It took Elvis and Emma Lee four months of eight-pages-before-bed to get through Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan's award-winning biography of Willem de Kooning, but after sleeping with Dutchman through most of the spring (they made room in their queen-size bed for the 600-page tome), Elvis feels like he has a better understanding of that particular kind of abstraction that blends forward and back, figure and landscape, bright and mud onto one canvas. De Kooning, after all, made that particular vernacular of AbEx famous in his fleshy, torn up women and his melting Long Island landscapes.

So, he was excited to walk into Cecily Brown's exhibition at Gagosian's W. 24th Street location last night. Immediately, Elvis threw back his cape and shouted "uh uh huh!" at the giant, leafy green canvas that introduces the sprawling gallery show. A lot of Brown's earlier work relied more on fractured figures, but these were landscapes, fields and swamps and cities that loomed big over the glammed up Chelsea crowd.

There's no doubt Brown is a painter's painter; her full-to-the-hilt canvases use palattes the size of a city block to dodge in and out and around a particular color. They are not approaching monochrome in the literal sense, but each one has its dominant color, be it green, white, blue, or in the case of the gallery's north-western-most room, fleshtone. (Here lies the first problem of the exhibition; in a show as profoundly large as CB's, to have "one of each" in so many hues makes Elvis start thinking nasty thoughts about which would look best above the couch.)

The work more than nodded to earlyish late De Kooning; bold, bright landscapes with figures hidden in plain view. Some of them were torn apart and plastered in direct quotation of Willem; while more often Brown's paintings were populated with tiny friends: little noses and the two quick lines of a mouth tucked above a bright line of color; a dollop that could have been just a dollop but could maybe also be a head.

Elvis could have searched all night for the little arms and legs of figuration, but it would have been futile. The full-up picture-plane, the swirling colors that bounced between muddled thickets and bright punches of direct light, the occasional calm swath of blue or white expanses (water? sky?) were much more intoxicating. Chuck Close's wheelchair was also mesmerizing (it made the Segway look like a wheelbarrow).

The good news is her paintings are beautiful. But Elvis, who went with Emma Lee and the Porcelain Rose, limped back to the 8th Avenue Line with a heavy heart. Why? In part, it was because he'd been asked to leave by Larry's blue-coated squadron (the only other guest to get the honor was the spacesuited hobo; hence the off-kilter pic, snapped on his way out). But more than the early exit, Elvis felt something was missing from the dense canvases: adventure.

Brown's a Brit that's been showing in NYC for a decade plus, first at Deitch, when she was a mere pip of a thing at 28, and since 2000 with Larry and his cold-shouldered crew. The work was smart, once or perhaps even three times, but at a certain point in the gargantuan show it became so tightly done it turned safe, toeing the line of blue-chip droll. Brown's triumph, and in Elvis's humble opinion, her potential downfall, is that she is caged into her fortunate circumstance. A young, British lady artist, she was at right place, at the right time, with the right dealer (s). You could predict her exact arrival by looking at the plots on a scattergram (a cluster around the legacy of the Ab Ex, the emerging rabid love of YBA, and the decline of Schnabel et al). She came up when the artworld was ready for another dose of abstract meditation; it was not lost on anyone that De Kooning could have been her grandfather, nor that her work was just young and edgy and feminine enough to be intoxicating. She inserted herself into a niche that, historically couldn't have come a moment earlier, pissed on her fire extinguisher, staked her flag, and started painting. A decade later, she's gotten everything a (still) young artist could ask for; but one of these days she must start asking herself the question the Porcelain Rose asked as the trio rumbled underground to Houston: What next? What now?

Back in the Philippines during the good old days when I was so into reading art history, the images that impressed me the most were the abstract or expressionist ones with bright or contrasting colors! I remember reading The World Book Encyclopedia's article on "Painting," and three works stoked my imagination in feverish delight: first was Jackson Pollock's One (Number 31, 1950) ; second was Willem de Kooning's Woman, I; and third was Wassily Kandinsky's Little Pleasures, No. 174. Sure there were equally staggeringly colorful works by van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Hoffman, Rouault, Gorky, etc.! But the abstract/expressionist paintings of Pollock, de Kooning and Kandinsky blew me away the most! When I came here to the U.S. and got the chance to see their actual works, the effect was even more awe-inspiring! Standing, at times, very close to the paintings and staring admiringly at each work (and mind you, these works are huge! Pollock's alone occupy a wall!), I must admit I was tempted to touch them just to trace the artists' drips of paints and brushstrokes! I was just scared the security people who were all around would throw me out of the museum! Ha ha! But, my God, the experience was just beyond words! (I felt the same experience when my sister and I went to see Vincent van Gogh's The Drawings exhibit at The Met in 2005!) I saw Pollock's and de Kooning's at the MoMA, and Kandinsky's at the Guggenheim.
So everytime I have brightly colored paints before me, I'm compelled to just have a go at them! Almost always, the results are monstrous! But man, am I happy!

Erased De Kooning Drawing From: radicalart.info

Nacido en Cody, Wyoming, Pollock estudió en la Art Students League de Nueva York con Thomas Hart Benton. Durante su período de formación conoció la pintura de los muralistas mexicanos, que le impresionó hondamente. Comenzó su carrera con obras figurativas, en las que presta ya particular atención a los valores matéricos y el cromatismo. Hacia 1938 empezó a interesarse por la pintura abstracta e irracional, y para las obras de este período buscó inspiración en el mundo de los indios americanos.

El artista estuvo viajando por el país, realizando cientos de dibujos de la geografía física y humana de los Estados Unidos. A finales de la década de 1930 y principios de 1940 colaboró en Nueva York en los Proyectos de la Administración para el Federal Art Project (Proyecto de arte federal). Sus primeras obras, en el estilo naturalista de Benton, representan escenas estadounidenses de forma realista. Entre 1943 y 1947 Pollock, influido por el surrealismo, adoptó un estilo más libre y abstracto, como en La loba (1943, Museo de Arte Moderno, Nueva York). A partir de 1947 Pollock evolucionó hacia el expresionismo abstracto, tendencia pictórica de la que fue el representante más conocido y destacado,  desarrollando la técnica de la action-painting o dripping, consistente en derramar, dejar gotear o lanzar pintura sobre lienzos sin tensar colocados en el suelo... Después los trabajaba o extendía con palos u otras herramientas, e incluso a veces dándole una gran consistencia mediante la adición de arena e incluso fragmentos de vidrio. Pollock fue además uno de los primeros artistas en eliminar de sus obras el concepto de composición y en mezclar signos caligráficos con los trazos pictóricos.

Sus obras, que siguen ejerciendo una gran influencia en la pintura actual, son cada vez más valoradas y se hallan expuestas permanentemente en los principales museos de arte moderno del mundo, especialmente en el MOMA y en el Guggenheim de Nueva York.

Now I have only been at this for about 7 months but it seems to me that there are certain stigmas in the perception of artists.  For one, I haven't even had my first gallery show and already people are telling me to go to NYC.  Now I understand that NYC is the mecca for artists and it is where all the clientele are... but why be just another face.  Granted, I am already, but in NYC artists are everywhere all pulling for their big break.  It's like aspiring actors going to Hollywood.  If you relate it that way, you can see how difficult that transition would be.

Career-wise things have been in fast forward for quite a while.  I can't say that I will never go to NYC as an artist, but I can promise that I wouldn't go unless I had galleries lined up.  To me this won't happen for years since most galleries book people two years in advance (which I don't understand, what if a better artist breezes through and you're all booked?).  So with this in mind I actually emailed all the galleries that were listed online.  Seems optimistic, and of course it was.  All said no, but not because of the work.  They said no because they were all booked.  Many said I had a fresh aesthetic, which was rough because it means I'm good enough but not connected with the right people.

Truth be told, I would rather have complete control of my art anyways and open my own gallery in a couple years.

1: Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948 - sold in 2006 for $ 140.000.000

Seller: David Geffen

Buyer: David Martinez

2: Willem de Kooning, Woman III - sold in 2006 for $ 137.500.000

Seller: David Geffen

Buyer: Steven A. Cohen

3: Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I - sold in 2006 for $ 135.000.000

Seller: Maria Altmann

Buyer: Neue Galerie

4: Vincent van Gogh, Dr. Gachet - sold in 1990 for $ 82.000.000

Seller: Kramarsky family

Buyer: Ryoei Saito

5: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre - sold in 1990 for $ 78.100.000

Seller: Betsey Whitney

Buyer: Ryoei Saito

]]> http://lifechums.wordpress.com/?p=467 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:33:25 +0000 lifechums http://lifechums.com/2008/07/24/dementia-series-disabled-legend-willem-de-kooning/ Willem de Kooning was born on 24 April, 1904 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and died on 19 March, 1997. Willem De Kooning was an abstract expressionist painter.

In the post-World War II era, Willem de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters that developed this school of painting include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others.

Willem De Kooning's parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced when he was about 5 years old, and he was raised by his mother and a stepfather. Willem De Kooning's early artistic training included 8 years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. In the 1920s he worked as an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store.

In 1926, Willem De Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway on a British freighter, the SS Shelly, to Newport News, Virginia. Willem De Kooning then went by ship to Boston, and took a train from Boston to Rhode Island, and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he supported himself as a house painter until moving to a studio in Manhattan in 1927. In 1929 he met the artist and critic John D. Graham, who would become an important stimulus and supporter. Willem De Kooning also met the painter Arshile Gorky, who became one of Willem De Kooning's closest and most influential friends.

In October 1935, Willem De Kooning began to work on the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Federal Art Project, and he won the Logan Medal of the arts. Willem De Kooning was employed by this work-relief program until July 1937, when he resigned because of his alien status. This period of about 2 years provided the artist, who had been supporting himself during the early Depression by commercial jobs, with his first opportunity to devote full time to creative work. Willem De Kooning worked on both the easel-painting and mural divisions of the project (the several murals he designed were never executed).

In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, Willem De Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including Two Men Standing, Man, and Seated Figure (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically coloured abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and Elegy. As his work progressed, the heightened colours and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized Woman and Standing Man, along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about 1945 the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in Pink Angels.

In 1938, Willem De Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, later known as Elaine de Kooning, whom he married in 1943. Elaine also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s. Willem had his first one-man show, which consisted of his black-and-white enamel compositions, at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York in 1948 and taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in 1948 and at the Yale School of Art in 1950/51.

In 1946, too poor to buy artists' pigments, he turned to black and white household enamels to paint a series of large abstractions; of these works, Light in August (c. 1946) and Black Friday (1948) are essentially black with white elements, whereas Zurich (1947) and Mailbox (1947/48) are white with black. Developing out of these works in the period after his first show were complex, agitated abstractions such as Asheville (1948/49), Attic (1949), and Excavation (1950; Art Institute of Chicago), which reintroduced colour and seem to sum up with taut decisiveness the problems of free-associative composition he had struggled with for many years.

Willem De Kooning had painted women regularly in the early 1940s and again from 1947 to 1949. The biomorphic shapes of his early abstractions can be interpreted as female symbols. But it was not until 1950 that he began to explore the subject of women exclusively. In the summer of that year he began Woman I (located at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City), which went through innumerable metamorphoses before it was finished in 1952.

Willem de Kooning, Woman III, (1953), private collectionDuring this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953 and caused a sensation, chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow Abstract Expressionists were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The appearance of aggressive brushwork and the use of high-key colours combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest Freudian insights. Some of these paintings also seemed to hearken back to early Mesopotamian / Akkadian works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes.

The Woman' paintings II through VI (1952-53) are all variants on this theme, as are Woman and Bicycle (1953; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) and Two Women in the Country (1954). The deliberate vulgarity of these paintings contrasts with the French painter Jean Dubuffet's no less harsh Corps de Dame series of 1950, in which the female, formed with a rich topography of earth colours, relates more directly to universal symbols.

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Willem De Kooning entered a new phase of nearly pure abstractions more related to landscape than to the human figure. These paintings, such as "Bolton Landing" (1957) and "Door to the River" (1960) bear broad brushstrokes and calligraphic tendencies similar to works of his contemporary Franz Kline.

In 1963, Willem De Kooning moved permanently to East Hampton, Long Island, and returned to depicting women while also referencing the landscape in such paintings as Woman, Sag harbor and Clam Diggers.

Willem de Kooning was diagnosed with, in all probability, Alzheimer's disease. After his wife, Elaine, died on February 1, 1989, his daughter, Lisa, and his lawyer, John Eastman were granted guardianship over Willem De Kooning. As the style of his later works continued to evolve into early 1989, his vintage works drew increasing profits; at Sotheby's auctions Pink Lady (1944) sold for US$3.6 million in 1987 and Interchange (1955) brought $20.6 million in 1989.

There is much debate over the relevance and significance of his 1980s paintings, many of which became clean, sparse, and almost graphic, while alluding to the biomorphic lines of his early works. Some have said his very last works, most of which have never been exhibited, present a new direction of compositional complexity and daring color juxtapositions. Some speculate that his mental condition and attempts to recover from a life of alcoholism had rendered him unable to carry out the mastery indicated in his early works, while others see these late works as boldly prophetic of directions that some current painters continue to pursue. Unfortunately, gossip has tainted the scant critical commentary afforded these last works, which have yet to be seriously assessed.

Keep visiting: www.lifechums.com more Celebrities featuring Shortly .............

The contemporary art market season has drawn to its close with a series of three consecutive evening auctions, which confirm that significant works by a broad list of fashionable artists are continuing to attract powerful bidding competition. New auction records were established at Phillips de Pury on 29 June for Franz West, Ugo Rondinone, Wilhelm Sasnal, Grayson Perry, Banks Violette and Elmgreen & Dragset (despite a third of lots not selling). At Christie’s on 30 June records were set for Nicolas de Stael, Michael Andrews, Gilbert & George, Yan Pei-Ming and Karin Mamma Anderson; and at Sotheby’s on 1 July for Domenico Gnoli, Frank Auerbach, Bridget Riley, Martial Raysse, Richard Prince, Marlene Dumas, Antony Gormley and Rachel Whiteread.

The most expensive lot of the three sessions was a 1975 triptych of small self-portrait studies by Francis Bacon, which was offered at Christie’s where it was purchased by an unidentified telephone bidder for £17.3m. In the same sale, an outstanding 1980 portrait of a reclining nude by Lucian Freud fetched £11.8m, the second highest price in the artist’s auction career. In 1990, this picture had been the subject of a court arbitration over the currency (£1.5m or $1.5m) that Cork Street dealer Odette Gilbert had quoted to its purchaser who subsequently sold the canvas for £2.8m at Sotheby’s on 9 December 1998.

At Sotheby’s another telephone bidder paid £13.8m for Bacon’s remarkable small portrait study of George Dyer, 1967, but a full-length nude portrait, generally regarded as a rather unattractive composition, failed to win any interest.

By far the most intriguing situation involved Balloon Flower, 1995-2000, the magenta colourway Celebration sculpture of Jeff Koons which had been consigned to Christie’s by Dallas collectors Howard and Cindy Rachofsky. To have brought this famous sculpture to auction in London, rather than New York, by way of Germany for a fresh polish, and to have installed it under tight security for preview in neighbouring St James’s Square, was a bold decision by the house and underlines London’s status as the preferred shopping destination for the new buying markets of Russia and the Middle East. The winning telephone bid of £12.9m will have covered (just) the cost of the operation and a guarantee to the vendors which the market believes to have been $25 million. The Rachofsky family may have paid $1m for the work in 2000.

Big sculpture also featured at Sotheby’s where telephone bidders acquired a large alabaster block by Anish Kapoor (Untitled, 2003) for £1.9m and Antony Gormley’s 1996 life-scale model for the Angel of the North for £2.3m. An unidentified Asian consortium underbid this lot and the two following lots, Bacon’s portrait of George Dyer, and The Visitor, 1995, by Marlene Dumas which fetched £3.2m.

Phillips de Pury had hoped to steal a march on its rivals by staging its event in what Simon de Pury described as a late afternoon Evening Sale on Sunday 29 June but might have been advised to wait for the momentum created by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Although London agent Ivor Braka paid £3.5m for the most expensive work in the catalogue, an untitled painting from the final chapter of de Kooning’s career (1984), other valuable consignments failed to perform. There were no bids for either Franz Gertsch’s 1979 portrait of Patti Smith or for a challenging mechanical installation by Paul McCarthy, 1996. From a long catalogue of 91 works of art, 31 lots failed to sell. The third way is proving to be an expensive commitment for Simon de Pury who had offered a total of 39 guarantees in order to win business and there is genuine concern throughout the market that the present business model is not sustainable.

Queremos saudar Robert Rauschenberg, que morreu na segunda-feira.
Lembramos a sua série Cardbird, que fez nascer formas de pássaro de cartões de embalagem rasgados, mas cartões montados, fotografados, impressos, recortados e colados em base de cartão para serem iguais a cartões rasgados, em formas de pássaro.
À parte a pintura, e as colagens, queríamos mencionar o seu "Erased de Kooning Drawing" ("Desenho de de Kooning apagado").
Rauschenberg decidiu levar o desenho ao branco completo, a partir do desenho. Apagou variados desenhos seus.
Mas aquilo não era nada - conta. Cada um parecia um Rauschenberg apagado. Para ser uma obra, teria de começar como arte. Tinha de ser um de Kooning. Uma coisa importante.
Rauschenberg foi ao estúdio do colega. Comprei uma garrafa de Jack Daniels e fui.
Depois de uma cena de espera e silêncio bastante tensa, com uma sombra de conflito, quando de Kooning trancou a porta com a tela que estava a pintar, de Kooning responde:

Tem de ser uma coisa de que eu sinta mesmo muita falta.

"You see how ridiculously you have to think, in order to make this work?" (Rauschenberg)
Vale a pena ver o vídeo do próprio Rauschenberg a contar o episódio, e o seu plano de trabalho, com o seu humor impossivelmente doce.
Já agora, como complemento para qualquer escrúpulo em relação aos cruzamentos nada/arte, humor/arte, e gostar/não gostar, será de ver o vídeo de Marcel Duchamp sobre o "gosto indiferente".

Robert Rauschenberg: Re-Conceived 20th Century Art

Robert Rauschenberg: A 20th Century Art Icon

Robert Rauschenberg, the prolific American artist who over and over again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night at the age of 82. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, during his later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist had to stick with one particular medium or style.

Rauschenberg pushed, prodded and sometimes re-conceived all of the mediums in which he worked. Building upon the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art.

He initially attended the Kansas City Art Institute, then traveled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he met Susan Weil, a young painter from New York. Soon thereafter, Ms. Weil entered the historic, experimental Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. Having read about and come to admire the Austrian immigrant Josef Albers, who at that time was the head of fine arts at Black Mountain, Mr. Rauschenberg saved enough money to join Ms. Weil there. For a while, Rauschenberg moved between New York and North Carolina, where he studied at both the Art Students League and at Black Mountain College.

Black Mountain's Josef Albers was famously known to be a disciplinarian and strict modernist who was shocked by his new student, and he later disavowed ever even knowing Mr. Rauschenberg. On the other hand, in retrospect Albers was recalled by Mr. Rauschenberg as both "a beautiful teacher and an impossible person." "He wasn't easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it," Mr. Rauschenberg added. "Years later, though, I'm still learning what he taught me."

Rauschenberg's Controversial "Erased de Kooning Drawing"

Robert Rauschenberg's controversial Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), is about minimizing the subject, indicating that the removal of one subject can allow for the appearance of another. The things that go undiscussed in conversation are in some way equivalent to those that are talked about.

The Erased de Kooning Drawing symbolised what was iconic about much of what Rauschenberg did in his early days, it was iconic and iconoclastic at the same time, although William de Kooning was not the icon the young Turk wanted to smash. His iconoclasm took a more genteel and personal approach. As he explained in an interview: "I erased the de Kooning not out of any negative response." Rauschenberg had been doing the same thing with his own drawings, but there was not much tension in that; it didn't push out into the world. He had a fascination with William de Kooning, photographing his studio in 1952. Another key factor was that "de Kooning was the most important artist of the day."

The inception of the project has been well-documented. Rauschenberg went over to the master's studio and said that he'd like to erase one of de Kooning's drawings as an act of art. De Kooning, apparently intrigued, had three groups of drawings. The first was comprised of drawings with which he was not satisfied, but that wouldn't work. The next group was of drawings that he liked, but which were all in pencil, too easy to erase. If de Kooning was going to participate in this neo-Dada performance, he would play his part. He looked in his third group and found a multi-media work on paper that would be quite difficult to eradicate (the media of the Erased de Kooning Drawing included "traces of ink and crayon on paper"). Apparently, it took Rauschenberg one month to get the sheet relatively clear of marks. No photograph exists of the work that Rauschenberg erased; however, there is a photograph of the relatively simple sketch of it on the reverse of his work.

The Erased de Kooning Drawing

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Rauschenberg on The Erased de Kooning Drawing

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Tribute to Robert Rauschenberg: A Music Video Slideshow

Music by Philip Glass: Mishima

Interested viewers might want to read a New York Times op-ed piece written as a memorial to Robert Rauschenberg by the musician and visual-artist David Byrne, which can be accessed here.

Technorati: Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Rauschenberg dies, Rauschenberg, Rauschenberg dies, William de Kooning, de Kooning, de Kooning Erased, de Kooning Erased Drawing, painter, Black Mountain College, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Joseph Albers, art, paintings, photographs, photography, gallery, photo-gallery, slideshow, video, music, music video, culture, cultural, gay, gay pride, GLBT, New York City, NYC, Manhattan, celebrities, multimedia, technology, breaking news, art news, news, world news, world

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At a time when artists were living in poverty with no hopes of selling work, de Kooning was working hard on some of the most unique abstract and figurative paintings. Heavily influenced by artists like Joan Miro, Picasso, and even the close friend Archile Gorky, De Kooning created paintings that are both bold and immensely personal. For him painting was a language to be deciphered and studied in depth.

Clam Diggers, painted in 1963 is an example of a middle period De Kooning. The color is fresh and playful compared to the women of the 1950s. De Kooning paints with a complexity of line work and shape, constructing form with the physicality of the paint. The Clam Diggers as a result, look as if they are made of water with their undulating wave like topography. Neither figure in the composition interacts with the other in a literal sense, instead they effect one another spatially. In the crowded composition, these powerful forms create a feeling of imposition. A frontal composition adds to the confrontation, forcing the viewer to indulge the figures and their gushing womanliness head on. Mark making within the painting is also descriptive of crashing waves that are reminiscent of an orgasmic release. The evocative nature of the paint handling is one of De Kooning's strengths, he adds a personality and descriptiveness indirectly with the quality of the paint. Focusing on the fundamental principles in painting, like line, shape, or composition, De Kooning manipulates the presentation of ideas on a basic level. He is thus capable of adding a psychological dimension to the content by balancing literal and indirect methods of description.

The difference with the Clam Diggers compared to the 50s "Women" is that these are a little more accessible. They are still just as evocative of sex without the jarring, emotional complexity. When looking at Clam Diggers, it helps to think that De Kooning once said he wanted his paintings to look like they were reflections in water. It reminded him of his youth in Rotterdam, when he went to the pier to look into the water. That is an intriguing element in his work, how an experience from childhood can directly effect how he chose to render form fifty years later and beyond. It is that personal level in his paintings, that has people still amazed over the formal thought process.

When I went into the kitchen Margaret was cooking some onions. 'I had a dream last night,' she said. 'I dreamt that the economy was God's little clock.' I decided to go out for a walk.

Margaret has got a new job. It's something I need to tell you about.  The truth is I liked it better when she worked at the florist. It wasn't as close to the cashpoint, and without it I'd never have known about the scented pelargonium. On the other hand we would never have had our infamous tiff about the relative merits of the blue versus the white gladioli. She's never let me forget that I said she had the aesthetic intelligence of an insect. The positive connotations of such observations rarely tolerate much repetition, do they?  

When I got back Margaret was in the garden looking for the cat. 'De Kooning, De Kooning,' she cried.  'Dinner, De Kooning, dinner.' I put the kettle on and emptied a sachet of instant cappuccino into a mug. I sat in the conservatory in the afternoon sun. De Kooning ran in and squeaked at me. I said hello to him and he went off in search of his dinner.  Margaret came in in and asked me if I'd seen anyone during my walk. I told her I hadn't. I never do. You could be forgiven for thinking I was a stranger in this town. The onions smelled good.

Tonight I was sitting at the window looking at the messy mottlings on the full moon when my mobile rang. It was The Greek. He said it had come to his notice that I was in need of some new scissors and he could supply me with the orginal and the best - or at least the best this side of the Pyramids, he was certain - at an unbeatable price.

'Why would I need new scissors?' I asked. 'The ones I've got aren't broken. It seems you may have been misled.'

'Well, haven't you lost or mislaid them?'

'No, I don't believe I have.'

We talked for a while about the government and then I went back to studying the patterns on the moon. De Kooning came in and joined me. Margaret flicked on the light and asked me if it was The Greek who had rung me. I confirmed that it was.

'What kind of clock was it?' I asked. 'A longcase?'

'Yes,' she replied. 'It was a grandfather.'

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts it size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter-- the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last-- the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

- E.B. White, "Here is New York"

Apparently this is a neat little essay written by E. B. White in a hotel room in New York City, and I want to get my hands on the whole thing. I could start a whole shelf devoted to these musings on my future home.

Something weird is going on when I don't want to do anything but listen to Pandora and while away the minutes until I get to go home. I don't want to read or think about my responsibilities right now. I think it's called a mixture of Spring Fever (the trees have turned and I must be under them!) and Graduation-itis (a rare form of 'I don't give a shit-fever' coupled with an amnesia like sensation of not knowing who you are or where you are or who those people are who are telling you to write them papers.) I'm not sure if I will survive. But The Mountain Goats guy is singing me through it.

I'm still reading, don't worry, just not as much as usual. Trying to get through Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti. and Possession by A. S. Byatt. Both are excellent and pair together well. I'm pretty annoyed with Interlibrary loan for this major disruption in Proust reading, but there's not much to be done about that. I am wanting a book from the Science library which is not on North Campus so I have no idea where it is or how to get there, how I'm going to find time to get there, etc. I'm also really excited about the next few months worth of new releases that I won't be able to afford to buy myself and they are:

Chuck Palahniuk-Snuff

Louise Erdrich-The Plague of Doves

Maureen Freely-Enlightenment

Salman Rushdie-The Enchantress of Florence

David Sedaris-When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Haruki Murakami-What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Just to name a few. Also going now to research Sanford Berman, a radical librarian.

Love, Jessica

"each new glimpse is determined by many, many glimpses before. when i'm slipping, i say, hey, this is interesting! as a matter of fact, i'm really slipping most of the time, into that glimpse. i'm like a slipping glimpser." The New York School: Abstract Expressionism in the 40s and 50s, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969.

de kooning often focused on landscapes, whether it was the countryside or the human body, and painted his subject matter in a way that didn't allow the eye to rest on a particular area--when i look at a de kooning painting, my eye continually shifts through a progression of focal points... the movements joy and/or chaos creates an incredible sense of de kooning's feelings and memories at the time he created the painting.

----

i've been reading an interesting book on de kooning by thomas hess (DE KOONING: Recent Paintings, 1967) that discusses a couple of works that are relevant to the schivelbusch reading:

pastorale, 1963

"in this painting, the light is still of the city and its close suburbs--the landscape that wheels by as you drive back to town, the parkways, ramps, overpasses. and some of the violence in the paint handling, particularly the thrown and spattering energy at the angles which burst out from the central horizontal action, conveys de kooning's response to the city and it's energy, style, and madness" (14). the movement depicted in these paintings is de kooning's vehicle for discussing his thoughts and feelings on life (i.e. about moving to the united states/new york, or reflecting upon his relationships with women).

woman I, 1950-52
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3213&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1

additional reading:
IN SHORT; A Slipping Glimpser, Sarah Boxer
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E3DB1E3EF934A3575BC0A962958260

"Anyone who has seen de Kooning painting will have noticed he often puts a lot of time into one part. The artist at work is a fetish of modernism. Instead of an artist painting a picture, we have a picture painting a mythic artist. This confuses the simple act of looking at someone working on a picture. If we remove the expectations the myth creates, all we see is a man stuck on something, a man who has lost his freedom. Instead of the myth "de Kooning," we see a puzzled biped. Instead of a mythology of "action," we notice certain things happening.

"The sight of this creature painting one corner over and over makes us curious to know what is going on there. If we examine the matter closely, it seems that one stroke is being repeated - the same stroke, or one very close to it. Maybe the biped does not know it's the same stroke. Or maybe he can know it is only by repeating it. Here the possibility of an infinite regression opens up. Such regressions are a form of imprisonment (as well as a form of vanishing point), but what is imprisoned, among other things, is a terror of change. This is produced by, and produces, a wish to control it. That very wish masks a desire for change, a desire to escape. For each stroke, as much as being a reconfirmation of the old, wants to be completely new - that is, unrelated to the previous stroke. Yet this can only be confirmed by the previous stroke. Exact repetition perfectly renews each moment even though it is a fake newness. So such fragments of a de Kooning contain a nascent Warhol. For Warhol's soup cans solve the problem of the new by completely forgetting a past which was exactly similar. Warhol repeats himself and is thus new. De Kooning tries to escape from the past and is thus tied to it.

"If we further examine this de Kooning fragment (still from the mid-fifties), we find epigrams and puns in terms of painting itself, and quotations from the past. We find confusions about space and time experienced very lucidly. So the sight of de Kooning stuck in one corner is like watching a blind man. He can't - as far as we can see - tell one stroke from another, itself an exaggeration of not being able to tell one part from another, or one picture, or one period. For he sees history in terms of space, all of it simultaneous and contemporary. He paints on a canvas identified with the space of history. So now we have some idea of what de Kooning is doing in that corner. He is engaged in the absurd task of painting European art over again. He is putting periods, movements, centuries into a fragment. This is an appallingly near-sighted view of history - the view of a person for whom all history has turned into space and for whom space keeps turning into time, and who doesn't know, or chooses not to know, the difference. Paradoxically, this is a characteristic of the most ambitious and gifted, and it leads to repetition. Who could be more narrow than Michelangelo?

"Why should anyone want to paint European art over again? Perhaps to make sure it exists. Perhaps to compete with it. Perhaps to correct it. This absurd ambition cannot be mocked, for the artist has mocked it already; laughter is an intrinsic part of de Kooning's work. From this absurdity we go on to de Kooning's periods, little histories within the larger idea of History, and to the only thing that would fit a person for the tasks he has undertaken - that confidence or ignorance that refuses to learn from the past, in a word, innocence. But innocence and laughter are mutually exclusive. They cannot engage in a dialectic, except by accident, when each fails to recognize the other. They appear and disappear in the work like different physiognomies.

"Periods exist, however, even in a fragment of a de Kooning. (Indeed, all his work is a fragment of something else, so his sketches, which admit that, are more complete than "finished" work.) So we can say that his periods, though strung out in time, may appear simultaneous. In this way his periods begin to present a fake idea of periods, just as his pictures finally are imitations of pictures. Is this very periodicity, then, something he thought about in relation to the idea of mastery, and specifically in relation to Picasso? The idea of periods has been corrupted into the idea of progress, of avant-gardism in little. Each new period is "ahead" of the last. In this sense periods are a kind of striptease, each approaching some finality, the artist's "naked self." Perhaps, when the last thing comes off, there's nothing there. In this area Picasso's voice and myth were deeply confused. His periods were predominantly a way of wiping out, so that he could start again. But his periods, assimilated by myth, became a kind of reassuring clock on which to tell the cultural time. Picasso's final period, his final striptease act, was of course his death. De Kooning's periods are a more limited adaption of Picasso's example. If masters have periods, the idea of mastery is approached through parody, a parody careful not to destroy but to license that approach. De Kooning's "periods" are more truly oscillations.

"There is an oscillation between abstraction and the figure; between all-over and focused space; between varieties of relative confusion and varieties of relative calm; between, finally, opacity and invisibility. There are also remarkably consistent themes-a persistence of certain habits and flourishes on the one hand and certain strategies on the other. We may also point to two persistent motifs: a woman, and an elbow-like brushstroke. And to certain moods: irritation and humor. And finally to a color: pink. And the ambition, however dissembled or cancelled, that tries to include all these, so that they can all be treated equally, like the spaces in which they are set. These, by and large, are what his "periods" take place against.

"In talking about periods, however, one is assuming they can be distinguished. If one tells a new period, presumably from looking at the old, this is a form of retroactive imprisonment for the artist. An amusing essay can be written on this matter of periods. De Kooning, however, has partly written it, since his periods are first-class delusions. He has had his identity and eaten it, too. Let us enunciate the litany of de Kooning's accepted periods:

• Early Picassoid, with many Miró-Ingres variations. This often resulted in an exquisite hysteria - the pictures are falsely held together.
• The famous black-and-white paintings shown in 1948. Cubism is flattened into a kind of drawing with lines. An impetus is given to the lines so that the idea of movement enters, and with it the implication that space is being mobilized for some alternative purpose. Space begins to escape the lines, and thus has the possibility of describing them as much as the other way round. Space and line are made clearly ambiguous, that is, figure and ground. Black and white, of course, aid this.
• The flattened, jigsaw spaces (late forties, early fifties) are a kind of all-over Cubism expressed in a brusque shorthand. The paintings (Asheville, Excavation) are landscapes with figures in that all show a distinct compression of motif toward the top - that is, they have a right side up. Excavation, with its grasshopper strokes, is a kind of mercurial puzzle of slipping fragments.
• The Women reappear again. Systems are developed by means of a formal and metaphorical multivalence of parts - puns between ideas of form and content. A surfeit of such references introduces the possibility of paralysis.
• At the same time, and increasingly, the Gotham News period of the mid-fifties. Pictures are painted on top of one another, ambition and dreams of history are incorporated, and the idea of time as a form most clearly emerges.
• For a brief time brushstrokes enlarge and compositions have a cousinship with Kline's. There are traces of irritation, pockets of painting done over and over, but this is disappearing.
• The neo-Revlon period of the later fifties. Large brushstrokes simply coexist side by side. Ideas of movement are codified in terms of speed, direction, sprays, and sudden halts, etc. This suggests obvious ideas of process which were misunderstood both by artists and critics. What really suggests it is a new interest in the compression of time - whether it is possible to eliminate all the gaps by a disguise of instantaneity, so that the strokes simply stay side by side. The "process" idea could have been corrected by just looking at the falsity of these pictures. Their colors are highly artificial, variations of pink become a major theme. Pink is reminiscent of maquillage. These works appear fleshy, but they are really cosmetic, consciously false. This implies that the rhetoric of brushstrokes is not to be believed. Pastel colors are flirtatious and psychologically are associated with ambiguity. Highly vulnerable to misuse, these pictures were, inevitably, raped.
• The rococo of the sixties, with the predominant theme of Women again, but this time ludicrous goo-gooeyed creatures, often coming in pairs. The tones are higher, the values closer, figures and landscape interpenetrate. The brush slips and twists instead of developing magisterial tundras and sprays.

"Many of these divisions are not divisions at all, since they shade into one another, or proceed concurrently, or are new ways of handling old themes. But cutting through all these divisions, false or not, is an approach to and a withdrawal from a climax - that Gotham News period of the mid-fifties. It is as if that climax called up a further tower of ambition, and the art, transfixed by it, could not proceed except by the pretense of unimportance. The informality of the work since then, as Harold Rosenberg pointed out, has been read as a decline. This myth contains a truth and distorts it. Though there has been a withdrawal from omnipotence, this withdrawal has a theme, a theme very much of its time, the sixties. "The sixties pictures are fragmentary, with few exceptions. The strokes are laid down side by side and areas of color do not disappear behind each other. Colors are high in saturation and closely valued. The pictures' flatness is accentuated by the frequently close values. A thin tissue of paint seems to have been rapidly wiped across the canvas. Pastorale (1963) is not a typical picture but it shows the idea. It also approaches invisibility. The instantaneity is another convention of time, as artificial as that of the mid-fifties. But instead of the picture being strung out in time, and hopefully obtaining its unity from this, it is now compressed into one instant. The gaps between strokes are not exaggerated, they are compressed.

"If we compare Gotham News and, say, Pastorale, there is a reversal of method. In the earlier picture we discovered a chaos which the parts struggled to eliminate by a convention of extended time that constituted an appeal to history. In the later picture we see a single mood, a promise of unity. But when we look into it the parts still don't go together. Yet if matters are instantaneous the parts must stay together. There is an escape from history here. De Kooning, one might say, has discovered the present.

"This aspiration clearly is contained in the earlier struggles with history, with reversible futures and pasts. It is signified even by subject and style, which in de Kooning's work we can consider as components of structure, The figure in these sixties paintings is a kind of Barbie-doll caricature of a fertility figure. Timelessness (instantaneity) is indicated by this icon, and it is introduced into the least demanding of histories, the rococo. It is a rococo that also signifies an escape from the artist's own past, for it parodies his own baroque period. So the escape is not complete.

"Instantaneity is the structural idea against which these later fragments define themselves - just as the early work defined itself against Cubism, or rather a Cubist jigsaw cut and spliced into history. Instead of accumulating picture on top of picture, in the manner of Gotham News, the later pictures are dealt off one by one. Since they inflect the same theme again and again, their family resemblance is strong. The idea enters that he may not be trying to paint different pictures, but to paint the same picture, again a way of eliminating history. The bystander now has the problem of superimposing the images. This is clearer in the drawings, very puzzling fragments when seen individually. Each one of them avoids a figure, giving just a few inadequate notations. A flip-book of these drawings might provide a glimpse of the figure they are avoiding. In this sense the drawings comment on the practices of the past and are footnotes to de Kooning's own history.

"The more successful this convention of instantaneity, the more history disappears. Ambition becomes more prudent and imitates humility. And as ambition is suppressed, humor increases. There is a history of laughter in de Kooning's work, and in these works the laughter is very peculiar. "Laughter," said Baudelaire, "comes from the idea of one's own superiority." But if one has given up that idea laughter becomes unnecessary. If it continues, it is as one sees it in these sixties paintings - a gallery of giggles. Perhaps they indicate a relief from past ambitions and a recovery of innocence. This brings us back full cycle. For innocence is connected with wiping out the past and turning an optimistic face to the future. It is connected with that dream that allowed de Kooning to fulfill his career under the disguise of failure.

"Emerson wrote that the New World was made up of the party of Hope and the party of Memory. One is Utopian, the other Dystopian. The party of Hope is continually reborn in every immigrant. Whatever happens to him is unremarkable because it should. In avant-garde circles in Europe this idea was associated with Whitman. The expansive illusion of freedom does away with the past, for one is starting again. Yet the past the immigrant brings with him is projected into the future, for he can only define his expectations in terms of this past. It undergoes odd transformations, since the immigrant forgets he's brought it.

"One can tentatively identify Whitman's anthropomorphic self-image spread across the future with de Kooning's art spread across history, across the past. The two can be superimposed without too much difficulty, although one is whole and the other, a century later, has suffered large losses. Every immigrant for a time thinks he is discovering America. Eventually he finds out he has discovered Europe idealized in terms of his own expectation. If the future is shaped by this memory, the past is resuscitated by this optimism. De Kooning discovered an idea of Europe that could only be experienced or discovered in America. He has always confused Hope and Memory, optimism and regret, history and a dream. He has confused them because he has so often used each to cancel the other-a way of making them interchangeable. No wonder an art caught in such a cat's cradle of illusions is itself a supreme fiction. In this fiction voice and myth are liable to confusion also. No wonder when we look at de Kooning's work we are impressed, above all, with its folly."

You have until January 1st, 2007 to find out:-).

All of the above can be seen at "Double Take: From Monet to Lichtenstein, " an unusual art exhibit currently displayed at Microsoft Co-founder, Paul Allen's music museum, The Experience Music Project, located in Seattle, Washington. The priceless paintings come from Allen's own personal collection of art.

The exhibit has been so popular with the public that its closing date was postponed from September to January. But I think they mean it this time, and so it may be your last chance to see it.

O.k., so this is another one of those "hurry up before you miss it" kinds of posts!:)

But listen--some of these paintings have not been viewed by the public in nearly 50 years, and who knows when you'll get another chance to see them? There is a rumor that the show may go on the road in the near future, but I haven't heard of any definite plans, and there are some obvious problems involved in transporting 28 priceless works of art all over the country.

http://www.doubletakeexhibit.org/

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_Nov_29

The exhibit pairs works from Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists---masters such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Vincent Van Gogh with the modern works of artists such as Pablo Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein.

The eclectic selection of paintings were paired together by Curator Paul Hayes Tucker in order to try to get people to see familiar works of art in a new light.  Some of the pieces were even taken out of their original frames in order to achieve this purpose.

Other paintings on display include the works of Edouard Manet, Georges Suerat, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gaugin.

See...

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:gdcNlwIgftAJ:www.doubletakeexhibit.org/press/index.asp%3Fdt%3D032106+%22double+take%22+and+%27ernst%27&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

and

http://arthistory.about.com/b/a/257692.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_32/c3996082.htm

It is also kind of a cheap date. The price is right--only $8 for the art exhibit alone, which is less than the cost of a movie.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/260686_artnote24.html

The exhibit ends on January 1st, 2007, so if you are anywhere near the vicinity of Seattle, Washington and want something interesting to do this week, you might want to stop by.

I'm just saying......:-)