Woman III Unit 6 Art Presentation

 Link to my Google Slides presentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sXp2IRmdGFoZ6ACPQcu_5wHAljANcJXVINY9JyVWdqk/edit?usp=sharing

Presentation handout:

Willem de Kooning’s Abstractionism in Woman III (1953)

Biography:

• 1904-1997 born in Netherlands
• Attended Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques for eight years
• 1926 de Kooning entered the United States as a stowaway and eventually settled in Hoboken, New Jersey where he supported himself as a house painter 
• 1928 de Kooning began to paint still life and figure compositions
• 1930s he began exploring abstraction using biomorphic shapes and simple geometric compositions
• He was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, particularly action painting
• Action painting is the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping brushstrokes and the chance of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas 
• 1938 de Kooning met Elaine Fried whom he married in 1943
• They heavily influenced each other’s art
• De Kooning was awarded many honors in his lifetime, including The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964

Early Works:

• Two Men Standing, Man
  • 1938 de Kooning embarked on a series of sad, staring male figures
  • Integration with spatial planes, lines, and time
• Seated Figure (Classic Male)
  • 1941-1943 he struggled with classicism, the following of harmony, restraint, and adherence to standards of form and craftsmanship 
    • Shown through the torso
  • Reducing it to an optical illusion to symbolize it making no sense in the modern world
• Elegy
  • 1939 early abstraction
  • He takes things out, transforms them, and returns them to art on his own terms
  • Surrealism – explore the creative potential of the unconscious mind
• Pink Angels
  • 1945; done in the wake of World War II 
  • Evolution from figuration to abstraction
  • Anatomical forms that have been torn apart or are in the process of colliding
  • Possibly an eye or a part of a fish head in the bottom left corner, and a circle and rectangle in the bottom center next to a crab-like form in the bottom right

Woman III

• Savagely applied pigment
• Use of colors that seem randomly distributed on his canvas
• Reveals a woman all too congruent with some of modern man’s most widely held sexual fears
• Toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities symbolizes Freudian insights
• Women were too far from the stereotypical image of the submissive American Housewives
• More realistic, despite abstractness

Critical Reception:

• Woman I–VI caused a sensation with its violent imagery and impulsive, energetic technique
• More of a chaotic effect than imitating the real world
  • Maybe a chaotic representation because of his tensed relations with his mother growing up influencing his perception of all women
• Some saw the painting as a betrayal, a regression to an outmoded figurative tradition
• Others have called it misogynistic, interpreting it as objectifying and violent
• de Kooning himself said “Beauty becomes petulant to me. I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous”

Work Cited

Exhibit-E.com. “Biography – The Artist.” Willem de Kooning Foundation. Accessed February 25, 2020. https://www.dekooning.org/the-artist/biography.

Grunenberg, Christoph, Celia Stahr, and Joan Marter. “De Kooning Family.” Grove Art Online, 2003.https://www-oxfordartonline-com.ezproxy.lib.davidson.edu/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000021873#oao-9781884446054-e-7000021873.

Sidelnikov, Eugene. “Woman III by Willem De Kuning: History, Analysis & Facts.” Arthive. Accessed February 25, 2020. https://arthive.com/willemdekooning/works/373906~Woman_III.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Willem De Kooning.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., December 9, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-de-Kooning.

Vogel, Carol. “Landmark De Kooning Crowns Collection.” The New York Times. The New York Times, November 18, 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/arts/design/18pain.html.

“Willem De Kooning.” MoMA, 2017. https://www.moma.org/artists/3213?locale=en.

“Willem De Kooning Artworks & Famous Paintings.” The Art Story. Accessed February 25, 2020. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/de-kooning-willem/artworks/.