Hello and welcome to Portrait in a Minute.
I am Brandon Fortune, Chief Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and curator of the
Elaine de Kooning: Portraits exhibition.
Elaine de Kooning was the most important Abstract Expressionist portrait artist; she bridged
the gap between abstraction and representation.
The first of four children born to Marie and Charles Fried in 1918, in Brooklyn, New York,
Elaine was raised in an art-centered world of museum visits and theater outings.
She began to draw around age five with her mother’s encouragement.
As she grew up, she was competitive and athletic.
After graduating from high school, Elaine ultimately found her way to the American Artists
School, where she discovered artists who were working progressively with the raw materials
of modernism.
She met Willem de Kooning around 1938 and soon began to study painting and drawing with
him in his studio.
They also began a romantic relationship and were married in December 1943.
By that time the two had become part of a generation of artists known as Abstract Expressionists.
Elaine painted abstractly, but was becoming known for her gestural portraits of friends
and family.
Although Willem de Kooning is now better known as a leading Abstract Expressionist, Elaine
said that instead of working in his shadow, she “painted in his light.”
During the 1950s and 1960s, Elaine began to show her work regularly, and also became an
art critic at ArtNews magazine, where she was celebrated for being among the first to
write in-depth about artists in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Despite being in a world dominated by abstract art, she never gave up on her own representational
style.
Her inspiration in the 1960s to create a series of portraits of men in her typical quickly
brushed, energetic painting style led to a commission from the Truman Library for a portrait
of President John F. Kennedy.
It was believed she could capture a likeness of the president quickly, since he would not
be likely to pose formally.
In late December 1962, Elaine went to his vacation home in Palm Beach, where she painted
the president as he pursued his everyday activities.
Returning to New York, she continued working, painting from her sketches as well as images
from the news media.
She created dozens of drawings, watercolors and paintings.
She was so consumed by this commission that she stopped her painting for many months after
Kennedy’s assassination.
Elaine challenged societal roles by refusing to be defined by a single label in pursuit
of her passion.
Although she was part of the abstract expressionist movement, figuration and portraiture were
also a mainstay of her work.
She searched for the perfect pose for her portrait subjects, looking for that something
in each subject that is characteristic and not static—that something which we see in
a glimpse.
Not wanting to be known for just one mode of expression, she used a variety of canvas
sizes and used many different drawing media, including charcoal, pencil, gouache, and watercolor
washes.
Today we appreciate her contributions to portraiture, both painted and drawn, and her appreciation
of the fluidity of likeness in modern portraiture.
This has been Portrait in a Minute.