威廉‧杜庫寧

文森特和希拉‧梅爾扎克，華盛頓（購自藝術家本人）
拍賣：紐約佳士得，1989年5月3日，拍品編號12
高古軒畫廊，紐約
1989年由現有藏家購自上述人士

巴爾的摩博物館藝術，「抽象表現主義藝術家」，1953年3月（展品清單）
巴爾的摩藝術博物館，長期借展，1961年 - 1964年
華盛頓特區，可可然藝術畫廊，「文森特‧梅爾扎克收藏」，1970年12月 - 1971年2月，品號71，附圖版
埃德蒙頓，埃德蒙頓藝術畫廊，長期借展品，1981年8月 - 1983年1月
紐約，惠特尼美國藝術博物館；柏林，藝術學院；巴黎，蓬皮杜中心國立現代藝術博物館，《威廉‧杜庫寧的素描，油畫，雕塑》，1983年12月-1984年9月，品號33，彩色圖版頁44 （紐約），彩色圖版頁86 （巴黎）

This painting is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 for the condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in an ornate carved gilded wood frame under Plexiglas.
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The late 1940s and early 1950s were a culmination of the creative ferment of post-war New York with its crosscurrents of European influence and American spirit vying to achieve a breakthrough to a new type of painting that would at once declare and define the radical character of the times. As visual signposts of the momentous developments in the history of art at this critical juncture, there can be no stronger candidates than Willem de Kooning's Painting (1948) and Woman I (1950-1952), both in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Historically, the span between 1948 and 1953 also marks the period of the artist's emerging fame: de Kooning's first one-man show opened at the Charles Egan Gallery in April 1948, he participated in the American pavilion at the 25^th Venice Biennale in 1950 and, finally, Woman I was purchased in June 1953 by New York's premiere museum of avant-garde art. Stylistically attuned to both works in various ways, Untitled from 1951 was created by de Kooning amid the confluence of this time and therefore stands at a crossroads in the history of his canon and 20^th Century art.

In his introductory essay to the catalogue for the acclaimed 2011 retrospective of de Kooning's work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, John Elderfield succinctly captured the fascinating conundrum that de Kooning was simultaneously a pillar of the Abstract Expressionist movement while creating glorious works that stand apart from his colleagues in contradictory appearance, sensibility and intent. While he was very much of his time, and was as immersed in the aesthetic and philosophical milieu of mid-20^th Century New York as any of his fellow revolutionary innovators, he was resistant to conforming to one school of thought or way of painting. This independent bent and lack of concern for relating his work to the tastes around him is - in the final analysis - the essence of his greatness. Further, Untitled (1951) embodies the aesthetic innovation which Elderfield proceeds to identify as the heart of de Kooning's grand contribution to the redefinition of art of the last century: his total engagement with pictorial space.

While de Kooning's love of paint and its "fleshy" properties is justly celebrated, it is his insistent challenging of the shallow depth of the modernist picture plane that led to the merging and shifting between figuration and abstraction that is the hallmark of his canon. De Kooning pushes the boundaries of the narrowed depth of Cubism in which multiple views and fragmented forms exist in a flattened space descended from Cézanne's radical landscape and still-life paintings. Untitled (1951) elaborates the means and methods by which de Kooning grappled with these precedents. The fluidity of enamel paint was perfectly suited to the lyrical and cadenced rhythm of his wrist, and the sinuous black lines that dripped from his brush provide both the scaffolding and the movement for this composition. Swift gestures produce economical and thin loops and circles, while more languorous applications produce the pools of paint that shimmer amidst the warm paper tone and the brighter color palette of yellow and red. Coupled with this implied movement, de Kooning's choice of palette further amplifies the animated spatial quality of Untitled (1951) since bright yellow and deep reds are suggestive of light, open spaces and pulsating vibrancy. Remnants of figurative forms and architectural motifs - most particularly the open symbolism of windows and doors - add to the sense of surface tension and spatial complexity within the composition. The collaged form in the lower left corner, while the most suggestive of an anthropomorphic figuration in Untitled (1951), is at the same time a quintessential tool used by de Kooning as inspiration for his more abstracted compositions. In totality, this painting brings to vivid life, the prescient comments of critic Clement Greenberg when writing of de Kooning's work in 1953: "He wants to re-charge advanced painting, which has largely abandoned the illusion of depth and volume, with something of the old power of the sculptural contour. ...he wants in the end to recover a distinct image of the human figure, yet without sacrificing anything of abstract painting's decorative and physical force. Obviously, this is highly ambitious art." (John O'Brian, ed., Clement Greenberg: the Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 3, Chicago, 1993, p. 122).

In his quest to synthesize the conflicting properties of modernist space with more traditional painterly characteristics, de Kooning had a prominent model to follow in the works of Pablo Picasso. He greatly admired Picasso's mastery of Cubism and Surrealism as well as his ability to blend them either ambiguously or conspicuously as in The Charnel House painted in the mid-1940s. Throughout his career, Picasso was also able to shift from one aesthetic mode to another, ultimately creating his own heroic style in a fashion that would be equaled by de Kooning's own facility to modulate his compositions between figuration and abstraction. The Black Paintings of the late 1940s, such as Painting, 1948 were de Kooning's first great series of works that declared the arrival of a painter who could challenge the boundaries of painting with as much vigor as his great predecessor. The Black Paintings, the sister paintings of creamy white such as Attic (1949) and their related works such as Untitled (1951) are "all-over" compositions in the grand manner of de Kooning's fellow "Action Painter" Jackson Pollock. But de Kooning's works teem with the biomorphic forms and abstracted shapes that, in their kaleidoscopic fragmentation, create a spatial illusion that fairly bulges from the works of this period, including Untitled (1951).

The collage technique present in Untitled (1951) is a testament to de Kooning's predilection for this honored method of modernist practice as a source of painterly invention. Both de Kooning and his friend Franz Kline would juxtapose fragments of torn paper in unconscious and random arrangements, seeking a moment of revelation toward an abstract composition. Untitled (1951) is an exemplar of this liberating technique that invigorated de Kooning's compositions, allowing for non-representational elements to coexist in works that also implied architectural space - denoted by windows - such as Untitled (1951) and Zot (1949). At the time, de Kooning created Untitled 1951, another painting in his studio made productive use of collage. As John Elderfield relates, "de Kooning would sometimes use tracing paper to capture the outlines of a detail that he liked; then would tack the paper to a later state [of the painting] to judge the fit of the image in the new context; and if he liked the fit, would finally trace the outlines onto the canvas and complete it with paint, or perhaps just copy it by eye." (Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, de Kooning: a Retrospective, 2011, pp. 247-249). In this manner, the collaging method was integral to the creation of Woman I.