Page 64 - Studio International - May 1969

hinting always that these artists had begun to ings that followed these abstractions are, if It appears to me that in the last years of the
decline in their powers. anything, a consummation of a concept. By 1950s, de Kooning recapitulated his two basic
Death cut short the cavilling about Pollock means of embedding (those little nodes of modes of experiencing—he moved from
for the most part, but de Kooning, alive and form that sometimes coalesce into a readable women to abstractions, and again, from
very much kicking, is still a target, and the anthropomorphic clue) Pollock elucidated women to abstractions—but with a new pur-
same old phrases still recur. One journalist this new experience of form. It was no longer pose, which was to bring his usual devices
literally used the word 'declining' in his simply a graph of an activity, but a system of such as the blur, the repeat, the pockets of
review of the later phases in de Kooning's art activities and transformations attached to formlessness, and the savage linear forces into
at the large retrospective at the MUSEUM OF distinct images. The eyes, limbs, and heads new contexts. His most extraordinary move,
MODERN ART. If the juxtaposition of these that lie ensconced in the shifting black planes to my mind, was in the landscape-like inven-
two important exhibitions—Pollock's black- reassert the starting point sometime in the tions of the late 1950s. Here, the notorious
and-white at Marlborough, and de Kooning's late 1930s, and make visible Pollock's dyna- expressionist brushwork was made to serve
exhibitions at the museum and at KNOEDLERS' mic vision of other spaces, other forms. Far explicitly as a definition of his feelings before
—reveals anything, it reveals that the notion from being the 'all-over' spaces so inaccurately the void. The 'form' of the paintings de-
of decline lodged in these critics' minds is ascribed to Pollock's paintings, these spaces pended not so much on the flourish of his
simply a want of imagination. They have are articulated by means of the hollowed nests curves, or the sweep of a housepainter's brush
been unable to follow and read certain dis- of imagery and the distinct return; the closing across a blue nowhere, as on the dumb,
tinct formal innovations arriving in the early off of the arabesque. agonizingly simple expression of illuminated
and mid-fifties in the work of both men. De Kooning's move to a different morphology spaces that hover between material and non-
Or perhaps I could put it another way: the was similarly achieved. He, too, was keenly material. The paint itself is very much there
formal changes in the course of some twenty aware of Picasso's transformations, and, at as a material presence, but the image is some-
years of serious painting had, for both artists, least in his early work, followed rather closely how fighting free of it. In de Kooning it is
resulted in a reflexive freeness; a true libera- the cubist spatial sensation. The thin ledge of always the flight from matter to apparition,
tion which permitted the kind of veering space which supports the relief in a cubist and always apparition brings him back to
from image to abstraction, and from clearly painting served de Kooning in, for instance, matter.
delineated image to vague mirage, which those early imaginary portraits of women. As Pollock spoke of nodes of space and image,
brought the charges of confusion. To me, it is Undercutting and stabilizing by means of and a tundra hollowed by habitations,
clear that both de Kooning and Pollock had individual vertical and horizontal axes was de Kooning spoke of elemental space, as it
certain strong convictions about the nature of de Kooning's common practise both in the could only be dreamed or imagined, but
their experiences in space, and the nature of figures of the early 1940s and the celebrated never traversed, and constantly transforming
the solids in that space, which they enun- abstractions (Attic or Excavation) of the late on the pre-visible level. The 'form' of his
ciated definitively in the early 1950s. 1940s. At the same time, he knew the value of landscape spaces becomes the expression of
The morphology of Pollock's drawings from those expressionist distortions Picasso evolved boundarylessness. Once the landscape is
the late 1930s was derived from many sources, in the linear figure drawings of the 1920s, and peopled, however, de Kooning's new mor-
but above all, from Picasso's drawings after incorporated them in his work. In one part of phology speaks to other senses. Those women
the analytic cubist phase. When Picasso a canvas he might consider form in its aca- he painted last year—they are, as he told
stretched and twisted the limbs of a figure, demic definition as the boundary between one David Sylvester, flesh-coloured women, and
suggesting strange transformations both in the surface and another, and in another part, he why not? Moreover, they display certain
structure of the figure and its relationship to might announce his later vision of form as figurative characteristics in their details that
its surround, he introduced a mode of draw- bending, slithering and becoming almost unavoidably define them as women. There
ing that was free from cubist rigour. Form in indeterminate due to its interaction with its are knees, breasts, high-heeled shoes, eyes, and
these drawings was not merely a definition of surround. Even in the romantic early figures, of course, those perennial mouths that first
the boundary between one surface and an- with their smoky softness, de Kooning was appeared, complete with teeth, in the early
other, but a summary of the sensations of beginning to feel that, as Kandinsky said, 1940s.
surfaces and depths. Form became not `every form is as sensitive as smoke, the But they are not amorphous. The welter of
merely shape, but shape visibly played upon slightest wind will fundamentally alter it.' colour, of strokes, of ill-defined planes, of
by forces so complex they could only be The dissociation of forms, as in the women of spots, of dots, densely painted most often, and
sensed and never analyzed. By talking of sur- the 1940s with their strangely suspended filling up the picture plane, are not amor-
faces as the topologist does—remarking on the limbs, and their distorted fingers (very much phous. They do not indicate that de Kooning
bizarre changes in shapes of surfaces which in the Matisse manner, by the way) was all in is no longer able to compose and stabilize
leave basic properties intact—Picasso opened keeping with de Kooning's growing feeling his forms as he did in those crisp early women,
the way for the vital transformations pursued for the strangeness (when you really think of with sharp linear decisions. On the contrary,
by Pollock at an early age. it) of the idea of solids depicted on a plane. these women are de Kooning's enormous dis-
Pollock's most shocking decision—to paint the When he begins to mask, to sweep over de- covery of a new way of perceiving form. Their
linear abstractions known as the drip paint- fined forms with erasures and paint smears hides are examined on the surface, and the
ings—was well prepared. He had already (which Pollock also did, in his way), he begins surface is made to twist, writhe, bend and
shown in his drawings that he experienced to discover the laminated spaces that he splay itself outward. The morphology is the
spaces and surfaces in this transforming described in his own black-and-white abstrac- morphology of the topologist. Nothing has
manner. For him, what Focillon defined as tions in the late 1940s. The balletic rhythms changed in the basic properties (even the
`the system of the labyrinth' with its different of the Duco paintings were the last pictorial teeth and the polished fingernails recur) .What
planes shifting, and its lines moving at differ- remarks that could be easily understood be- has changed is the way de Kooning appre-
ent speeds, was not a gratuitous choice. It was fore de Kooning's storm of rebellion in the hends these fleshed figures as they transpire
already obvious that his arabesque would women. They were also the last paintings of and transform themselves in intimate spaces.
hollow spaces of a new order, but it was de Kooning to be admired without reser- Long before, de Kooning had treated the
always, still, an arabesque—an emblem of a vation. Thereafter, his appetite for a new torso as though it were squashed and flat-
will to establish a closed, discrete form. expression of forms and spaces would appear tened by the forces of nature. Now, this
It seems to me that the black-and-white paint- unseemly to many orderly souls. pummelled torso breathes in and out all over