(light piano music)
- [Steven] We're in the Museum of Modern Art in New York
looking at Willem de Kooning's Woman, One from 1950-52.
- [Beth] So this painting took a long time to paint.
De Kooning worked on it over a number of years,
and that's really evident when we look at the surface
of the painting,
which looks like layers and layers
of different textures of paint,
some thin and drippy and some thick and matte.
- [Steven] In fact, some of his friends,
when they spoke about this painting,
remember that de Kooning actually had worked
on a whole series of images of a woman on the same canvas
and would work on it until the painting fell apart.
And then he would basically wipe it away
and start over again.
So, his objective was not a finished product.
- [Beth] But instead process.
The quickness of the brushstrokes, which are so visible,
imply the painting was made quickly.
- [Steven] The brushwork is almost calligraphic
and muscular and tough.
The paint is thick.
And look at the colors that he's using.
They are so garish.
And, as if the brilliant pinks, and orange, and yellows
up against muddy passages of flesh tones wasn't enough,
he's also put a border of silver on the right side.
- [Beth] The colors seem to be intentionally difficult,
those fleshy, pink-y, peachy tones,
but also olive green that feels really dissonant.
- [Steven] Willem de Kooning is one
of the central abstract expressionists.
He was friends with Jackson Pollock.
He was spending time with Mark Rothko.
And yet here's a man who goes back to the human figure.
And large-scale, seated female figure
goes all the way back in the history of art to the Madonna.
This is sacred art
that has been brought into the 20th century
and made profane.
- [Beth] And commercial.
The eyes, the emphasis on her breasts,
I start to see the relationship to images of pinup girls,
sexualized images of women with thick lipstick,
teeth showing, and wide grins,
and mascara, and eyeliner.
- [Steven] It's such an interesting moment
in American history.
GIs coming back from the war.
The representation of the woman,
either on the silver screen or on a movie poster.
- [Beth] Taking on the sexualized,
eroticized images of women,
she comes forward toward us.
She's overwhelming in her size.
She fills up the canvas.
- [Steven] And it's important to remember
that Willem de Kooning was one of the few artists
of the abstract expressionist generation
that had been trained in a very traditional way.
- [Beth] He could draw as well
as any academically-trained artists
going back to the 19th century.
- [Steven] It's about finding an art
that is still meaningful
in a sea of reproductive technologies,
where visual images are bombarding us.
And it's about what the tradition of the figure means
in an art world that has turned to abstraction.
- [Beth] I find myself looking at the figure
and trying to find it.
Where is her right arm?
Does it hang down by her side?
Does it come across her lap?
Where are her legs or her thighs?
- [Steven] So, he's constructing that body for us.
But he's also refusing
to allow it to exist in any coherent way.
So, given a kind of abstract field,
how do we populate that with the human figure?
Where does she exist?
Part of the tension is
that the painting is essentially an abstract field.
If he had pushed the painting a little bit further
and the figure had dissolved,
it's the abstract field of the canvas
that would have asserted itself
and precluded the space for the figure to exist.
This is a painting right on the edge,
where the figure is still able to maintain itself in space,
even given the hazards of the abstraction
in which she exists.
- [Beth] There is something about that space
between abstraction and figuration
that has to do with the fact
that this is a male artist painting a female figure.
She's overwhelming.
- [Steven] De Kooning has taken
the desire of the male viewer for the pinup,
for the commercialized female figure
in contemporary visual culture
and used that as a kind of fuel for this painting.
- [Beth] The paint is aggressive and energetic.
Her eyes are bulging.
Her teeth are bared.
There is aggression in this painting.
- [Steven] This was improvisation.
This was a kind of experimentation.
This was a kind of discovery.
As this contemporary representation of the female figure,
it is also about how that work is made.
(light piano music)