For this post, I decided to focus on the Elaine de Kooning and her trajectory of work within the abstract expressionism genre.
I thought that it was fitting since my first post of the “7 Simple Questions with Creative Women” series was about a practicing abstract artist, Amber. It is also fitting because I love abstractionism and I adore Elaine de Kooning.
Examining Elaine de Kooning’s background illustrated a woman who wore many hats within the art world, all of which are notable given that she was one of the limited few women working and recognized during the post WW2 abstract expressionism period. Examining her career also illustrates a woman who was constantly engaged with the art world, taking on new challenges until her death.
A born and raised New Yorker, Elaine was always interested in art and was encouraged by her mother who frequently took her to museums, encouraging her to perfect her critical beholding skills and draw what she saw in the images. She was educated in the NYC school system into college, as well as various NYC art schools. Her college and art school experiences are where she met and befriended art world characters who would influence her story as an abstract artist as well as her participation in the Artists’ Union, where she met artist and close friend Milton Resnick. From these years of artistic development, Elaine’s style grew to be representational, with bold gestural strokes. Her growth was greatly influenced by other abstract artists, including Stuart Davis, one of her teachers.
Post-education years brought many experiences, layering her art world hats. Meeting Willem de Kooning in 1938 and taking drawing lessons from him was most probably another hugely influential event for her. Their marriage in 1943 furthered her work as an abstract artist, but also added another hat as art promoter; she began to focus on her husband’s career and promoting his work as well as her own. She continued to promote his work throughout his and her careers, even after their separation in 1955.
In 1948 Elaine accompanied her husband to North Carolina for his teaching position. This move offered her an opportunity to add art teacher and stage production designer to her repertoire, as she stayed in NC for the summer working and painting even after Willem departed for NYC. Her work up until this point was still considered representational, while abstract in nature.
After the NC experience, she became an Editorial Associate and art critic for ‘Art News’, being the first to write about rising artists of abstract expressionism. It appears that writing was a change agent in her own evolution. It was around this time that her work, while still including elements of representational gestures and figurative forms, began to morph and reflect elements of abstract expressionism.
She continued to teach into the 1950s, spending time in Juarez, Mexico, where she attended a bullfight and was captivated by the energy and colors of the event and setting; one of her most well-known works was born, “The Bullfight”. This passionate and vibrant work is done in bold, energetic brush strokes that evoke a certain amount of fervor for the viewer. “Bullfight” is one of her most recognized works. “Bullfight” marks the beginning of my own passion for her work began.
As an abstract expressionist artist of her time, she was known within her set as well as outside. One of her highest, most recognized commissions was of President John F. Kennedy for his official presidential portrait, marking his White House years.
When asked about her experience painting the President, she noted that he was somewhat difficult to paint, as he was fidgeting quite a bit: he wrote notes; spoke on the phone; crossed and uncrossed his legs repeatedly. Upon glancing at the famous finished portrait, there is an energy in her strokes that intimate the energy of the sitter.
I visit this portrait often as is occupies a strategically lit, recessed alcove in the President’s Gallery at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. While I love “Bullfight” the Kennedy portrait evokes something else for me. Her strokes and color choices in this work hold my glance in a trance. The Kennedy portrait is everything that I love about abstract art: energy, movement, rhythm. Abstract art tricks the viewer into believing that it is easy.
But abstractionism is complex. When I view the Kennedy portrait above, I see the complexities of the sitter and the painter. I see her eye and see that she has captured the literal of JFK and the intangible that made JFK and “Camelot” be the mystique of the mid-century Americana that he was a part of. In this portrait, she accomplished a triangulated marriage of figurative, portraiture and abstract painting. This was and is not the norm of abstract artists.
By many accounts, Elaine was a noted, respected and famous national and international artist, art critic, writer and teacher. She enjoyed teaching positions in the US, in Europe, Paris in particular, as well as Egypt and Kenya to name a few international locales. Her extensive travels and teaching opportunities spanned her entire career, well into the 1980s. Many critics have attributed the refined growth of her later work to these traveling experiencing. While her signature style of figurative forms was still evident, her later works are described as lighter in tone and using thinner brush strokes: very different from her earlier works as represented by the Kennedy portrait.
But still, I believe, quintessential Elaine De Kooning.
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