m by critics, who even hired some neurologists to back up their claim for faulty paintings. A lot was written to acknowledge and criticize the originator of the Abstract Expressionist School. The exhibition at San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art drew paintings from private and public collections.
Most of the observers and curators called it the most fluid, sensual and celebratory works created in the twentieth century full with “luminous” strokes of yellow, red, orange and blue. The paintings were called as a beautiful interlude of the sun and sky, ocean and ballet. Another impressed critic expressed his opinion about the exhibition by declaring that De Kooning has refused to categorize his paintings throughout his career. He clearly shifted between figurative and abstract paintings and sometimes fused the two. He would reinvent his manner of working style, which eluded his critics.
This renewed his vigor, which he sustained over decades by continual invention and new vision. At the age of 75, De Kooning again shifted by another way of working. His initial acclaimed works with heavy layering of surfaces, dense and excitable strokes and rich diverse colors gave way to open and spare forms. These recent paintings had scraped and carefully constructed surfaces. The primary colors were concentrated with complements of green, orange and violet with subtly toned creamy backgrounds.
These paintings reminded of his 1930s and1940s work with an assurance e and freedom only attained by a master painter. Robert Storr, curator from New York’s Museum of Modern Art was one of the coordinator of his last exhibition. He wrote in Winter/Spring 1997 issue of MOMA Magazine that the story of De Kooning in the 1980s is that of a nearly miraculous recovery of focus and ambition. After several years, De Kooning was newly sober and had astounding determination to resolve outstanding issues of his works. Knowing that failure would have confirmed the opinion of those who were expecting his decline, he said, “Failure ought to take your whole life, active life.” His final creative burst had a sheer number of canvases resembling Women 1,his earlier acclaimed effort. Storr narrates in his essay, that films of the artist at work show that he would labor over certain passages, rephrase a curve, cancel out large, complex areas thus creating a clearly legible distribution of bounded shapes, flowing lines and open spaces.
He was confident of his freedom to paint with all creative restraint. These films produced an uncanny experience reading the tracks of brush across the canvas. These moves would envy anyone then painting. Moving away from Abstract Expressionism, he dwelled on various techniques of neo- expressionism. By virtue of its freshness, De Kooning’s works will be placed in the foreground of any accurate picture of this period. I think De Kooning life’s art achievement speak for themselves by its demand and recognition in the art world.
As the controversy surrounding his late works Kooning was an imaginative which was not easy to be understood by his few contemporaries. He could be likened to Beethoven who created his masterpiece Ninth Symphony when he could hear single word of formed music. A genius in his own department De Kooning, in spite of his progressive disease, created something original and fresh away form his earlier works.