A Closer Look: Willem de Kooning
Woman, 1951
A Closer Look: Willem de Kooning
Woman, 1951
Woman, 1951
Willem de Kooning’s Woman series, a significant pillar of post-war American art, is crystalized in the present work, Woman, 1951. A preliminary and fully resolved drawing for this most iconic of masterworks by the artist, Woman I, now housed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, remains a foundational iteration of this eponymous series. The work is rooted in the multi-perspectival logic of Cubism and the dynamism of Futurism. Its intricate blend of flattened planes and bold black lines deconstruct the naturalistic rendering of the female body, blurring the figure-ground distinction and revealing a raw, unmediated human essence.
In the Woman series of paintings, de Kooning reveals a heightened interest in planar anatomy and dissecting the human body into its constituent parts. The artist’s achievement lies in his innovative deconstruction of mass and space. Attacking perceptions of beauty, freedom in painting, and his own masculinity, his Women are formidable treatises. The present work narrates the speed, grit, and coarseness of being in an urban landscape, representing the figure as irrevocably entangled within its environment.
Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1952, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The expertly outlined components of the subject’s body describe space with brilliant precision, positing the figure in a tradition of synthetic Cubism whereby various geometric planes intersect and overlap with extraordinary force. As reflected by its extensive museum exhibition history, the drawing demonstrates a consummate deft of hand, one that de Kooning successfully utilizes to merge these various elements with a post war and forward looking sensibility.
Similar works to Woman can be found in various institutions, including Woman, 1952, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Woman I, 1950-52, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
“Certain artists attacked me for painting the Women, but I felt that this was their problem not mine. I don’t really feel like a nonobjective painter at all. Today some artists feel they have to go back to the figure, and that word ‘figure’ becomes such a ridiculous omen – if you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody’s nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It’s really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it, since we have this problem of doing or not doing it. But then all of a sudden it was even more absurd not to do it. So I fear that I have to follow my desires”
Artist statement from his solo exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, in March 1953, as quoted in Diane Waldman, Willem de Kooning, New York 1988.