De Kooning: An American Master

by Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan

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.

Genres: Art, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Art History, Biography Memoir, 20th Century

732 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I read this book, I rarely read straight-up biographies. I think the last one I read was a bio of Sylvia Plath I waded though in the tenth grade for an essay I was writing on her (oh yes, I was so tortured). I still recall bits and pieces from that bio, but I didn't crave all things biography after I'd finished. I think I went to track practice and forgot about it.

This book has singlehandedly renewed my faith in the biography. I have never been in love with de Kooning's paintings, but I can't resist hundreds of pages of details about this nutty man and his exploits. Oh yeah, and art criticism that isn't boring and actually made me appreciate the paintings more fully. It also helped that de Kooning hob-nobbed with all these drunk modern artists and the bio has detailed accounts of all the people he spent time with, was inspired by, and ahem, had relations with. Did I mention that de Kooning had lots and lots of sexy lady friends, too? Well, he did. Later in life, de Kooning gets dementia, but keeps on painting. It's really interesting to see how his work changes and what remains the same throughout his life, especially when the ravaging effects of his wild lifestyle begin to take hold.

This was a really engrossing and inspiring read. Like VH1's Behind the Music meets MOMA. I have yet to find another biography that hits the mark as this one does.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an extremely difficult read and is even more so to review. I feel as though I don't know enough about art and painting to offer an adequate evaluation. It was the not knowing of this topic that drew me to this bio, and the best thing I did gain from this is a heightened appreciate for paintings.

As a musician, I'm always fascinated by any artist's creative process, but what's to be done if you get too close? Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and New York Times 10 Best Books of 2005 as a result of this penetrating and painstakingly well-researched book. They get so close to their subject that I imagine avid fans of de Kooning would be dismayed by even a glimpse of his every day reality outside his paintings. Without giving too much away, this guy was a tragedy from beginning to end. I like the idea of reading the beginning and end of a entire life, and for that, this books is quite admirable. Also, the amount of detail and insight to the private life of de Kooning is prize-worthy on its own. This is clearly a life's-work type of book for both Stevens and Swan, and it shows in every sentence. The passages devoted to the critique of de Kooning's paintings were poetic and illustrious.

But while I respect him, I'm still not sure I love de Kooning's art. (There's many examples printed in the book, and I frequently looked up pieces online as I read. Often, I found myself more enamored by his contemporaries.) I'm certain that I would not have enjoyed having a personal relationship with him, but if he was in a NYC coffee shop giving a lecture to a friend (a common practice of de Kooning), I'd probably hop a flight right now just to eavesdrop. de Kooning was endlessly fascinating, and this biography illustrates this beautifully. It magnifies its subject and gives the artist the respect he deserves.

If you're at all curious about modern art in America, I imagine this bio would be an excellent starting place.

[Ed Smiley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This autobiography deservedly netted a lot of book awards, including the Pulitzer. I'm going to do a fairly detailed review, but it only scratches the surface of this book, and is no substitute for reading it.

There was a major de Kooning retrospective at MOMA in 2011-2012 with 200 works, around the time this book was released:
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhi...

I won't label it a spoiler, because there is so much I left out, but if you hate knowing anything about a book, then you might want to stop here....

The book extensively details his Dutch background, both his troubled home life--with an abusive mother--and his short but thorough grounding in academic drawing, leading to early success in commercial art and as a chief artist in Dutch design firms.

A highly intelligent child with early signs of some degree of artistic ability, a marketable skill was the one way out of the bottom rung of the highly stratified Dutch class system, where working class children were expected to leave school at the age of twelve, no matter how promising they were. (In reading the recent van Gogh biography,Van Gogh, at the same time, I was struck by how little the insular and regimented Dutch society had changed; it is after World War II, apparently that the great movement towards a more enlightened and progressive Dutch society emerged.)

At first, he never thought of himself as a fine artist, but as a commercial and decorative painter, who privately painted for himself (at that point in a somewhat symbolist or Art Nouveau manner) --ambitions and expectations that he carried on into his journey as a stowaway to America. Early on, he exhibited a somewhat American entrepreneurial spirit, and preferred to move from working for established companies to freelancing.

This background helps in understanding many aspects of his later career. His training at the Academy had not included the more advanced classes in perspective, nor painting.

Perspective was not particularly an issue for the shallow space used in magazine illustration or commercial advertising, nor when developing his own style in a modern or abstract idiom, based on a flat sort of Cubist type space.

He was never interested in vast battle scenes or complex architectural views. Nonetheless, he seemed to exhibit early on a deep seated need for self-contradiction or paradox, by sticking difficult foreshortening into straightforward abstracted figuration, punching and flattening space into a worried surface that defied a single reading.

His training in painting came from commercial firms, and gave him practical experience in many ways that he might not have had an opportunity to learn at the academy, including shortcuts in layout, and preparation of paint. In painting, he utilized a lot of techniques that he had learned as a commercial illustrator in innovative ways in fine art, in terms of layout, transfer of images, and manipulation of materials in his paintings. He developed an art practice of using vellum-tracing paper- to cut up and transfer shapes, and even lift paint from painting to painting.

At one point in his life, he decided to stop doing commercial art and paint full time. This was a risky and conscious choice and one that his free lancing personality was willing to accept, to spend a long time, "broke but not poor", as he put it himself. Luckily, New York turned out to become the kind of art world crucible for the emergence of a new kind of painting, and interaction with other artists on the cutting edge. Particularly he picked up art theory, and techniques from Arshille Gorky, a brilliant abstract painter and autodidact, and many others, such as the extravagant John Graham. If I went into detail, this would turn into a list of famous artists, like Jackson Pollock: read the book, OK?

Returning, now to his restlessness and inability to settle down. His life was filled with paradox and disruption that seems to have been prepared by his early years. His mother was physically abusive; he loved her but disliked her. His early family life was unstable. In a strange way, he seems to have been prepared to react with both anxiety and comfort in unsettled situations, and to seek them out because of their familiarity. For a long period of apprenticeship, he labored over, and endlessly reworked paintings, and continuously brought new and difficult complications into his work that were, by their very nature impossible to take to a single resolution. He developed an underground reputation as an academically trained and skilled painter, who could draw like Ingres, but chose not to, who worked incessantly on strange paintings, but who could never finish anything.

Psychologically, de Kooning was a bundle on anxiety. He gradually learned to turn this irresolution into a kind of aesthetic, where he would bring several different things into a painting, let them fight it out, and consider a painting done when it had in his terms a "visage": a kind of theme of fragile dynamic balance. The hallmark of all his multiple styles is the ambiguity of figure and ground; the "background" will suddenly pop forward and the "foreground" recede, so that multiple paintings are embedded in one, in a disquieting and unrelenting energy. I am consciously not going to go into details about each of his several or so major styles; this review is long enough, and the book comes with adequate color illustrations, and there is plenty of material in the literature on them.



In his work he tended to build up anxiety, which would then explode into a manic burst of activity, often in a totally new style. (Many people only know, and dislike (or like) de Kooning on the basis of one style, he had seven or eight.) Then he would fall into anxiety again.



The remarkable thing I learned about the Abstract Expressionist era is that the really severe drinking of many of the artists, really came to a head, after these absolutely obscure artists began to be recognized. Partly, because with some money floating around they could afford Scotch instead of beer, partly perhaps, because there was fear of success, and partly because the Zeitgeist of the atomic era was seeking an art of anxiety, and so many of the artists that became famous at that time suffered from anxiety. (To cite just one example, Jackson Pollock, was if anything even more anxious and less mentally stable than most, and famously and tragically met his end in a booze fueled car crash.)

De Kooning was no exception. He soon feel into a cyclic pattern of alternating his periods of manic creativity alternating with manic binge drinking. For the most part, the first part of the cycle, de Kooning was alert, witty charismatic, and would pretty much go without sleep for three or four days, then he would fall into a stupor, and finally black out on the street, in an alleyway, or in a park, and his many friends would have to organize a search to locate and rescue him.

In his life he would never resolve anything. He lived alternately with his wife, the mother of his child, Joan Ward, and several different girlfiends. In this particular aspect you can see a commonality between his art and his life. He was not consciously cruel in in this bohemian life style, just rather helpless to live any other way. His daughter Lisa said that he was definitely not a good father, but she was just as equally certain that he loved her very much. At this point he had become enormously successful but was a very troubled man and deeply sunk in alcoholism.


His wife, Elaine de Kooning, an artist with a significant reputation in her own right, came to have more of an influence in his life again after a number of years. She was a heavy drinker too and started to try to get fellow artists to go on the wagon after she joined AA. She set a project to get de Kooning dried up, and reorganize his life. As a result, he was able to have a very long and productive life. His art started to take on a light, fluid pastoral quality, more influenced by Matisse and impressionism, less edgy, and more graceful.


But not so fast. It was a sad ending.

After a number of years, when he reached old age, he began to suffer significant memory lapses. He had significant cognitive reserves visually; it was said if he couldn't remember someone's name it would come to him when he drew them. Ultimately the diagnosis was Alzheimer's. He continued to paint for a number of years; Elaine organized the studio so that all his equipment and paints would be set out for him, and all his legal and routine affairs would be arranged. There is general consensus that this studio routine kept off the onset of dementia for a number of years as his mind was actively engaged. There is also somewhat of a critical consensus, that although not as edgy and anxious as his earlier work, his better late "ribbon paintings" take on a beautiful elegance and compression, and do indicate an artist at the top of his craft.

[Leah Weyandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“At times the authors disappear, and rather than just read about de Kooning we watch him apply paint, scrape it off and attack again, trace sections of a painting and pin them on other parts to see how they work, stare at pictures for hours, destroy canvases, fly into rages of frustration and fling furniture about.”

—Red Groom

[Doria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well-written, if at times overly adulatory, biography of the artist Willem de Kooning. It draws upon first-hand accounts and sources, and is very complete in most respects. However, the depiction of the artist’s wife, Elaine, is unflattering, and seems to fall short of a more honest appraisal of her abilities and importance as an artist. She is generally given short shrift, and is brushed off as something of an annoyance, which does not do her justice, either as an artist or as his wife. Despite her absence for long stretches, she always returned to him, and they were clearly drawn to each other, regardless of affairs or differences.

I was also surprised to note that the authors made no mention of the important Abstract Expressionist artist Grace Hartigan, who knew and was influenced by de Kooning. Reading about her life and work in the extraordinary not-yet-published book Ninth Street Women, by Mary Gabriel, there is a noteworthy description of her meeting de Kooning early on in her career and development as an artist in their shared territory of lower Manhattan. Yet his biographers did not see fit to include this significant exchange, nor even make reference to Hartigan.

In fact, most of the women in this biography are depicted as entering and leaving de Kooning’s life as if through a revolving door, with only slight mention of their professional work and impact, despite the fact that many of them were part of the artistic community in which de Kooning lived and worked for the entirety of his adult life. His professional world is depicted as largely male-dominated, which may have been true in the 60s and 70s, but was emphatically not the case in the 40s and 50s, when the burgeoning Abstract-Expressionist community of artists in New York was filled with and often led by a significant number of vibrant and active women, among them his own wife.

This biography contains many interesting anecdotes, and includes analyses of a good sampling of de Kooning’s work covering most of his major stylistic periods. It proceeds chronologically, and covers a great deal of territory, especially concerning de Kooning’s upbringing and early education in Holland. There are many valuable firsthand accounts included here, from friends and family, fellow artists and assistants, and observers of the NYC art world. An immense and impressive amount of work was required to bring all of these many threads together - successfully - into one coherent work. I only wish that some of those threads were not cut short or left out in places, to the detriment of our fuller understanding of the world in which de Kooning lived.

[Shawn Callon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a well-researched, highly detailed and very readable account of de Kooning's life from his early childhood with his broken, impoverished family struggling in early nineteenth century Holland thru his decline into dementia many years later. I prefer his early and later work rather than his strange period in the middle where he appeared to have a real problem with women - painting them as ugly, scary sex objects ready to eat you up! He was uncompromising, refusing to give into modern demands to change his style and refusing to accept labels that would define his style. Yet he was also adaptable in a strange way, ready to cease painting for a while and do some sculpture and then return to painting using a different style again. His personal life was a mess like so many gifted artists - a succession of affairs, constant debt for many years and of course his alcoholism. The authors make him a likeable and sympathetic guy who was able to mix with many types of folks from different backgrounds, many of whom loved his sense of humor and his intellect. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to meet him.

Review written by Shawn Callon author of The Diplomatic Spy.

[Luis Velasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has haunted me for a bit now. Not in the material itself, but the density of it all. Imagine thirst and there is a coldest freshwater lake in front of you—quench yourself with a dropper. This book is not for the faint of heart. If you are truly interested in the art and the history of it during a time where the definition of art was radically changed, read this book.

You’re going to learn about a man, who against it all changed, the landscape of American art with his contemporaries. A classicist creating in a world that was evolving all around him—there’s a quote in the book I love where, during his health decline near the end of his life, encapsulates where his art and genius spawned from and continued throughout his entire life regardless of the ever-changing landscape of the art world around him: “[The National Gallery in Washington’s de Kooning Retrospective] was poignant not only because de Kooning himself was no longer painting but also because something seemed to be dying with him. In the eyes of many, de Kooning was the last great painter in a tradition that began in the Renaissance.” Critics called him stuck, hard-headed in sticking with his guns and choosing what he believed needed to be painted, regardless of money and popularity. This book will tell you the ups and downs of the man’s life, psyche, success, decline in incredibly, well-researched detail to the point where you will feel like you are suffering and succeeding with him.

I cried at the end of it, knowing how it was going to end. If a biography makes you cry, it’s really well made.

In terms of the approach towards his art, the critiques and analysis is absolutely wonderful. The authors going into the technical side of his genius, describing how his choices on the canvas can be directly traced back to either old masters who he admired and/or the uncertainty of his existence during his lifetime, made me appreciate art and the complexities within so much more. I have a new found appreciation for the era of abstract expressionism and the impact de Kooning had it on, next to Pollock.

Once again, if you love art, you should definitely read this book.

Will revisit it one day. Right now, I need an easy glass of water.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

The two authors have devoted a good piece of their lives to documenting deKooing's. The book clearly focuses on the artist and his artistic legacy. A byproduct of this giant effort is a history of America's emergence in the world of art. The authors show how a small group of literally starving artists survived, and how and why deKooning reaped worldwide recognition and wealth as he became the literal survivor.

There are many striking things about deKooning's story. The first is the total deprivation of love and support he suffered as a child. The last is the long goodbye which he said through the fog of alcoholism and Alzheimer's.

The authors stick with deKooning, his art, his personal life, his success and failure and his impact in the art world. They are neutral and do not assess him as he throws drinks at people, breaks furniture and humiliates intimate friends.

DeKooning's manner of raising his daughter is attributed to his abusive birth family, but the authors make no comment on its most probable impact on the unstable relationships with women (which he cannot sever) and give only a passing mention of its potential influence in creating his visually misogynistic "Woman" paintings.

Other absent themes of the book are the historic events outside the art world. Pearl Harbor, the McCarthy witch hunts and the JFK assassination are hardly (or not) mentioned. World War II has a mention as Rotterdam is burned, but this is dropped. Pages later, when his Dutch family re-surfaces there is no description of their (or much related to the war or about deKooning's) war experience.

I do like a book that sticks to its mission, and this one does, so I while I'd like to know more of the psychology of deKooning and the impact of major events on him and his art, the authors stay with their expertise. I give them 5 stars for their research and ability to present it in a readable way. I hope that others will take on these other aspects of, perhaps, the most provocative artist of the 20th century.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I didn’t want to pin it down at all. I was interested in that before, but I found out it was not in my nature. I didn’t work with the idea of perfection, but to see how far one could go.” (p. 342)

How does one pin down Willem de Kooning, the master of impasto and ambiguity? An artist that refused any reconciliation, de Kooning’s reputation for enraging and enthralling is writ large and real in this vast biography. The success of this text is two-fold. First, through exhaustive research and analysis, Stevens and Swan manage to give a detailed and clear picture of this fickle painter. But it’s the narrative qualities that make reading this book such a joy, as the authors bring not just de Kooning but the entire tumultuous mid-century New York art world to life—the time when “the individual refused to be contained by the conventional boundaries established by either European or middle class taste.” (p. 364) Sections about de Kooning laboring in his studio are incredibly vivid (as well as inspiring and, often, exhausting), and, with each struggle for artistic breakthrough, I became more and more invested in his journey. Considering how conflicting, cruel, and infuriating of a person he could be, this is, perhaps, the greatest testament to the achievements of this book.

[Anita MacAuslan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is certainly an informative read and I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of de Kooning's work. That said, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I found the writers jumping to several conclusions and making a lot of inferences (mostly regarding his relationships and emotions) without anything to back them up. (i.e. - "Though he never said so, it may have been that de Kooning felt..." and we have a page or so of unconfirmed emotional turmoil.) Also, they seem to spend far more time providing biographies for others in his life, or even tangential to his realm of existence than necessary. Lastly, there are many grammar and spelling errors, and the writers seem to get themselves stuck on certain words and use them needlessly (the one that comes to mind most is 'milieu'). All in all, the editors did not do their job very well; the book should probably have been half its size, more relevant, less subjective, and more readable.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

How did this book win the Pulitzer? When someone chooses to read a biography about an artist, they are usually interested in the artists life and how they came to create their reputation as a master. This telling of DeKooning's life spent 5% of the read explaining his art and technique and 95% on the repetitious nihilistic behavior of drinking and sleeping around. This would have been relevant if the authors tied it to his art for each of the periods of his life. Explaining how these women and levels of intoxication changed or altered his technique and perceptions would have been an assumption in telling this artists story. Instead we are given genealogies for each mistress. I can't even applaud the effort because it feels to be pandering to the masses that watch Desperate Housewives and The Real World. If you want to find out more about DeKooning, go to Wikipedia and save yourself $25 and 630 pages of reading.

[Ruth Charchian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you are not a fan of abstract art, this is a stunning masterful book. It won a Pulitzer Prize for a reason. When you make the decision to read this book be prepared to virtually move in with de Kooning, his masterful paintings, his struggles with alcohol, his friends, his women, and his art dealers. The level of detail and breadth of description is illuminating. His work was his life. Nothing else really mattered to him. He labored over his early paintings trying to determine who he was as an artist. Over his life he reinvented his art several times over impacting the art culture of the world. If Picasso was the pre-eminent painter of Paris at the time, de Kooning was the pre-eminent painter in NY establishing NYC as the center of art equal to Paris. This is probably the best biography i have ever read.

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know this book got great reviews, and I hate to be the sand in the works, but I found it to be kind of creaky. The biographical information was presented in a fairly straightforward way ... interesting, but the writing was only on the level of good journalism. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of one of DeKooning's major works from the period covered. These I found painful, the worst kind of foggy, bum-kissing artspeak. (That's just my opinion; lots of people disagreed.) The one thing that came across clearly, and impressed me tremendously, was how dedicated DeKooning was to his work. He made a lot of bad decisions in his life, indulged in self-destructive and hurtful behavior, but he never stopped painting. And he was one hell of a painter.

[Marta Magnetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The longest artist’s biography I've ever read, and the best written ever. All of De Kooning's life, his aspirations, his ideas, his fears, his fixations. All the events that helped make him one of the most famous painters of all time; the book tells the story of a Dutch boy at the limits of poverty that made of art all his life, until the last day.

La biografia di un artista più lunga che io abbia mai letto e la meglio scritta in assoluto. Tutta la vita di De Kooning, le sue aspirazioni, le sue idee, le sue paure, le sue fissazioni. Tutti gli eventi che contribuirono a renderlo uno dei pittori più famosi di sempre, il libro racconta di come un ragazzino olandese ai limiti della povertà abbia fatto dell��arte la sua vita, fino all’ultimo giorno.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply researched and well-written biography, I would perhaps have given de Kooning: An American Master five stars if I hadn’t read it on the heels of Naifeh and Smith’s Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. While both Pulitzer Prize winning biographies, de Kooning’s stands in the shadow of the monolithic work on Pollock, much as de Kooning’s painting was initially eclipsed by Pollock’s. De Kooning, a more variegated and mutable artist than Pollock, proves a fascinating subject, yet the contextual, historical aspect of Stevens and Swan’s work is constrained.

When compared to Pollock’s biography, a specific and detailed accounting of the techniques and schools of thought relevant at the time and a broader description and association of other important artists’ work is missing, especially towards the later period of de Kooning’s life. A passing glance is given to de Kooning’s contemporaries and environment, while unnecessary speculation as to his frame of mind as an immigrant is rampant. In Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, the authors didn’t hesitate to dedicate pages or even chapters to the development of the history of relevant influences and their contributions to the atmosphere of Pollock’s life as a painter. To understand Pollock one must understand the New York he lived in and the artists he brushed up against. These deftly synthesized nonlinear components serve as reinforcement to the life of the artist being portrayed. All this is disappointingly absent from de Kooning’s biography, which is restricted almost entirely to de Kooning’s person in a suffocating, circular way.

Additionally, stating the colors and other obvious visual features of selected works of art is absurd, adding nothing to the understanding of the painting itself when a color photograph is included. This type of cataloguing is more archival than biographical. Highly subjective interpretations dressed up in convoluted language offer little to redeem the practice of literal description. This, however, is more a general criticism of the practice of describing paintings in words than it is of the authors themselves.

[Govaert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een biografie die je noopt om er eens rustig bij te gaan zitten. In ruim 600 pagina’s doorploegen de auteurs leven en werk van De Kooning.
Het archetype van het getormenteerde genie vormt de rode draad. Een moeilijke onstabiele jeugd, schrijnende armoede, rudimentaire werkomstandigheden, een schier eindeloze rij affaires en scharrels, destructief alcoholgebruik,… niks ontbreekt. Maar op bijna onverklaarbare wijze haalt de scholing, het ambachtelijk vakmanschap, de genialiteit,… steeds opnieuw de bovenhand. Het resulteerde in een carrière die zowat 7 decennia overspant en bakens verzette in de geschiedenis van de schilderkunst.
Zelfs als je niet altijd weet wat je van zijn werk, of bij uitbreiding de abstracte expressionisten, moet denken, dan nog stijgt bij ieder hoofdstuk je fascinatie voor deze uitgeweken Hollander.

[Eryck · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can, read this book with a complimentary book of all his art work. That way when they talk about a painting and moment in his life, you can view that moment--The words describing the artistic moment aren't enough. You want to see what they're talking about and this book doesn't have enough photos of paintings to do that. Hey, I think I'm going to do that with other artists--two books. one a biography, the other all his paintings. Double hey hey. You could do that with music--a bio on the band and all there music on You Tube or Spotify.

[Charles Fried · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be a well-researched and honest narrative of de Kooning’s life and art. Elaine de Kooning was my aunt, and I had heard many of the stories in the book from her and from my father, and their siblings and others. I had met many of the artists and art critics and acquaintances of de Kooning and it was very interesting to me to learn more about their backgrounds and the historical context. This is not a short book. There is a fair amount of commentary on art movements and styles. But that seems necessary and relevant to the history.

[Cameron Maddux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combined with their Francis Bacon bio, Stevens and Swan give an immense perspective on two artists who tackled what figurative painting was post widespread photography. I gained new understanding of de Kooning, of the cultural forces that swirled around him and his "art world." His willingness to turn away from the commercial or the going style is remarkable, and even commendable. The denouement of his life is difficult to contemplate, but still another fitting stage of his paintings which do not easily fit into the narrative.

[Geri Degruy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tome. An amazing tome. Engagingly written, well researched, this book "paints" the life of de Kooning. A confession: I decided to read this biography because I was so appalled by de Kooning's Women paintings and wanted to understand the man. Well, perhaps I understand him a bit better in regard to those paintings... but what I really got from this read was the life of a dogged, disciplined, hard-working, aggressive artist who loved art most of all.

[William Dury · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should probably rate this one higher. Enjoyed “Bacon” so much I followed Stevens and Swan to “de Kooning” and was once again treated to a combination good biography and modern art history education. Unlike Bacon, de Kooning was steadfastly, comically hetero. Socially, financially, the difference in their stations in life could hardly be greater. When Bacon went thru his “poor” period he still vacationed in southern France and lost stacks of money in Monte Carlo. While de Kooning was in his “poor” period he once walked 40 blocks because he didn’t have bus fare. He also,for the most part, didn’t have enough to eat. Bacon came from a wealthy family, de Kooning a poor one. There’s a considerable difference between rich person poor and poor person poor. As stated, de Kooning’s relations with women border on the comical, not to say exploitive. And, you’ve got to admire his wife conducting “affairs” with two of New York’s most important critics in order to further de Kooning’s career. She hitched herself to his star early and never lost the faith, bless her. A constant woman, in her way.

[Linda Dittes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not often does a book tell the detailed story of a angst ridden artist and give the reader the pleasure of getting to know the time period which involves places and other artists. This book flowed even though it took me 6 weeks to read. It certainly deserved a Pulitzer. Now reading Ninth Street Women to fill in for the women artists of the same period.

I loved learning even more about an artist who spent his life dedicated to his craft while ignoring the critiques influence.

[Suzanne Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's no spoiler alert to warn you that biographies never have happy endings. They all end in a graveyard. But this one is more depressing than usual, what with his studio assistants propping him up at the end of his life and putting him in front of a canvas and sticking a paintbrush in his hand. Why couldn't they just let him sit in a lounge chair and watch "Three's Company" reruns?

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an epic search through not just the life of an iconic American artist, but renders a time in America when this kind of life and production of an artist could be - and birth - and conversely reveals what would be the end of this brief moment in history as well, and the end of Modernism as it is historically understood.

[Colleen K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine read. Now go pick up a copy of Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel.

[Cameron Blackshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice and chunky biography about one of the greatest modern painters. I loved reading about all his idiosyncrasies and the strange way he said certain things. Willem certainly led an interesting life.

[Anda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completely understand why this won the Pulitzer.

[Daniel H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long and meticulously detailed, even boring at times, but absolutely essential for understanding 20th century American art.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing well written book that will keep you wanting to turn the page

[Tamera · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely riveting biography.