Willem de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning, East Hampton (gift of the artist)
Private Collection
Diane Upright Fine Arts, New York
Christie's, New York, May 16, 2001, lot 49
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

Paris, M. Knoedler & Cie., De Kooning: Peintures Récentes, June 1968, cat. no. 34
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., De Kooning, January 1968 - March 1969, fig. 5, cat. no. 13, illustrated
Berkeley, University of California, De Kooning: The Recent Work, August - September 1969

This work is in very good condition overall. The works show evidence of light wear and handling. There are scattered examples of foxing to the sheet. The sheet is mounted onto canvas and all four sides are taped. There appears to be scattered hairline craquelure that follows the thinnest skeins of paint. There are scattered accretions in particular along the corners. Along the top edge at the center, there is a visible tear to the paper, which presumably happened prior to the sheet being mounted to canvas. Framed.
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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.

In 1963, after success as one of the most highly esteemed Abstract Expressionist artists of postwar New York, Willem de Kooning left the city and relocated to East Hampton, Long Island. Despite maintaining consistent iconography and brushwork, de Kooning’s transformation in palette and style coincided with his move away from the bustling streets of Manhattan. He indulged himself in the liquidity of oil paint, frequently employing a smeared effect. The archetypal figures of women in their environments, previously jarring and harsh, became friendly and pastoral. In contrast to de Kooning’s distinctly aggressive and disquieting figures of the previous decade mirroring the tumult of the city - Woman I (1950-52) being the quintessential example - the later series of Women of the 1960s, created in his new serene setting, feature flowing brushwork, warm color combinations and an overall mood of grace and leisure. 

De Kooning's women of the 1960s are portrayed in new manner, where they comingle with their surroundings, as if flesh had been dematerialized into the water and light of the Long Island landscape. De Kooning had commented on his painting from this period: "I try to free myself from the notion of top and bottom, left and right, 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" (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Willem de Kooning Paintings, 1994, p. 174).

Two Figures I, which de Kooning painted in 1968, is one such example in which a vibrant palette, abstracted figuration and liquefied paint application work in tandem with de Kooning’s suggestive female poses to inject a renewed primal vitality into this famed series of tactile, fleshy women. In the paintings of this period, de Kooning’s distinctions among face, torso and legs are indeterminate and dissolved – often pulled apart and spread across the canvas. He investigates this distortion of figure, returning to the bare essentials of form as well as color. This painting is from the same series as The Visit (1966-67), part of the Tate’s collection. De Kooning explored this form of the woman with spread legs through a series of paintings he made from 1968-69, which are now regarded as some of his most expressive paintings of the female body. 

1968 was an important year for de Kooning. At this time, the artist travelled to Rome, and began experimenting with sculpture. The present work relates specifically to de Kooning's important sculptures, and it should be seen in this context. As with de Kooning's famed Woman series of an earlier decade, the present work references ancient depictions of women found in Cycladic and Sumerian sculptures that the artist observed on trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But rather than the piercing frontal glare and glinting teeth of the ferocious 1950s Women, de Kooning's female form of the 1960s more closely resembles the voluptuous abdomen and thighs of an ancient fertility goddess, lying invitingly supine in a natural landscape.

In the present work, the flesh of de Kooning's figures dematerialize into the swirling strokes that denote background and setting, presaging the complete merging of figure and ground. The flattened abstraction and clustered subjects in Two Figures I certainly relate to the art historical debate surrounding modernist pictorial space. Nevertheless the ambiguous and barely discernable figures exude an explicit sexuality. The provocative nature of this arousing subject matter is evident. This fluid depiction gestures a more contemplative yet sensual period in his work.