Monday, December 27, 2004
De Kooning - Late Works 3
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| 'Untitled', (Seated woman on bench), 1966 - 1967, Charcoal on Canvas, 28 x 24 in. |
| 'no title', Oil on canvas, 1986, 80 x 70 in. |
- As an aging artist de Kooning would have found it very difficult to let drawing go from his daily habits, it being essential to his make up. Having been throughout his life an adherent of abstract expressionism and 'Automatic' drawing which is supposed to draw from the physical a subconscious response to form and space. It allies the artist very closely with the work physically, cutting off analytical mind functioning somewhat, and relying more upon intuitive or automatic responses to the work in progress. De Kooning relied on his drawing as a basis to his work all through his life. He drew every day (I think from life, even through his abstract work) and the habit of drawing, I think, was very important to his thought process in his work. He relied upon it and during the late work it is the drawing that comes to the fore and out goes the gestural painterliness of earlier work.
I think Kooning's drawing was a physical process that was equally a 'mental' process. This was part of what the 'action painters' of the abstract expressionist movement were trying to explain and was part of the justification for what they were trying to do. Using drawing and painting techniques originating with the Surrealists.
The whole adventure for the abstact expressionists and Surrealists was to discover what the mind was capable of. Drawing upon the unconscious and finding a wealth of information albeit not easily understood due to not being consciously thought of first.
Because of his daily drawing activity de Kooning would have had an enormous back catalogue of drawings on which to refer for his later works. Looking at these and using them as underpainting for his late works in the direct way that he seemed to, must have enabled him to carry on and remember, intuitively, what he was doing. These intuitive marks and lines are learned through years of study and habitual repetition. What is fascinating about de Koonings late works is the reduction to just these elements. Somehow making the decision to leave out or take out so much from the work while bringing or revealing new things to challenge the imagination. Is this decision intuitive, Automatic, conscious? A direct result of Alzheimer's (an expression of the condition)? Probably all of these together. This is an area of the unconscious that we don't know much about.
# posted by Neil @ 7:49 AM 
