Page 51 - Studio International - January 1968

tions of the sea' I could find none of this pastoral
NEW YORK
commentary by Dore Ashton
De Kooning at Knoedler; Pasmore at
Marlborough-Gerson; Peter Gourfain
at Bykert; Robert Mangold at Fischbach;
Arakawa at Dwan; Isaac Witkin at
Robert Elkon.
De Kooning Woman on a sign I 1967
oil on paper, 48¼ x 41¾ in.
Knoedler, New York
R. Mangold ½ brown curved area 1967, sprayed oil on canvas, 72
With the distance we now have from the years relaxation in his important work.
labelled Abstract Expressionist, it is not difficult
to place Willem de Kooning in a still greater On the contrary, the half dozen major pieces, all
twentieth-century tradition: he is an expressionist, dating from the past year or so, are hermetic
pure and simple, who occasionally uses an abstract expostulations in his most intense vein. The shapes
mode. By temperament, idiom and technique, swell out not in organic plenitude, but in the raw
de Kooning takes his place, along with Kirchner, manner of flayed carcasses. Rembrandt and
Grosz and especially Soutine, in the broad avenue Soutine with their studies of putrefying flesh are
of expressionism that cuts through the century more easily associated than Rubens.
parallel with other less tortuous avenues. It is true that certain of these later paintings are
De Kooning has had other moods. He has proved kept in a higher, roseate key than is usual for
that he can draw coolly and incisively in a classical de Kooning, and it is also true that he has avoided
mode. He has indicated that he can compose inter- the deliberately dirtied areas that used to sharpen
locking, neatly delineated spaces with the sang- his central image. But the high pinks with their
froid of a classical painter. His range is broad, his blood red accents serve only to heighten the terrible.
facility great. But more and more, he emerges as These women, and occasionally men, may be clam-
an expressionist in his bones. Certainly the strong- digging or enjoying the seaside, but to me they
est work in KNOEDLER'S large exhibition was in the seem spread across de Kooning's field and pinned
wildest and most unnerving expressionist vein. helplessly in a nightmare.
The works exhibited date from 1963, the year De Kooning achieves his impact with familiar and
de Kooning removed himself from New York City absolutely personal means. He is interested in pal-
to his fastness in Long Island. Knoedler's has pability and therefore builds his spumey surfaces
greedily mounted what seems to be the entire carefully. They foam up from the depths of his
production of those four years—some fifty oils and canvas, swinging across or up and down in order
more than thirty charcoal drawings. Naturally, to emphasize the dissociated flesh-shapes that
such indiscriminate comprehensiveness works are his subject. A thigh or a belly may be articu-
against the artist. There are far too many inci- lated purely in terms of the deep impasto with its
dental works cluttering up the walls. They fatigue bubbly surface, brushed on in almost sculptural
the eye and make it difficult to concentrate on the relief. In the more striking images, these pinkish
masterworks. planes seem to spread with an interior energy,
But masterworks there are. De Kooning has not threatening to engulf what little environment there
lost his innate ability to express a raw-nerved is left around them.
response to his experience. The very best works In keeping with his style, de Kooning uses occa-
here carry something of the terribilità that few sional linear accents to relieve the plastic density
twentieth-century artists are any longer capable of of his planes. They can be quite savage. But they
articulating. Although Knoedler's press release in- are never, in the best works, purely impulsive. It is
forms us that his new paintings show his 'fascination apparent that every inch of these eruptive images
for the changing light of the sea nearby and the has been worked with care. Viewers at Knoedler's
changing colours of the woods and marshes around —or at least those painters who thronged the
his studio,' and that his subjects are 'women on the galleries—were still marvelling at de Kooning's
beach, in rowboats, wading, digging clams, the trade secrets : the way he can overpaint a sculp-
moving variations of light or the shimmering reflec- tured stroke, or drag a half-loaded brush, or make
the ground plane speak throughout, although
there is nothing definite about it either in terms of
chroma or form. He is still a painting wizard.
The drawings are in a softer, more nebulous vein
than in the past. But they serve well to remind us
that de Kooning has lived a good part of the cen-
tury, and that he has assimilated certain of its
idioms in forging his undeniably unique style. It is
clear in the drawings of women that the satiric
impulse of the old expressionists is present. Even
the manner of articulation suggests it: women with
the spindly, slightly knock-kneed legs depicted by
Kirchner in his drawings, and George Grosz in
his; with the exaggerated goggle-eyes found in
certain Beckmann drawings; with the scrunched-
up, jumbled postures found in almost all the
sketches of German Bohemia in the days just before
the First World War.
I was moved by the Victor Pasmore exhibition at
MARLBOROUGH-GERSON, as much by the failures as
by the several outstanding successes. Pasmore is a
purifier, but not a purist. His tendency, over the
years, is toward more and more precise, economical
expressions of what he must feel is an imprecise and
144 in. Fischbach Gallery, New York
shifting universe. He takes on problems that elicit