De Kooning: A Retrospective

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists

De Kooning: A Retrospective Details

Review Elderfield (emer., MoMA) offers an introductory essay that analyzes early critical approaches to the artist and acquaints readers with the spatial complexities of de Kooning's paintings. Dwelling upon de Kooning's use of preparatory sketches and recycled pictorial elements, the author deflates the rhetoric of action painting that has oversimplified the artist's work. Subsequent essays by Elderfield, Mahony, and Jennifer Field offer erudite studies of everything from the WPA works and the "Woman" series to de Kooning's "full arm" "urban landscapes" and the torqued ribbons of his late canvases. This is a catalogue about biography, sources (many of them from pre-modern painting), process, form, and-particularly in the studies of major works by conservationists Jim Coddington and Susan F. Lake-materials…the many reproductions are invaluable, and Delphine Huisinga's meticulous chronologies are a boon to researchers. (S. K. Rich Choice)This volume magnifies and clarifies the great exhibition's many facets, honoring the complexity of de Kooning's historical presence and his work's lasting fascination. Short essays examine various aspects of nine distinct phases of his career; to each phase is appended a detailed chronology and an analysis of materials and methods used in a single representative canvas. In his idiosyncratic syntax, de Kooning once described himself as a "slipping glimpser," referring to his preference for the incomplete or provisional information that a dynamic viewpoint affords, and this teeming book aptly provides slipping glimpses of one of the giants of 20th-century painting. (Maine Stephen Art in America)"De Kooning: A Retrospective" is a superlative exhibition. (Its catalogue is equally fantastic.) (Tyler Green Modern Art Notes/ARTINFO)Bring open eyes and an open mind, for if you cherish the ox of any aesthetic of ideological bias, de Kooning will gore it. (Peter Schjeldahl The New Yorker)The Museum of Modern Art's generous, even prodigal De Kooning retrospective is the most ambitious show New York has seen in a long time - a lavish, knotty and definitive tribute to a tricky and alloyed genius. (Ariella Budick Financial Times)"…the first comprehensive look at de Kooning's work in nearly 30 years…" (Carol Vogel The New York Times)"De Kooning: A Retrospective," at the Museum of Modern Art, is the most piercing, inexhaustible, and relentlessly intense full-on career survey I have ever seen in this country. (Jerry Saltz New York Magazine)If you are looking for something jaw-dropping, then look no further than this sprawling retrospective devoted to one of the most important figures in 20th century American painting. (Carolina Miranda WNYC Culture)Predictably awe-inspiring… In its scale, crème-de-la-crème editing and processional sweep, it's MoMA in excelsis, and for many people it will probably represent this institution's history-writing at its best. (Holland Cotter The New York Times)The first retrospective since de Kooning's death in 1997, it will give us our first opportunity to experience the artist from start to almost-finish. (Kelly Devine Thomas ARTnews) Read more

Reviews

I hesitated to buy this expensive book - I could find most of the pictures on the web and much of the bulk of the volume is writing, which you're supposed to read if you buy the book. Well, pictures in the book are printed better than those you find on the web AND the color is more faithful to that of the originals at the MOMA than you find in less expensive books.. After all, MOMA published the book.So, what about reading the writing? Well, in the early pages there's the usual back scratching among academics et al, but once you get past that the individual essays (chapters) give reasoned insight in readable English. Chapter 5, "Women to Landscape" by John Elderfield is especially illuminating.