De Kooning at MoMA

I took my wife and four kids to see the de Kooning exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art December 19.   As a working artist, three things stood out to me:  scale, line, and texture.  Here are some thoughts in response to the show–

Viewing the Willem de Kooning exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last week, one thing was clear– de Kooning painted like he meant it.   My family and I agreed that many of  the paintings would be difficult to live with over the dining room table.   But they are not easy to look away from either, even less easy to dismiss.

The entire sixth floor of the Museum of Modern Art is devoted to about six decades worth of de Kooning’s explorations.  Due to the crowds waiting at the entrance of the show,  we chose to enter  the last gallery first, viewing the show in reverse.  It turned out to be a good strategy, allowing unhindered views of magnificently large canvases

SCALE

Since scale is an element of design,  I wanted to see these giants in person.   My belief was confirmed:  you haven’t seen de Kooning if you have only seen reproductions. (The grand canyon on a postcard isn’t the grand canyon).  Emotional force comes through loud and clear when you stand in front of a massive wall of paint.

Untitled 1986

The first gallery we entered (the last gallery of the show) displayed de Kooning’s final works, created under the specter of Alzheimer’s.  Large pale or white canvases were cut with swooping ribbons of primary color.  One arrangement of looping lines was done in blue and black.  A few included peach and tangerine.  Simple, direct and somewhat pleasing, none of them  moved  me.

Walking into the next gallery was a jolt.  Suddenly the walls radiated passion, energy, and a restless intelligence animating everything.  Seven-foot canvases floated majestically on the walls.   Vivid colors sang out like jazz improvisations.   These huge paintings are  rich, difficult, and captivating.

LINE

From his early abstract experiments, he emphasizes line cutting space.  His early masterpiece “Excavation” is accompanied by smaller, similar variations on the theme of calligraphic line carving up space.  They struck me with the force of ancient cave paintings.

Excavation, 1950

His highly praised series of black paintings are white lines slicing up black space.

1948

In the disturbing series of “Woman” paintings as well as  works  like “Easter Sunday,” slashing, angular lines provide structure over and pulsing underneath colored spaces.   Newspaper transfers — photos and text ghosted in reverse — appear subtly and surprisingly throughout.  The paint texture is rich and varied, but has a gritty, dry quality.

Woman I, 1950-52

TEXTURE

In the next-to-last gallery, linear angularity gives way to slippery lines floating over and pushing into larger masses of intense color.   The eye is offered little resting place as paint slides, drips, bubbles and clumps with abandon.   Colors threaten discord but never quite tumble into cacophony.

Each painting is a textural tour de force.   From thin paint, sanded back into the canvas,  to luscious liquid strokes as wide as your hand, to heaped up sandcastle structures pushing out from the surface, de Kooning appears to have been intoxicated with  textural possibilities.   I left the show determined to have more fun with paint.

Untitled XII, 1975

Our photography-based popular culture has left most of us without the tools for appreciating non-representational art.   Since any foreign language sounds like gibberish until we learn it, I would humbly challenge my friends who dismiss all abstract art as childish blather to reconsider.  De Kooning has something to say to those who will listen.

Would I like to own a de Kooning?  Some of them, definitely.  Many of them, no, thank you.   They can be visually and emotionally messy, even disturbing.   But this is their strength.  To me, de Kooning’s  body of work feels like a dissection or a surgery.  Not easy, but important.   I’m glad he had the guts to do it.

De Kooning was a man of intelligence and talent struggling with a universal human problem – the attempt to find order and peace in the face of  uncertainty, pain and loss.  I’m not sure he ever achieved resolution, personally or artistically.   Did he even believe  it was possible?  Hard to tell.  But he openly shared the struggle with us.  It feels very honest and very human.  For that, I am grateful.