Seeing de Kooning

I finally made it to the de Kooning exhibit, the blockbuster MoMA show, on an afternoon when it was not too crowded, and alone so that I could float from piece to piece without needing to explain my preference for this one, or why I skipped that one. With such a large show, unless I know that I will return to see more at a future date, there is no choice for me but to let my eye wander until it lands on something, go see that picture or work, and then repeat. I can not absorb in one viewing as much work as was there displayed. And, though it is all there to be seen, I do not believe that the intention is to have each visitor absorb it all. Undoubtedly there are some well developed eyes and minds that are capable of slowly perusing each piece, as there are members of my gym who seem to be there when I arrive and leave no matter the time of day that I appear. The eyes are muscled as well, the brain is one big muscle and both need developing to be able to study art in such a studious method. For the rest of us, to show up at all is an important step.

So with that said, I can share that his early drawings were nicely presented to prove that he was in fact an incredibly skilled draftsman. The early work reveals the influence of Miró and Dali and Picasso in the exploratory manner that any artist who is looking for his or her style is likely to experience and so, show. The Seated Man and women sitting from the 40s are beautiful figures–the women are likely modeled from Elaine Fried who became his wife in 1947. The Montauk series in the 60s, however, delighted me (an example to the right). It is a wonderfully fun series. Light, pink, bodies, eyes, silly, sexy. I enjoyed it much more than his earlier series of women from the fifties when he was first exploring abstraction. Those are more earnest in their burlesque, ponderously intense (sometimes described as violent though I do not see it that) and bizarre as it moves into abstraction, which itself is studied, noticeably intentional. This is what is meant when we talk about development-the shift from intentionality to natural grace. It takes time.

Woman, 1948

If one expects an MBA to be making huge deals by 30 if s/he is to be a success, the same is simply not true of artists. Craft can be excellent while repeating what came before it. In fact, that may even be what differentiates craft from art. Art, on the other hand, requires that artists investigate their own response to the traditions from which they come or have embraced in order to be able to articulate their singular vision. And I do mean articulate as opposed to stutter or scream, if we are to use a vocal analogy. The young megastars of the art world rarely have something else to say besides their original "miraculous work" precisely because they stumbled upon it, got famous, and now what? De Kooning was 44 when he had his first major solo show at the Charles Egan gallery in Spring of 1948. He had been producing work, but it was then that the "breakthrough years", as described by MoMA, occurred, moving him into abstraction. I really like the black piece called Zurich though I would be hard pressed to explain why it is so called without a good biography nearby to explain the impetus of the titles he gave the works that made him famous.

Zurich, 1947

This brings me momentarily to the issue of titles in abstract works. I understand the first titles being concrete because he was actually still considering the impact and meaning of shifting into strongly abstract work. When he is settled into it, the pieces are called Untitled V, Untitled II, etc. He refuses titles. It is in the last years, however, that this gets pushed even further where the placards simply read [no title, 1983], for example. I realize that this might be explained by his personal disintegration, but it might also be understood as the most perfect acknowledgment of the sublimely peaceful visual works, like bright sunshine glaring down from a sold blue sky, where the spring air is crisp, clean and for a moment standing in the light everything is still.

[no title], 1983

Attic, 1961

After the dark paintings, of which Zurich is one, de Kooning was lauded for his white series, often posited as the "positive" side to his earlier "negatives" in black. The one below is called Attic, not because it looks like a cluttered one (though with more gray and brown it would resemble some attics I have entered) but rather because he put everything into it.
This is just to show that much can not be explained by a title, and though a plaque can give you information, it won't tell you how or why to appreciate it. That process is up to you, the viewer. There was so much work on display and I can hardly describe it all. Not only because hours have passed, but also because the expectations of writing are to produce coherent, causal language so that one thing, in some way, follows the next. This often means that things get cut because it does not "fit". We hope that our writers centered their writing on what they thought most important so that none of that gets cut, but in truth, from my own experience of writing, often good stuff does get cut for the sake of this one piece, with the hope that it will fit in another.

The experience of going to a show of this size is to embrace being overwhelmed. That is a good thing. There is not only great quantity, but also amazing quality. The artist is a phenomenon. That others participated in his process (studio assistants or Fried) is like objecting to Gertrude Stein's involvement in reading Hemingway or speaking to Picasso. If the artist stood alone, we would not be going to see the show. The best thing we can offer works of art is an earnest attempt to see it. This does not mean understanding what others have written about it (though that can be educational), nor what the author 'intended' (though that can be intriguing), but what happens to you, the viewer, when in front of this work. If you want to become a scholar, sure more is expected. But the grand majority of us can gain a great deal from simply walking up to any old piece that catches our eye, and seeing what happens next.