WILLEM DE KOONING

(1904-1997)

East Hampton VII

Footnotes

Provenance
Knoedler & Co., New York.
LA Louver Gallery, Los Angeles.
Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles.
Acquired from the above by the present owner through Ron Wilson Interiors, Los Angeles.

Exhibited
New York, Knoedler & Co., de Kooning: January 1968 - March 1969, March 4 - 22, 1969.
Los Angeles, Manny Silverman Gallery, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, February 27 - April 10, 1999.



Willem de Kooning's personal relationship to abstraction and Expressionism is powerfully conveyed in East Hampton VII and Figure. Both works not only reflect his deep affection for New York's East Hampton but also showcase, with striking clarity, his technical mastery of soft, malleable pigments and nuanced texturization. These paintings, each from distinguished private collections, respectively, demonstrate how the trajectory of de Kooning's life and career converged into a formal style that now defines him as one of the twentieth century's most influential masters.

De Kooning's definition of abstraction was as personal to him as the grip of the paintbrush in his hand. In a paper titled "What Abstract Means to Me", written in 1951 for a symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, he states: "One day, some painter used 'Abstraction' as a title for one of his paintings. It was a still life...From then on, the idea of abstraction became something extra. Immediately it gave some people the idea that they could free art from itself. Until then, Art meant everything that was in it - not what you could take out of it." (W. De Kooning quoted in H. Rosenberg De Kooning, p. 143). He goes on to discuss the search by many to find purpose for and in art, specifically as a tool for social engagement, and how this very search, instead of freeing the art, requires by necessity the next step of defining one's practice, what makes art unique, and, especially, what makes art useful. In doing so, the concept of Abstraction becomes a finite, observable thing which takes the place of a subject as the primary center of a work. In de Kooning's mind, however, art's uselessness is the very thing which keeps it free.

This mindset progresses steadily over the next decade, as evidenced by de Kooning's 1963 interview with David Sylvester, which he begins by describing his original ambition to become an "applied artist" rather than a painter. Soon after his arrival in the United States, he found steady employment as a house painter in Hoboken and began to investigate his European education's unofficial stance that America was the land of opportunity while Europe was the land of Art (W. De Kooning quoted in H. Rosenberg De Kooning, p. 203). It is when he met Arshile Gorky, however, that he began to reflect on his own romanticism and relationship to art: "He came from no place...And for some mysterious reason, he knew lots more about painting and art - he just knew it by nature - things I was supposed to know and feel and understand - he really did it better," (W. De Kooning quoted in H. Rosenberg De Kooning, p. 204). The friendship of these two young men, both fresh to the New York art scene and so disparate in their upbringing when it came to a formal education, marked a turning point. Gorky's intuitive grasp of art led de Kooning to reconsider the need for art to have a "purpose" and to challenge prevailing critical labels. He famously resisted being identified as a non-objective painter—a stance that frustrated critics invested in postwar American binaries: art was either subjective or abstract. But de Kooning rejected such rigid definitions. "It's not so much that I'm an American," he once said. "I'm a New Yorker" (ibid).

That declaration, made in 1963, takes on deeper resonance when viewed alongside his relocation that same year to The Springs in East Hampton. It was because of this move, accompanied by an urgent desire for change in his practice, that De Kooning's technique matured, and he produced some of the work that is best-known today. In his own words, "I'm an eclectic artist and have been influenced by a lot of people, but now I'm starting to collect it all together to make a new start," (W. De Kooning quoted in J. Elderfield's De Kooning: A Retrospective for the Museum of Modern Art). It is during this later period of work that viewers can truly appreciate the unique technical skills which he spent his career developing. By 1967—approximately in between the execution dates for Figure and East Hampton VII—Thomas Hess, writing on behalf of Knoedler & Co., explores in depth the process by which de Kooning paints, starting from his favorite brushes (long hairs which bend into an S as the pigment is applied) to the colors he carefully mixed himself out of commercial oil paints with an emulsion of safflower oil, benzine, and water to create a foamy liquid which adds additional layers of texture to the overall surface while it dries (T. Hess, "De Kooning: Recent Paintings," p. 32). The very effects of this working method can be found in not only the large, smooth strokes of white pigment blended so effortlessly across the center of East Hampton VII's composition, but also in the tiny, textural variations inherent to the artist's chosen medium in Figure.

Figure, a colorful oil on paper towel composition from 1965, is the more obviously figurative of the two works and, consequently, presents a clear dialogue between the Women of the 1950s and the stylistic changes that accompanied his move from New York City to East Hampton. This is compounded by the scale of the work, which is smaller than most of his earlier works and reflects the changes to his style upon moving to The Springs. The smaller oils of this period are impromptu and honest in a way that the larger oils of the 50s lacked due to de Kooning's persistent interest in keeping all of his works "up in the air;" in other words, while the frenzy and passion of the earlier works is heightened by their constant state of evolution, these smaller oils introduce a version of de Kooning who is much more assured of that which he does not know. The assuredness with the final image can be said to go in tandem with the artist's own maturity and desire for change in his own life.

By contrast, the broad, liquid brushstrokes of East Hampton VII, executed in 1968, provide a gorgeous example of the openness and fluidity which is seen consistently in de Kooning's late works coupled with the attention to texture that has been a focus of the artist throughout his career. East Hampton VII glows vibrantly with the characteristic, seamless color-blending of de Kooning's method while illustrating the same personal, complex relationship between abstraction and figuration that is so essential to his oeuvre. Between the two examples, the viewer is offered a rich glimpse into a period of the artist's life full of self-reflection and the emergence of his virtuoso, late style.