Feature

When de Kooning Was King

At no other time in his life did de Kooning step forward into American culture in this public a fashion, not only accepting but even seeking the spotlight. It would have been remarkable, of course, if he had resisted the blandishments of celebrity. His difficult youth, his anxiety as an immigrant, his years of struggle, and his desire to succeed in the New World made it unlikely that he would simply turn his back on attention: The money and renown must have seemed a kind of miraculous gift. But even as he first knew success, he began to look away. The abstract paintings that de Kooning completed in the city in the late fifties turned eastward, reflecting the light, ocean, and color of Long Island.

The large and heavy brushstrokes were often compared at the time to highways, and aptly so, for during this period de Kooning was constantly traveling back and forth between his New York studio and a house in the Springs. Although he never learned to drive a car, he loved to sit in the passenger seat, observing the unfolding highway and glimpsing the passing landscape. The new paintings, while touched by the country and dreams of escape, were bold and declamatory, even domineering. De Kooning did not fuss overmuch in these pictures with small subtleties. The beautiful highway strokes swept across the picture plane with the bravura of an emperor traveling through his dominions. (De Kooning would paint softer, more yielding landscapes a few years later when he gave up his position in New York.) The paintings had panache; they displayed the confident “grand style” of which de Kooning sometimes dreamed. He always enjoyed looking at the billboards along the highway, and his pictures of the time capture the eye with the instantaneous impact—the gotcha—of an unforgettable sign.

De Kooning’s art dealer, Sidney Janis, was delighted with these particular abstractions. He believed that de Kooning, as long as he did not return to the figure, would remain the dominant painter of his time. Janis and his wife, Harriet, who occasionally wrote about art, now talked about publishing a book to help promote the painter. But such talk only made de Kooning anxious, and in the late fifties, he began to resist proffered laurels. When the Museum of Modern Art approached him in the winter of 1958 about organizing a one-man show—an extraordinary honor in those days for a living American artist—de Kooning turned down the invitation, saying he was “not ready.”

On May 4, 1959, Janis opened an exhibit of the large new abstractions. The gallery was jammed by 5 P.M., the official opening time, but the line of admirers first formed at 8:15 that morning. At the opening, according to one reviewer, de Kooning was “doing his unsuccessful best to fade into the woodwork.” Nineteen of the 22 oils were sold by noon, ranging in price from $2,200 for the smallest oil sketch to $14,000 for each of the five big canvases. By the end of the week, every work had sold. The notices in the press were adulatory.

De Kooning himself was beginning to smell the bull in the extravagant praise. The review in Time magazine, titled “Big Splash,” contained a strangely defensive remark that suggested his growing weariness with the art scene. “There’s no way of astonishing anyone anymore,” de Kooning told the reviewer. “I’m selling my own image now. It’s being understood. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” De Kooning always liked to outflank his critics by insisting that he actually sought what certain critics disliked. But it’s doubtful that he really thought that “that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” The remark sounded like it came from the ironic Pop Artists, whom de Kooning would later criticize for having no “innocence.” The same review mentioned that de Kooning “shuts himself up in his Greenwich Village studio for weeks at a time, refusing to see visitors or acknowledge telegrams.”

Coming into de kooning’s studio one day, not long after their relationship began, Ruth Kligman saw a large blue-and-yellow painting on the wall and exclaimed “Zowie!,” a piece of art criticism de Kooning relished. It might remain the ambition of de Kooning and his friends to create a “masterpiece,” but in the late fifties it would have seemed too corny and hifalutin—and too European—to use a word like that. “Zowie” was the sort of sinewy street slang that de Kooning and the other painters preferred. In Ruth’s eyes, de Kooning had knocked one outta da park. Hit the jackpot. Scored big-time. Kaboom!

Later, de Kooning called the painting Ruth’s Zowie, which sounded like an open-ended and lubricious euphemism, such as the title of a jazz tune about a great time in the sack. The painting contained an explosive coming-together of brushstrokes, a knotting of forms into a climactic burst. There was an angular velocity to the feminine V shapes, and the “wet on wet” application of the paint had a slip-and-slide quality that was sexual in feeling. Some areas of the painting appeared worked upon and lingered over. Others had the quick inspiration of a caress. Even so, Ruth’s Zowie was not just about lovemaking. As usual, de Kooning’s feeling for content was glimpsing, elliptical, fragmentary. The palette of the picture actually contained few flesh tones: Its blues and greens and yellows suggested a watery landscape splashed by sunlight more than they did a female figure. In any case, as in so many de Kooning paintings, figure and landscape became almost one.

What was new about Ruth’s Zowie—and the work generally from this period—was the singular, declarative power of individual brushstrokes. Not only were they fewer and larger than before, but they dominated the foreground, which, in turn, governed the rest of the painting. The negative space and the complex interlacing of strokes became less important than in his earlier work. Ruth’s Zowie was an early example of de Kooning’s muscular, imperial style. The commanding brushstrokes—like the new highways then overpowering the American landscape—proudly claimed great swaths of space. An air of performance and exaggeration is natural to an imperial style, which has traditionally depended on theatricality to wow the crowd. As Kligman’s admiring declaration suggested, the painting was not lost in details or byways but had a splashy simplicity and an impressive stylishness, too, with its long, confident strokes and, in places, elegant turns of the wrist. An imperial style is vested in a celebrated man. In Ruth’s Zowie, de Kooning seemed to throw his whole body (not just an arm or a wrist) into the rhythms of the painting; the picture has his physical impress. This was the work of a painter at once public and personal, a master of his milieu, whose autobiographical “mark” created wonder and applause in the New York audience.

Excerpt from de Kooning: An American Master (Alfred A. Knopf).