Customer Reviews

Willem de Kooning: Paintings

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is probably the best book about Willem De Kooning on the market. Along with a multitude of color plates David Sylvester offers historical, technical, and philisophical insights about Willem De Kooning and his life works. The large format makes viewing the artists works very enjoyable. The reading is not overly complicated as it paints a full portrait of the artist, his accomlishments, his techniques, and also offers an approach to understanding the significance of his work. A must have for any De Kooning, or Abstract Expressionist enthusiast.

This book is undoubtedly the best recent publication on De Kooning. Very complete, it encompasses the entire career of the artist with beautiful reproductions and a text partly written by one of the most sensible art critics of our time, the late David Sylvester (whose other writings on American Art I strongly recommend too). It was a catalogue for an exhibition held at the National Gallery in Washington in 1994, which, to this date remains a reference.

Here is my problem with the book...While there are an abundant number of color plates in the book, many of the black and white plates I feel should have been treated to a color rendering.

This alone,would have made the book worth the high asking price. (I paid 60.00 for a used hardback)

Also, the color plates are not as brilliant as what Rizolli Publishing has done ever so exquisitely with the recently released Hans Hoffman art book.

I probably would have rated this product four stars instead of three, but I have been spoiled by the brilliant renderings of Rizolli Publishers.

One of the New York action painters, abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning was born in Holland almost a century ago. He began as a portrait and figure painter, later becoming "an artist who makes ambiguity an hypothesis on which to build."

This gloriously beautiful retrospective of his work was published in conjunction with the first major exhibition devoted exclusively to his paintings at the National Gallery of Art. With 80 color and 50 black and white plates, exhibit curator Prather, art historian Sylvester, and art history professor Shiff offer commentary on 84 of de Koonings's paintings which span five decades of his career.

Beginning in the 1930s with the earliest series of paintings of men and women to the 1980s when the artist's style became more abstract, this superb volume is testimony to de Koonings' life and oeuvre.

A contemporary of Rothko, Kline, and Pollock, Willem de Kooning's works are sometimes taken as metaphors, dynamic with shapes and colors splayed across the canvas. He is one of the most influential artists of our generation. This splendid catalogue is apt tribute.