Talking about de Kooning who has perhaps had the most prolific career as a living painter in the USA is quite challenging, especially when it comes to his Woman series where formal abstraction meets provocative representations of womanhood.
Art critics are very careful not to outright call him out on his misogyny, choosing to let complex work speak for itself but it is evident that his depictions are problematic.
To quote Audrey Flack:
“The intense emotions de Kooning displays in these paintings must have originated when he was a young man in Amsterdam. He visited the Red Light District and saw prostitutes standing in windows flashing body parts to attract men passing by: a breast here, a thigh there, buttocks, pubis, hair, high heel shoes, disconnected body parts flashing before his eyes as he walked along.”
This would explain the dismemberment of his subjects in what can be characterized at a sordid attempt to objectify women.
Like the legendary Harpy of Greek mythology, those women are powerful in that they are menacing. The expression in their eyes are threatening and clash with a forced smile, all of which is evocative of these fleeting moments in the Red Light district during his youth in Amsterdam.
This is my piece on bottom shaming à la de Kooning before I began using the white acrylic ink.
There is a theory that the Woman series is made of self-portraits.
While all art is always somewhat autobiographical, I feel like this thesis is meant to justify the public’s love for Willem de Kooning in the same way satire is evoked to justify the controversial ideas in South Park for example. To me, it is a half truth meant to enable us to live with ourselves as we revel in the technical marvels of a series that is kicking women as they are already down.
However, just as abstraction is efficient at blurring lines, a Washington Post article describes the theory best stating that:
“So much so that the most shocking conclusion one might take from this show, the hit of the New York season since it opened Sept. 18, is that they are somehow self-portraits, vivid self-representations in drag of a painter who may well have felt he was pimping his own talent in as many directions as his women are twisted, pulled, stretched and broken.”
A compelling take to be sure and one that resonates with an era of social media where this pimping of “self” has become the norm. In fact, we forget the gender inequalities looking at how aggressively men are taking part in this desperate call for attention which permeates our online existence.
In my opinion, the artist’s chief redeeming quality regarding Women is to say aloud what a male dominated art scene was really thinking, thus igniting a long overdue conversation, especially when looking at the art world at the time.
Was it out of hubris or out of a desire to speak up, no one knows. It likely was a little bit of both. One thing is for sure, we are talking about art that is loud and refuses to sit neatly inside the box.
This is it for today’s Inktober prompt: Injured. It was an interesting piece to write because one of my University professors had me study the abstract expressionist as she saw similarities with my own brand of abstraction. I do find pleasure in rendering these formal spaces closely knit and describing a strange order of things. Let’s bring it all back!
