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de Kooning

An American Master

by Mark Stevens ; Annalyn Swan

Summary

This monumental biography of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) emphasizes not only his enormous talent but the dedication that made it flower in the face of often horrifyingly slim odds. Beginning as a child in a broken, impoverished family in Rotterdam in 1904, de Kooning became an artist through a combination of unrelenting work and a vision that slowly focused as he studied and experimented, painted and drew, and finally, at 22, came to America as a stowaway. In New York, he apprenticed himself to Arshile Gorky and gradually rose in the art world until, despite the inroads of Pop Art and de Kooning's own maverick ways, he found material success and canonization as-in the apt subtitle of this book-an American master. De Kooning's life was a fascinating one-not least because of his legendarily numerous liaisons with women-and this biography is a thorough, insightful, and valuable recounting of it in all its complexity. It was also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2005.

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Media Reviews

"HEN we get the chance to look at the whole life and work of Willem de Kooning, the upheaval in American art in the middle of the 20th century comes into clearer focus. That alone makes DE KOONING: AN AMERICAN MASTER, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, an important book. Several biographies in recent years-of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Arshile Gorky, among them-brought parts of that history to life. But in this book an enormous picture develops....One of the great strengths of this book is its sense of an artist in his studio. At times the authors disappear, and rather than just read about de Kooning we watch him apply paint, scrape it off and attack again..., destroy canvases, fly into rages of frustration and fling furniture about."    -- Red Grooms

   -- New York Times Book Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 2004
Size: 7 x 9.75 inches
Weight: 2.45 pounds
Pages: 731

Publisher's Notes

Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true “painter’s painter” whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.

The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York school—just as American art began to dominate the international scene.

Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figure—and his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank O’Hara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimer’s, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work.

This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master.

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