Customer Reviews

De Kooning: An American Master

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What an amazing man, living in an amazing time. I was very moved by this biography, especially in the way in which de Kooning and his world come alive. The writing contains enough analysis to help connect the dots of the artist's life. And the book is rich in detail, especially about the art world in downtown New York from the 1930s on. I enjoyed reading some of the detailed descriptions of various New York venues.

One thing that struck me was how uniformly negative most of the reviews of de Kooning were. It seems as though he enjoyed a brief romance period with the critics early on, when his work was still entirely abstract. That was in 1950, after his work "Excavation." After that, the critics basically wrote him off, declaring that he was past his prime. There were, of course, some exceptions to this, including de Kooning himself.

It was also distressing to read in detail the gradual deterioration of the artist by alcohol and his destructive personal behavior. This was the only aspect of the book I had difficulty with, as at times I felt like a peeping tom, peering in on the lurid goings on in the de Kooning household. But I don't suppose there is any way to tell the story without telling that part of it. It is no big secret that many great artists, performers, poets, writers, etc., have had more than their fair share of demons to contend with, and this biography illuminates that point vividly.

The biography is extremely well written and the pages fall away with novelistic abandon. I did not feel weighed down by an over abundance of detail, but I also came away feeling very "satisfied" as a reader. Please go ahead and treat yourself to a powerful experience. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in artistic expression, in the process of creative expression and where it comes from, in the craftmanship and hard work that goes into his art, and in a fascinating period in history. The authors have captured a dynamic view into the soul of a master.

I found this book riveting--both a brilliant portrait of the artist and a deeply felt exploration of his art. In the past, I was always puzzled by the passionate, reverent affection a friend of mine, a successful figurative painter, expressed for de Kooning's work. Now I get it. Like all good criticism, "De Kooning: An American Master" expands the reader's understanding of (and appreciation for) the art it luminously examines. At the same time, the authors deftly conjure forth a three-dimensional picture of de Kooning the man: self-contradictory, funny, brilliant, maddening, and wholly original. The result is an insightful, fascinating book-as Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times, "smart and unflinching," "remarkably lucid," a "sweeping, authoritative biography."

I was outraged by Edward Baiamonte's review of the biography DE KOONING, AN AMERICAN MASTER. Mine is not a review but a rebuttal to such harmful comments. When he speaks of "egotistically" I think he should look at himself, who seems to think he alone knows what art should be expressing. De Kooning's work is a great importance in the history of art and in the expression of the inner self of a great artist. De Kooning was well trained in the Old Masters type of portraiture (if this man read the book, he'd know that),;he had exquisite skill. Abstract Expression is just one way of releasing, exploring and communicating the complexities of life. This biographyh of de Kooning is remarkable in its thorough examination of the life of one of the great characters of the century and remarkable for its ability to make the act of painting a physical and psychological experience we, the readers, can understand. I, for one, dread facing long books because I am a slow reader, but, in this case, I couldn't put the book down -- as we say. It is a great read, it is based on serious research, it could not be more immediate in terms of pleasure. It's a great read,. If this reviewer wants to bring God and morality into this book, I think any god, including his, would be proud of such a searching mind and talent, de Kooning would represent man's higher nature in all its soul searching, in failures and success. I am giving this book to most people on my Christmas list!

The New York abstract expressionists have been written to death. The Village, the Cedar, the Hamptons-is there anything we don't know? As it turns out, yes.

This big, fat bio of Willem de Kooning takes all the familiar people, places and ideas and makes them pop up off the page. As they tell de Kooning's story, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan lead you through downtown New York the '40s, '50s and '60s, when rebellion, sex and booze helped fuel perhaps the most modern of artistic movements. This is intellectual history, sure. But the depth of the research and reporting in the book puts you in the room as things are happening-painting, arguing, affairs-in a way that few biographies can.

But the book isn't just a long party sequence: You see and hear de Kooning struggling with his art, his celebrity, and, ultimately, his integrity as well. And then there's his long sad decline; after a White House dinner he had to be reminded that the man he had sat next to was President Ronald Reagan.

In the full disclosure department, I have worked with the authors. Even if I hadn't, I would still press "de Kooning" on my friends.

I found de Kooning: An American Master to be one the most colorful and interesting biographies I have ever spent time with. The authors' discussion of de Kooning's art is accessible and insightful and woven into the context of his life and relationships. I particularly valued the authors' discussions of de Kooning's relationships with women, which so powerfully influenced his art and are fascinating in their own right. In addition, the authors' discussion of the rise of the New York school of abstract expressionism provided a rich and informative perspective (at least for those largely uninitiated in art history, like me) in tracing de Kooning's own ascent. Moreover, the book is wonderfully written, never dull.

This is without a doubt the best analysis of Willem and his life and work in New York. While a voluminous work it focuses on every aspect of his life and his relationships with other artists and a multitude of women. A must read even for those of us who may or may not be "turned on" by the abstract expressionists of this period. Highly recommended!

de Kooning outlived himself. His final years, when he was hardly there, became melancholic and declined. 1984 dementia knocked the legs from under him. 1997 a series of pulmonary events knocked him over.

But this is not a book about his death, rather his life. And a very energetic and enthusiastic one at that. About obsessive defining and redefining artistic output. About his influences and how he became who he was. How the world was influenced and changed because of him. Yes what you see around you today was shaped and influenced by de Kooning and a number of modern artists from the previous century.

1904 a hard beginning.
1921 an academic artist.
1945 breakthrough abstraction.
1947 deep black & white abstraction.
1950 'Excavation' de Kooning arrives.
Onto his 1950's abstract women then phases of intensely personal brushstroke bravada.

This is not a picture art book. Only 20 (perfectly chosen) paintings wonderfully compliment this long (700 pg) indepth biography of an existential man who lived on the cutting edge of the art world.

Brilliantly written by Stevens/Swan.

When the history of art in the 20th century is written, one of the key movements of the century will be abstract expressionism -- a school of art that moved painting from a visual experience into a cerebral exploration of ideas and emotions.

It was a time in the 1940s and 50s when the focus of the art world shifted from Paris to New York. The horrors of World War II were behind us, and American culture was primed to expand. After all, Americans had led the free world to victory over Germany and Japan, and North America was seen as a new frontier. Pioneers were welcome in a world ready for change.

Even before the war, the art world was in transition. The Impressionists, the Cubists, the Fauves and the Dada movements had expanded the boundaries of creativity in painting. There were individual artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Georges Bracque, Constantin Brancusi, Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse who were geniuses in and of themselves. But no movement had emerged that had taken painting to the next level where the conception of artistic creativity was completely redefined.

The abstract expressionists did that.

The leading abstract expressionist was Jackson Pollock, according to current popular perception (no doubt helped by a blockbuster retrospective and a Pulitzer Prize winning biography several years ago). But there were others -- such as Hans Hoffman, Arshille Gorky, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Willem de Kooning -- who were all driving forces in the abstract expressionist movement.

A new book, de Kooning: An American Master, gives the Dutch immigrant his due as one of the leading abstract expressionists. Indeed, at the end of the book, one has to consider de Kooning as the leader of the abstract expressionist movement. He outlasted all the others and his successive waves of well defined styles spanned five decades -- a remarkable creative achievement.

But it wasn't easy for the immigrant from the Netherlands. Arriving in America in the 1930s, de Kooning took his formal training as an illustrator into the heart of the modern art world in lower Manhattan where he began his remarkable journey. There he fell under the wing of Gorky who introduced the young Dutchman into the romanticism of the Manhattan art world. Gorky's style of painting also had a big influence on the development of de Kooning's own artwork -- nudging him from realism into the abstract.

The late 1940s were idyllic times for the young art movement, and it was then that de Kooning made his first breakthrough in a series of black enamel paintings that drew considerable attention in the art world. The black and white paintings were the subject of de Kooning's first one man show, and while the show was a flop from the standpoint of sales, the art critics raved about the new style developed by the Dutch artist. Most important, one of the most influential art critics, Clement Greenberg (who was later to be Pollock's champion) praised the ambiguity of the abstract works of art that allowed the viewer to formulate his own conception of what the artist was trying to achieve.

In 1950 de Kooning made an even greater breakthrough in a painting called Excavation -- considered one of the defining paintings of the early abstract expressionist movement. Excavation was a large painting (more than 6 X 8 feet), and de Kooning used subtle touches of color to highlight parts of the painting. The painting captured the essence of the pulsating art world in New York City. There were many interpretations of what de Kooning actually meant, but the painting itself presented itself as a living, breathing display of the energy that was gathering in art circles at that time.

"No other American painting...conveyed with comparable force the jazzy syncopation of the city," the authors write. "Excavation was a personal improvisation on the great abstract grid of modern urban life..."

At the end of the 1940s de Kooning embarked on a more controversial project -- the first of his paintings of women. His first painting in this genre, Woman I, took nearly three years to complete before he felt the work was finished. It was a startling painting, and it gave de Kooning more renown.

"Woman I was an eruption, opening a Pandora's Box, that not only liberated the demons of one man, but also released many essential issues that would bedevil art and culture during the last half of the twentieth century," the authors write. "The sexual anxiety in Woman I is palpable. It almost forces the eye away.."

In short, de Kooning had developed a theme that he would return to again and again in his career. He used his woman paintings to express his fascination with human relations, not only between men and women, but between all humans, no matter what their sex (or sexual tendencies).

But the women series also took de Kooning deeper into abstract art, and for the next 20 years his abstract work expanded and matured. His colors became more vibrant, and he used both composition and color to develop themes that fascinated the art world. Pollock's career culminated with his drip paintings from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s, but his violent personal life never took him beyond the oeuvre that he became so well known for. When he died in a suicidal traffic accident, Pollock's art abruptly died with him -- in mid-flight, it seemed.

de Kooning, on the other hand, developed a whole series of themes in his art that showed a steady progression until, between 1975 and 1980 he achieved the pinnacle of his creative work in a series of fully mature paintings (...Whose Name was Writ in Water; North Atlantic Light; and a series of untitled paintings, the most prominent of which was Untitled V). In the late 1970s he even stumbled upon sculpture as yet another dimension in his art.

But it is in his final period that de Kooning may have left his true mark.

By 1980, de Kooning's age and his alcoholism had taken their toll on the man. His mind started to deteriorate and he began to sink into the void of Alzheimer's Disease. But as he did, he developed a new style that simplified his technique. He cleaned up his slashing brush strokes and wild colors, and began to create graceful ribbons of paint on white canvases. Some critics have compared this phase of de Kooning's art with Matisse's cutouts that the French master created in his final days. Other critics scoffed at de Kooning's late work labeling it the product of a failing mind. But viewed in the overall scheme of de Kooning's career, one has to believe that the final works of art represented a cleansing of his work -- a natural summing up of a stunning body of work that neatly represented the abstract expressionist movement.

This is a marvelous book that should give de Kooning recognition for his genius and credit for his place as the leader of the abstract expressionist movement. But here's a hint: if you read the biography, have a book of de Kooning's paintings nearby. There are some illustrations in the biography, but only a few. This reviewer happened to have a copy of the catalogue to the 1994 de Kooning retrospective organized by the National Gallery in Washington at hand -- and it was very helpful to be able to examine a reproduction of a painting even while reading the book's analysis of that painting.

As a teacher and scholar of literature, I find it difficult to read many novels in my personal leisure time, and for purposes of escape and relaxation in the sense that some people prefer. For typically, I get into the literary analyst mode, or begin to think too much about the text's formal features and how I might take it to the classroom at some point. I have a lot of love and respect for autobiography and biography as genres, but rarely teach them, and so they educate me while offering a bit of escape. I am always happy to come across ones that are well written. I tend to read a lot of literary biography, though I read many other kinds. As someone who is also an artist, I enjoy reading biographies of artists. The Stevens/Swan biography of de Kooning is beautifully written, thoroughly captivating, and ranks among the very best biographies of all the ones that I have ever read, across various categories. I had a false start with it last year during a busier time, and got caught up in other things and so lost and stopped reading the story. I went back to it again this past spring. It was so clearly written, and I particularly admired this seamlessness and clarity given that it was a collaborative project. It was a work that made me sorry that I hadn't followed de Kooning more closely, and a true fan of his art and legacy. The authors draw us in, for instance, so that in one powerful scene, one can just hear all the verbal cadences of de Kooning telling a dealer asking for one too many paintings to just "take it," and the tone that thorougly registers all that was wrong with having been asked for it in the first place. This biography comes to life and lets his story gracefully unfold, page after elegantly written page. It was the kind of book that I was sorry to see end, that I didn't want to let go of. Of the biographies that I've read in recent years, I've particularly enjoyed and found most endearing the ones that have created characters to complement their main subjects. Often, they are charismatic ones that either shadow or centrally shape their main subject. While we get clear and engaging portraits of people like de Kooning's mother and Elaine de Kooning (an artist with her own story and talented and necessary to study in her own right), what is interesting in the Stevens/Swan biography is that de Kooning alone ultimately emerges as a character in the sense that I am describing. I am also inspired by how these two art critics/editors have used their amazing talents to produce such an admirable work of scholarship, too. In general, above and beyond its value for the story related to art that it tells so effectively, it's also a great immigrant story, even an exemplary and classic one. That is to say, it reveals how de Kooning came to America earlier in the twentieth century, built a home, adapted and contributed to an increasingly modernizing society, and in effect, became American, giving this term new meaning.

This is an exhaustively researched and detailed account written in a way that draws the reader into de Kooning's struggle on a daily basis. For all of its 630 pages, it was a real page turner - I could hardly wait to see what was going to happen next.

It is a powerful tale of a childhood of poverty, neglect and abuse in Rotterdam, Holland, from which he escapes first by attending a traditional academy of art at night while working as a decorative artist, and second by stowing away on a freighter bound for America at the age of 22, where for years afterward he would be an illegal alien beset by the anxieties of that status. He spends a decade as a commercial artist in New York before deciding to devote himself entirely to his painting, a choice he makes in the depths of the Great Depression by quitting his day job. There follow two decades of obsessive and disciplined dedication to his painting in the face of self-doubt and grinding poverty with little recognition, capped by a year and a half struggle with just one painting, his disturbing and controversial Woman I. The following three decades of fame and fortune are overshadowed by more self-doubt, intermittent ridicule and dismissal at the hands of the art world, topped off with repeated bouts of catastrophic binge drinking.

Through it all, he remains stubbornly resistant to the siren call of the artistic fashions that he has created and repeatedly veers off track at the height of success to pursue yet another difficult vector. The tale is lubricated with a constant flow of beautiful and exotic women who are caught up in his spell but always (and often to their chagrin) remain subordinate to his painting. His modesty and generosity towards other artists are characteristics, I think, not usually seen in artists who compete and succeed at this level. The many artists who are his mentors, friends and acolytes include: Hans Hofmann, Franz Klein, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollack, Fairfield Porter, Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko.

As he slips into the long decline of Alzheimer's toward the end of the 1970s, the story becomes increasingly tragi-comic, headlined by a shop-a-holic wife and his art dealer who are interested in keeping de Kooning isolated at his studio on Long Island (and his condition from the press) while encouraging him to continue painting at the highest output of his career (the $300,000 per painting price tag may be a factor here). They are aided in this by well meaning assistants who lay out his brushes, mix his paints, turn the canvases for him, and even start the drawings for his final paintings. The good guy in the white hat standing against these darker forces is his long-time lawyer and friend, himself succumbing to Parkinsons's. Included in this farce are forged signatures on de Kooning prints (the attorney in the white hat discovers this fraud and stops the presses) and a modified will, among other hijinks. More or less on the sidelines is his daughter (not by his wife) who is squeaking by on a $25,000 per month allowance (this is the early 80s when $25K is a lot of money). It is a race against time, but de Kooning does seem to float above the melee as he completes his last paintings in the late 1980s.

The soap opera briefly outlined in the foregoing paragraph notwithstanding, for anyone who doubts the artistic commitment of the Abstract Expressionists in general, and de Kooning in particular, this Pulitzer Prize winning biography promises to be a fascinating revelation; and for those who have themselves done battle with their own aesthetic demons, a real inspiration.