Peter Schjedahl, in his essay, De Kooning later life was compared to King Lear in Shakespeare’s play. It is said of him , ” The wonder is, he hath endures so long./ He but usurped his life.” Peter continued on with these lyrics of King Lear to praise De Kooning’s later life. Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out; And take upon’s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out, In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones That ebb and flow by the moon. “Willem De Kooning: The Late Paintings, The 1980s” , an exhibit in Modern Museum of San Fransisco, was the center of a critical controversy. He was labeled to be lost to Alzheimer’s disease and thought to be slipped from reality.
According to a critic in New York Daily, ” the paintings are like seeing a comic actor cast unexpectedly in a serious role.” She further stated that there was a evidence of loss of energy in those recent paintings. To be specific she picked Untitled XIII (1986). She criticized by saying, ” the quality of line dissolves from improvisational to conventional. Rather than making their own paths, lines become mere stripes, tracing the outlines of forms, already laid down on the canvas.” The critic accused the exhibit curator Gary Garrells of taking an unusual step of collecting a panel of experts to determine when De Kooning’s work began to lose coherence. The panel included painter Joseph Johns and curator Robert Storr of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
After close examination of his paintings the expert group determined that De Kooning’s work faltered after 1988. Gary Garrells declared the paintings made before 1988 as the most beautiful and sensual abstracts works of modern art. There was not mere criticism 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