Willem De Kooning: Tracing the Figure [Anglais] [Relié]

At the forefront of modern art during the 1950s, painter Willem de Kooning secured his place in art history with the unveiling of his "Woman" series. Colorful, brash paintings composed of bold, violent brush strokes were seen by critics and viewers as vulgar and problematic but unfailingly important in their merging of abstract and representational forms. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles presents, in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name, Willem de Kooning: Tracing the Figure, a collection of drawings and studies that led up to the famous "Woman" paintings. Seen as completed works in their own right, these drawings bear de Kooning's distinctive draftsmanship of powerful lines, erasures, scrapings, and strong color. Blurred images of the figure coming apart at the seams, the works look as if they were made during an emotional explosion, though de Kooning's work process was known to be rather laborious. Four insightful essays complement the arresting images, including a remarkable discussion on the social ramifications of de Kooning's vision of the female form by curator Cornelia H. Butler. This well-crafted book is perfect for any fan of modern painting. --J.P. Cohen

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the phenomenon that was abstract expressionism. . . . Clearly written and carefully researched.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the phenomenon that was abstract expressionism in the mid-20th-century US (or for anyone who is simply looking for something on De Kooning that is clearly written and carefully researched).

Willem de Kooning, one of the great pioneers of Abstract Expressionism, experimented with the human form throughout his career. An artist deeply skeptical about Western ideals of beauty, he focused on anatomical fragmentation and spatial ambiguity to express the fleeting nature of the individual. This strikingly designed book, published in conjunction with an exhibition originating at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, explores de Kooning's drawings of the female form between 1940 and 1955. It reveals an artist who struggled to eliminate traditional barriers between drawing and painting as he explored ambiguities between the figure and its background.

De Kooning relied on early-twentieth-century abstraction in his initial attempts to redefine the figure, drawing and re-drawing the same line until he resolved the image. Beginning in 1947-49, he synthesized abstraction and figuration, dismembering figures and rearranging them with seeming randomness. As his figural compositions developed, geometric configurations transformed into architectural elements (suggesting windows, doors, mirrors, paintings, and furniture) to create ambiguous space. In 1951, de Kooning abruptly returned to depictions of women. Using turbulent brushwork, he turned female figures into monumental, intentionally vulgar, wildly distorted images whose parts read alternately as flat pattern and fully rounded forms. The effect is an almost violent sensuality.

The artist's later style differed dramatically from that of earlier decades. Familiar shapes and hues suggest that women remain in his works, yet they are distorted beyond recognition as if seen from underwater. As put by Thomas Hess, the artist's friend and critic, "Woman, for de Kooning, is the human equivalent of water; more than a vessel, she embodies it in planes of rippling flesh.

June 15 - September 8, 2002

Cornelia H. Butler is Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, most recently "Flight Patterns" and "The Social Scene." Paul Schimmel is Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His exhibitions include "Public Offerings," "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979," and "Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s." Richard Shiff is Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and directs the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Cézanne and the End of Impressionism as well as numerous studies of critical and methodological issues. Anne M. Wagner is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire and Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keefe.