Street in the 19^th century and had relocated to University Place by the 1950s, Cedar Street holds a place of particular homage for this era of de Kooning's career. A bar and restaurant, the Cedar Tavern (or Cedar Street Tavern) was a meeting place for the artists and writers of downtown Manhattan at mid-century.  Located nearby to various artist's studios, the tavern was a convenient place to congregate for de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston and many other members of the New York art world.

Painted in 1956, Cedar Street, along with the other Urban Landscapes, do not signify a representation of landscape; they are distillations of environments inspired by the raw dynamism of New York, the gritty texture of downtown and metropolitan life, and the rapid pace of modern times. Being an artist who thrived on the inspiration of concrete experience, rather than established precepts of any aesthetic movement, de Kooning sought to transfigure through impulse both the explosive nature of original creativity and the complex quality of modern existence. De Kooning's oeuvre continually morphed from abstraction to figuration with an ever-present undercurrent of landscape or spatial construct. The years 1950-1952 witnessed de Kooning's triumphant Woman I, his monumental masterpiece that stands as an iconic moment in American Abstract Expressionism, but the story of the decade is only half told by this female colossus and her sister paintings. Police Gazette (1954-1955), Gotham News (1955-1956) and Easter Monday (1956) are majestic Urban Landscapes with equal weight and presence to the robust Women, and they also proclaim the full range of de Kooning's painterly innovations. From the large expanse of  Police Gazette to the intimacy of Cedar Street, the Urban Landscapes are primarily celebrations of expressionistic verve and spatial complexity, but as with all of de Kooning's work, traces of figural form continually merge and emerge at regular intervals from their surrounding ground.

The pink and flesh tones of Cedar Street speak to the two fundamental plastic concepts that Thomas Hess identified in his 1969 book on his friend, Willem de Kooning. "The first involved his invention of forms, out of which to make a body for a 'Woman': ...de Kooning's metaphor for his concept was 'intimate proportions.' ...And when parts are seen 'intimately' they become interchangeable: as when you hold up the joint of your thumb close to your eye, it could just as well be a thigh. ...Anatomy opens up to as many permutations as there are parts of the body." (Thomas B. Hess, William de Kooning, New York, 1969, pp. 77-78). Cedar Street has this quality of close-up observation, where the detail appears to be the whole. Both soft and angular forms in Cedar Street can hint at a bent knee or the curve of a hip or breast, but in its fragmentation, these hints of figuration ultimately blend into the pattern of a larger abstraction that fills the composition.

This concept is related to the second point that Hess identified in de Kooning's oeuvre of the 1950s; that of 'no-environment'. With a similar lack of specificity, details of space or construct are fragmented and mixed together to defy a clear identification of place or object. Hess expounded on the circular logic that intermingled figuration and abstraction in de Kooning's art: "As in his concept of anatomy... the parts of the city are envisioned as interchangeable....The landscape elements played an increasingly large part in his painting as the Woman series [of the 1950s] progressed, and finally took over the image as de Kooning returned in 1956, to abstractions. As the sense of landscape grew stronger, however, the environmental forms tended to develop a likeness to the intimate proportions of the Woman's anatomy." (Ibid., pp. 78-79).

The fluid composition of Cedar Street epitomizes the commingling of de Kooning's painterly eye as it embraces both the frenetic action of the bold black sweeping gesture of movement in space, just as the palette of flesh, green and yellow inhabits the abstract ground. As with many of de Kooning's paintings, the glimpse of one thing chimes beautifully with another as they cascade together within the picture plane.