De Kooning in Retrospect

There is a retrospective of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) currently at MoMA. He was certainly a major painter of his generation together with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, and Hans Hofmann. But I consider his most creative years to have been no more than decade from 1945 to 1954. In those years, he produced some of the most impressive works: Pink Angels (1945; Weisman Foundation, LA); Judgment Day (1946; Metroppolitan Museum of Art), Excavation (1950; Art Institute of Chicago), and the Woman series, I through VI (1950-54). These, in particular, combining vigorous brushwork, bold palette, and awesome images, are energetic and heroic and overwhelm the viewer, whether she/he understands the iconography to be misogynous or expressive of female ferocity. At the time, the Women were considered regressive and lesser for being figurative rather than abstract. But in retrospect, as the retrospective allows us, the abstract works that followed them in the later 50s and into the 60s, struck me as weaker in impact. They spatter energy but playfully or else chaotically without the figurative element that provide a controlling armature; both the design and performance lack deliberation. Contradicting the experts in the field, I am tempted to say that after 1954 his oeuvre shows a steady decline; and, possibly exposing my ignorance, I am compelled to speculate that as his name grew in fame and stature he dashed out one canvas after another under the pressure of the galleries who could sell them to private collectors faster than he could paint them so long as the artist name was attached to them. Seeing de Kooning’s abstract paintings in number, we are made keenly aware how they lack strong individuality from one work to the next; they look much too similar and are disconcertingly unmemorable, as Rothko’s seemingly similar canvases are strongly individualized as are Agnes Martin’s in her oeuvre. The art market corrupted the artist as it did Basquiat more efficiently in the 80s. De Kooning after 1980 are, to me, sadly forgettable. It’s only the still pervasive cult of the artist’s name that honors his works after 1954 as equal to his best and the most powerful creations.