Willem De Kooning: Drawing Seeing/Seeing Drawing - Hardcover

Kertess, Klaus; De Kooning, Willem; Drawing Center (New York, N. Y.)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0965728080 ISBN 13: 9780965728089

Publisher: Arena Editions, 1998

Synopsis

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) regularly created series of drawings, sometimes continuing them intermittently over a decade. Despite de Koonings renown as a painter and draftsman, there have been no publications to look at selected groups of his drawings in depth. This book, and the traveling exhibition organized by The Drawing Center, New York, presents four of his drawing series, affording a closer view of de Koonings working process and his constant reinvention of mark-making.

The earliest series to be included, Folded Shirt on Laundry Paper, 1958, is figured by a calligraphic spareness and openness that lays bare a panoply of mark-making possibilities with brush and ink. The second series are twenty-four drawings from 1966 which the artist created with eyes closed. These works make clear just how totally interdependent de Koonings memory and drawing hand were. But for their documentation, they are indistinguishable from his drawings made with eyes open. Several of the drawings are of the Crucifixion, and this subject, unique for de Kooning, comprises the third group of drawings executed in the mid- and late-1960s. These drawings take fullest advantage of charcoals lush flexibility. The fourth group, almost never seen, is comprised of tracings made on large sheets of vellum of painting configurations that might be employed in subsequent works. Done from the late-1960s through the 1970s, these double-sided drawings are made startlingly complete by de Koonings subsequent improvisations added to them.

Each series will be discussed in relation to the artists contemporaneous painting and will explicate his constantly changing but interrelated means. No other artist of his generation produced drawings so regularly and so superbly. Drawing is the crucible of de Koonings art.

About this title

Review

As a collection of four groups of seldom-seen sketches by Willem de Kooning, this book succeeds in showing another side of the artist most often recognized for his abstract expressionism in the 1940s. Created more recently during a period ranging from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, the collection predominantly exhibits his dexterity with raw charcoal and ink, though the last group highlights his subtle color techniques. In a hardbound binding, the collected works are preserved on pages with superior quality and unified design. An informative introductory essay provides deeper insight into the artist and his work. Perhaps the strongest group includes the rudimentary sketches of a nude in "Drawings with Eyes Closed" as well as the harrowing and compelling images in the "Crucifixion Drawings." In a style typical of abstract expressionism, these later pieces continue to show that de Kooning was interested in capturing the fluid energy and gestures of changing forms, without any intent to stabilize or focus. And since de Kooning was unwilling to state that any of his works were finished, we are left to contemplate the transformational essence of the creations by this artist fluent in reinvention. --Lucas Hilbert

About this edition

• Publisher: Arena Editions
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0965728080
• ISBN 13: 9780965728089
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 127