DE KOONING
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg: DE KOONING. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978. Second printing. Oblong quarto. Green paper-covered boards with green cloth quarterstrip titled and stamped in gilt. Photo illustrated dust jacket. Green endpapers. 294 pp. 3 fold-outs. 226 illustrations, inc. 65 color plates. Chronology, Bibliography and two separate prose statements by the artist. Thumbnail size chip to jacket spine repaired with archival tape to verso. Glossy jacket lightly handled. Tips faintly bruised. Binding tight and secure. A nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
13.5 x 12.25 hardcover book with 294 pages, 3 fold-outs and 226 illustrations, including 65 color plates. A lavish monograph that includes a Chronology, a Bibliography, and “notable for the interview with the artist, plus de Kooning's 2 essays and the color plates.”— Freitag #2191.
Art critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term action painting in 1952, writing that "at a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or 'express' an object.... What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."
Specifically, the term describes the work of artists who painted with gestures that involved more than just the traditional use of the fingers and wrist to paint, including also the arm, shoulder, and even legs. Often the viewer can see broad brushstrokes or other evidence of the physical action that took place before the canvas, and in many of these works of art the kinetic energy that went into the making of the painting remains vivid.
Although "action painting" became to some degree synonymous with Abstract Expressionism, it didn't apply to all of those artists. For example, Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman left little or no trace of the artist's touch. On the other hand, the works of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline exemplify action painting.
The New York of the mid-fifties revered de Kooning’s kind of individuality, which stood out in an era that was often conformist in outlook. Many artists of the time picked up some of the speech patterns and affection for slang that de Kooning made his own—such as the use of the word terrific and “How do you like that.” But the most common form of imitation was a self-conscious desire on the part of many younger artists and poets to present themselves as notable “individuals” who violated boundaries in the manner of Pollock and de Kooning. This crowding toward the individual had begun earlier in the fifties. (Harold Rosenberg, one of de Kooning’s champions, referred drily to the “herd of independent minds.”) But no young painter could use Pollock’s technique without being accused of overt copying. De Kooning’s brushstroke, by contrast, celebrated a kind of personal handwriting, a living record of one’s feelings and sensations. At a certain moment, to move a brush like de Kooning seemed to represent the epitome of grace under pressure: His brushstroke was manly, beautiful, despairing, and he attracted followers much as Hemingway did. “De Kooning really took a whole generation with him,” said Clement Greenberg, “like the flute player of the fairy tale.”
Harold Rosenberg is remembered as one of the most incisive and supportive critics of Abstract Expressionism. His famous 1952 essay, "The American Action Painters," effectively likened artists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline to heroic existentialists wrestling with self-expression. And his stress on the expressive and thematic content of their art ultimately made his writing more popular - at least in the 1950s - than the formalist criticism of his rival, Clement Greenberg. Originally a contributor to fringe, leftist magazines such as The Partisan Review, Rosenberg went on to the influential post of art critic for The New Yorker. His reading of gestural abstraction as "action painting" also proved important for early promoters of happenings and performance art, such as Allan Kaprow.
Willem de Kooning was born on April 24, 1904, into a working class family in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Driven by an acutely perceptive mind, a strong work ethic, and persistent self doubt – coupled with the determination to achieve – the charismatic de Kooning became one of America’s and the twentieth century’s most influential artists.
Showing an interest in art from an early age, de Kooning was apprenticed to a leading design firm when he was twelve and, with its encouragement, enrolled in night school at the prestigious Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques (Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen te Rotterdam), which was renamed in his honor in 1998 as the Willem de Kooning Academie. With the help of his friend, Leo Cohan, in 1926 he stowed away on a ship to the United States, settling in New York City in 1927. At that point, it was not the life of an artist that he was in search of; rather, like many young Europeans, it was the movie version of the American dream (big money, girls, cowboys, etc.). Nevertheless, after briefly working as a house painter, he established himself as a commercial artist and became immersed in his own painting and the New York art world, befriending such artists as Stuart Davis and Arshile Gorky.
In 1936, during the Great Depression, de Kooning worked in the mural division of the Works Project Administration (WPA). The experience convinced him to take up painting full time. By the late forties and early fifties, de Kooning and his New York contemporaries, including Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, became notorious for rejecting the accepted stylistic norms such as Regionalism, Surrealism and Cubism by dissolving the relationship between foreground and background and using paint to create emotive, abstract gestures. This movement was variously labeled “Action Painting,” “Abstract Expressionism” or simply the “New York School.” Until this time, Paris had been considered the center of the avant-garde, and the groundbreaking nature of Picasso’s contributions was frustratingly difficult to surpass for this group of highly competitive New York artists. De Kooning said it plainly: “Picasso is the man to beat.” De Kooning and this group finally stole the spotlight and were responsible for the historic shift of attention to New York in the years following World War II.
De Kooning became known as an “artist’s artist” among his peers in New York and then gained critical acclaim in 1948 with his first one-man exhibition held at Charles Egan Gallery, at the age of forty-four. The exhibition revealed densely worked oil and enamel paintings, including his now well-known black-and-white paintings. This exhibition was essential to de Kooning’s reputation. Shortly thereafter, in 1951, de Kooning made one of his first major sales when he received the Logan Medal and Purchase Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago for his grand-scale abstraction, Excavation (1950). This is arguably one of the most important paintings of the twentieth century. During this period, de Kooning gained the support of Clement Greenberg and later Harold Rosenberg, the two foremost and rivaling critics in New York.
De Kooning’s success did not dampen his need for exploration and experimentation. In 1953, he shocked the art world by exhibiting a series of aggressively painted figural works, commonly known as the “Women” paintings. These women were types or icons more than portraits of individuals. His return to figuration was perceived by some as a betrayal of Abstract Expressionist principles, which emphasized abstraction. He lost Greenberg’s support, yet Rosenberg remained convinced of his relevance. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, accepted de Kooning’s change in style as an advancement in his work and purchased Woman I (1950 – 1952) in 1953. What seemed to some as stylistically reactionary, to others was clearly avant-garde.
De Kooning’s dramatic rise to prominence between 1948 and 1953 was only the first act in a remarkable artistic career. While many of his contemporaries developed a mature “signature style,” de Kooning’s inquisitive spirit did not allow such constraint. Fighting adherence to any orthodoxy, he continued to explore new styles and methods, often challenging his own facility. “You have to change to stay the same,”is his frequently quoted adage.
Succumbing to the affects of old age and dementia, de Kooning worked on his last painting in 1991 and passed away in 1997 at the age of 92, after an extraordinarily long, rich and successful career. De Kooning never stopped exploring and expanding the possibilities of his craft, leaving an indelible mark on American and international artists and viewers. [The Willem de Kooning Foundation]