Look, See

Searching for a Clyfford Still image, which I didn't find (September 1949 at the Albright Knox), led me to the Hirschorn Museum's excellent site, and eventually this image, which simply shows how beautifully de Kooning drew.

At first look past the red, because basically this is a monochrome, so to see his drawing look it all simply as drawn lines without worrying about the color. And look beyond the figure; don't think too hard about what this is, let's look at how this is.

Willem de Kooning, American, born Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1904-1997 Lobster Woman, (1965), Oil on tracing paper 18 7/8 x 23 7/8 in. (irreg.) (47.9 x 60.7 cm.) THE JOSEPH H. HIRSHHORN BEQUEST, 1981 (86.1351 ) Confession: the Hirshhorn web site pages have a script which prevent right-clicking on images to save or view URL; it's of course easy to get around by viewing the source of the page and scanning the HTML for the images source URL. I feel no guilt; my workaroud makes this post possible.

Instead, look at

• the variety of lines
• how they narrow and broaden
• how the ends taper or curve off or end more bluntly
• how lines do or don't touch
• how lines stack and overlap
• how line is used to make space and to make flat areas
• the area outside the figure, and the spaces created between the figure's external defining edges and the edges of the paper.

One sees a face, and arm held up across the chest, spikes of hair, a torso with ribs, a waist, hips, the pubic area, the beginning of legs. Is she holding a lobster? Is this someone who sells lobsters? Does her claw-like hand remind de Kooning of a lobster?

And now look at the red- it's a gorgeous cadmium medium, I think. Maybe it's a color de Kooning had at hand. Is the color red that of a boiled lobster? What is the temperature of this image?

Quite likely, knowing his working method, this is painted over a drawing, although it looks pretty direct and fresh. Since this is on tracing paper this could have been laid over another drawing and traced with a brush. This piece of tracing paper has bits of other work evident; maybe there's a partial drawing on the back, or he pressed it against a painting to make a monoprint, as he was known to do, or perhaps it is erased pastel. Whatever these smudges are they make a field for this red figure. This atmospheric field around the boldly, superbly, beautfully drawn figure gives the figure extra dimension, working with de Kooning's line to keep the figure from flatenning out and being iconic.

There could be something vaguely threatening or a little ferocious about this woman. It could also be that any figure caught stop-second in the middle of active work could look threatening. It really is too easy to apply the overly-used stamp of misogynist to de Kooning; his stance is more complex than that.

This photo was taken May 19, 2005 at NYMoMA:

On the left is A Tree Grows in Naples, 1960, and on the right is de Kooning's (infamous) Woman I, 1951-52. Much has been written about de Kooning's ferocious women, their gnashing teeth, the large breasts, the blonde hair, bright red mouths, etc., and how they are painted with a kind of violence or aggression. I want to address both of these points.

First off, de Kooning painted slowly. If you actually stand in front of the two paintings in the photo above, and follow his movements and how he built up his images, there are very few places where you can tell de Kooning painted in a fit. Look at the edges of his paint, the surfaces, the direction, and you can see that while different areas are painted at various speeds, de Kooning was never the Action Painter that, for example, Alfred Leslie emulated. In fact, few of the Abstract Expressionists moved at the speed that the lable Action Painter described. While the term may be little used now, the cliche of the inspired (or angry, or emotive) painter still persists.

Second, de Kooning's women make possible a whole range of attitudes that men, perhaps especially heterosexual men, can have towards women, whether mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, strangers, or icons. The paintings are not simply about blond bombshells and perfect icons, manipulating vixens and fear of castration, or men's fantasies and sexism. Yes, they are about all of those, but they also include all of the opposites; they are about love and hate, adoration and idolization, beauty and horror, attraction and repulsion, intimacy and distance, comfort and fear, commitment and avoidance of commitment.

Woman takes the viewer through the whole range of a man's possible feelings towards women; they are a recognition of the complex relationships between the sexes, the differences in communication and expectations, they way we regard each other. I risk getting too close to all the "men are from... women are from..." baloney with this, but come on, guys, you know what I'm talking about. De Kooning's depictions of women are no more misogynyst than Shakespeare's.

De Kooning has always been a primary figure for me, but when I was in New York in May I admit that my eyes and mind were elsewhere. In terms of the 20th century Mondrian, Newman and Pollock have taken over my thoughts for now. Matisse has become more important than ever before. One El Greco at the Met has filled my head. A Gainsborough at the Frick has completely opened me to an era and way of painting I've never thought much of before. Picasso lowered in my estimation as a bully and show off, his vision, to use the term flippantly, fascist.

This is just a small sampling of the some of the things for which I felt enormous enthusiasm during and after my trip. When I encoutered de Koonings I just didn't feel fully engaged. I felt like I was betraying him a bit. I felt a little guilty, although, undeniable, there is a lot to his career, his practice, his vision, his touch that are very important to me.

At the end of the day at MoMA I wandered through the atrium and saw two later de Koonings (below), both wonderful paintings. These are another side of de Kooning, the one who loves landscape, water, light, and air. I found myself fully responding, really seeing how the paintings were made and worked. The small red brush drawing of the figure above lays out quite plainly what de Kooning can do, his skill and subject. One finds an inspring consistency of quality and invention throughout all of de Kooning's work .