Honk If You Like de Kooning
The Pulitzer Prize Winning Biography by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 08, 2007
De Kooning An American Master
By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Published 2004 by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Paperback edition, 2006.
734 Pages, illustrated, with notes, index and documentation
While giving a course on Modern Art for Suffolk University I was projecting "Woman 1" and "Woman on a Bicycle" by Willem (William) de Kooning when a student became visibly upset. After class I asked her to discuss reactions to the paintings which I pointed out are owned by and regularly on view at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. They are generally acknowledged to be masterpieces of 20th Century American Art.
Their inherent violence and implicit misogyny was deeply offensive to her. I took great care in a dialogue with her for several reasons. The first consideration was that she was an outstanding student taking an art history course as an elective. She conveyed to me that she was hoping to attend law school with a commitment to deal specifically with battered women. The issues of violence to women were so personal that she questioned why I had submitted her to this form of abuse. My response was perhaps a bit fumbling and weak. I fell back on the fact that the works are shown in major museums, endorsed by critics and curators, and even illustrated in the text for the course "Modern Art" by Hunter and Jacobus. That, in fact, I would be remiss not to include these seminal works. Adding somewhat lamely that as far as I knew de Kooning was fond of women and not known for physical abuse. And that the artist had stated that they were inspired by images of ancient goddesses such as the "Venus of Willendorf."
The truth is that back then I knew of the work only generically and enough to get by with some passing remarks during a survey of modernism. Having now read the masterful and widely praised, meticulously researched and argued "de Kooning: An American Master" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan how I wish that I could reopen the discussion with that past student who is by now practicing law and working with female clients. I would feel more confident now to present those horrifying and galvanic works in greater context the better to navigate their troubling violence and creative brilliance. This superb book has provoked so many issues that I have left it better informed but with as many lingering and disturbing questions as answers.
A part of that ambivalence stems from the approach of the authors to present the artist based as much as possible on objective factual information and to assume no position other than to convey the compelling urgency of dealing with and coming to understand one of the most important and influential creators of his generation. A giant of the Greatest Generation during what Irving Sandler's book describes as "The Triumph of American Art" (a pedantic title he told me was forced on him by the publisher the better to sell the book). While de Kooning did not stand alone, there were others such as Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, John Graham, David Smith, Franz Kline, William Baziotes, and, most importantly, Jackson Pollock. Clearly, de Kooning was on the front line of any critical debate surrounding how during World War Two the matrix of avant-garde art passed from the School of Paris, sparked by the Surrealists in exile surrounding Peggy Guggenheim and Andre Breton, to the struggling and emerging New York School.
The authors take great care in laying out the complex detail of the implicit power struggle of American artists, including many émigrés, to get out from under the magnetic and mesmerizing tug of Paris to assert what critic Harold Rosenberg described as American Type Painting or Action Painting which also came to be known as Abstract Expressionism. Their book is a succinct survey of the emergence of the New York School recovering from the provincialism of the American Scene and the strident Marxist politics of the Depression era's Social Realism. Add to this mix such elements as the WPA with its Easel and Mural programs as well as the late night discussions at the Waldorf Cafeteria that led to the founding of the Artist's Club and nights at the dingy Cedar Tavern near Washington Square Park within walking distance from the cluster of studios and cooperative galleries on Tenth Street.
We witness the unfolding of the critical battles involving Harold Rosenberg and Tom Hess, editor of the then dominant Art News, who championed de Kooning (to some extent through the influence of his wife Elaine who often had affairs with his dealers and critics) and Clement Greenberg the other heavyweight who touted Pollock (until his demise when he went back to drinking) and scorned de Kooning's Women as a copout and betrayal of the purity of an avant-garde based on abstraction. In one scorching chapter we are told of how de Kooning and Greenberg came to blows during a drunken barroom brawl.
Of course by now all of these artists, critics and curators have been so deified and elevated into the high canon of modernism that it is difficult to perceive them as just flesh and blood who put their pants on one leg at a time. Or, more importantly, to care when the works and issues they fought over with such passion and even violence mean a toss to the generations of students whom I used to teach. Their interest was hard to induce back much further than Andy Warhol who now seems so very, very old and, oh yeah, dead. Really, really dead. Under such circumstances it was the rare exception rather than the rule that an individual student would get upset by such a safe and antique work as a de Kooning painting of a Woman however snarly and rapacious. The more usual response to being show such works, or the drip paintings of Pollock, which de Kooning described as "breaking the ice," ran along the lines of "Is this going to be on the test?"
In the current social and political climate of art with so many issues and agendas on the table, and artists often trying very hard to shock and arouse us by any means necessary, it is difficult to comprehend what the fuss was about regarding de Kooning's Women. Perhaps one way of putting it into perspective is to recall seeing the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" for the first time in 1960. It was the most intense and frightening bit of footage I had ever seen and scared the willies out of me. Now the scene is something to analyze and deconstruct in film school. Compared to today's special effects the truth is that nothing really happened in the shower especially when compared to the blood and gore one might see on any given night on TV. The average CSI show has more gruesome gore than the entire oeuvre of Hitchcock. And, oh yes, Hitchcock and de Kooning were creators of genius. The CSI folks, well, are not.
So why am I saying this just adding to the reams of reviews and articles which have already been written about a book that has won a Pulitzer Prize and just about every other literary accolade that one can receive? Well, because, slow dolt that I am, just got around to reading the bloody book. De Kooning ate into my heart, mind and soul on a daily basis for a couple of weeks recently while trudging around Northern Italy. One always takes a good long book on such a trip and my only regret is that they ended, both the trip and the book, all too soon.
This is not to imply that I even like de Kooning let alone understand the work any better now than when I fudged it in the classroom years ago. In a real sense one never really does understand art. Rather, as Andy Warhol would put it with his wonderful irony, mostly we "fake it." Critics are always faking it and these distinguished authors no less so than anyone else. I don't feel they know the artist and the work any better than I do it is rather that they have labored longer and harder on the topic but I don't feel any special golden grail of insight. They have assembled tons of material and taken us on a marvelous voyage of discovery but in the end the artist, the man, and the work, remain an enigma.
Even from my far more limited scholarly point of view they either played it safe by presenting opposing views of the work extracted from contemporary reviews allowing us to draw our own conclusions or got it all wrong with the usual prejudices. When de Kooning was included with several other artists (selected by Alfred Barr) in the Venice Biennale (1950) they simply blow off Hyman Bloom, Lee Gatch and Rico Lebrun (selected by Alfred M. Frankfurter) who were also included as artists "now largely forgotten." Wrong, some of us, few to be sure, think a lot about Bloom, and the complex history of "the return of the figure" which has never been thoroughly or accurately studied. The authors never mention "New Images of Man" curated by Peter Selz in 1959 at MoMA and de Kooning's role in that context. Instead the authors follow the familiar path of how the return to the figure was actually an appropriation of Abstract Expressionism and gestural drip painting in the ironic approach of the ersatz Pop art of Rauschenberg and Johns. There is much emphasis on the famous incident where a very young Rauschenberg asked for a drawing from de Kooning which he intended to erase. They write with great clarity about how this proved to be a cathartic and catastrophic event for de Kooning and his rage when Rauschenberg later exhibited the erased drawing as one of his own works.
The first half of the book was truly exhilarating. It was thrilling to read mentions of so many artists of the era and their epic struggles for survival. It is a story that can not be told often enough. It was personally exciting to learn that Florence and Peter Grippe had played a part in getting de Kooning a gig for the summer at the legendary Black Mountain College. At the time he really needed the money and typically Elaine spent much of it on clothes. Grippe was my professor at Brandeis and a great influence on a decision to pursue a life in art. He often talked of those tough early days and it was wonderful to have this in context. The authors also discuss artists I knew and interviewed in Provincetown such as Fritz Bultman and Robert Motherwell. Most of the comments on Motherwell are less than flattering. Others who also do not come off well include the early dealer, Charles Egan, who had an affair with Elaine and did not pay his artists, as well as the sycophant, Tom Hess, and even Harold Rosenberg who always seemed to be itching for a fight with Greenberg or came to the studio with a bottle.
Past the tipping point of the book the mood darkens. We are beyond the great striving and uncertainty of the important works such as the abstraction "Excavation" (1950) or even the struggles over "Woman 1" (1950-52). The more successful the artist becomes the more chaotic and pathetic the life including the tangled mess of lovers from flings to sustained and heart wrenching relationships and none more so than with his daughter Lisa, born out of wedlock in 1956, to the artist and Joan Ward. All of which led to pathetic alcoholism. During the later period in Springs on Long Island a studio assistant describes de Kooning as laying in an "arsenal" of booze. This in turn may have led to the dementia of his last years.
The fact that he suffered symptoms of Alzheimer's disease raise legal and critical questions about the last works. It is described that he could no longer work unassisted and that drawings were projected and drawn onto canvases by assistants which were then finished by the artist and may have even included some retouching by assistants as he often "forgot" to complete canvases leaving certain areas unattended. Elaine and the artist's dealer, Xavier Fourcade, even conspired to add colors to the artist's palette which he resisted using. They felt that expanding the limited range of colors he was using (he largely stopped mixing paint) would make the work more saleable. The rationale was that it was only working in the studio with such prolific and dubious results that kept him alive. Just how much of de Kooning is actually in those sparse final works which now represent millions of dollars in his estate?
While I respect and admire the artist and his tormented work that is not to say that I like him. He was too sad, manipulative and tormented to truly be loved. In some ways he was childish, charming and endearing. Until you got too close. Which, for me, involved being thoroughly absorbed by this compelling book. Ultimately, he hurt my feelings and broke my heart. Perhaps he was just too much of a father figure for my generation. We kind of grew up on abstract expressionism. I even had a student period of trying to paint gestural paintings while pretty drunk. Much like those horn players shooting smack hoping to play like Bird. Unless you are a genius you end up just another drunk or junkie.
My artist friend, Gerry Bergstein, made a painting called "Honk If You Like de Kooning." Well, I guess I don't. Like him that is. Actually it's a lot more complex. I don't like Picasso or Pollock. They were great artists but real assholes as human beings. In a more benign way so was de Kooning. An asshole. So were Hitchcock and Bird. Truth is great artists are often not very nice people. Perhaps that goes with the territory and putting the work in front of everything else. It is a kind of pact with the devil. By the time he croaked Bill had lost his soul. This book will forever haunt me.