De Kooning, Bosch and Bruegel: Some Fundamental Themes Author(s): David Anfam Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol.

145, No. 1207, American Art (Oct., 2003), pp. 705-715 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20073233 . Accessed: 10/02/2011 18:04
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De

Bosch and Bruegel: Kooning, some fundamental themes

by DAVID ANFAM, BrandeisUniversity -

THE EXPRESSIVE AND STYLISTIC EXTREMES of Willem art are well On known. the one hand, Kooning's

de the

of his abstractions from the decade of cataclysmic violence the mid-1940s the wrenching disloca onwards, alongside tions in his more work of the same period, figurative provoked B. Hess
'savage

critics
dissections'

such as Clement describe

'Procrustean' and

to perceptively

and Thomas Greenberg their impact in terms of

methods.1 On the

taste for grotesque caricature extended other, de Kooning's from the Seated man (clown) (Fig.24), through the 'Woman' to the mangled series of the 1950s, that protagonists the graphics (Fig.40), canvases and sculptures of his populate evokes an final twenty years or so. This second penchant different impulse. It often strikes, willy-nilly, the altogether keynote of what he called 'hilariousness'.2 de Kooning that have Likewise, merged lowly elements ? in Abstract few equivalents elsewhere Expressionism cut from magazine advertisements mouths (one of which to generate Woman I of 1950?52), aswell as a depic helped tion'of Marilyn Monroe (1954) and females who flaunt their ? most with a long intimate parts before the viewer's gaze admiration for the old masters, standing including Rubens, and Titian.3 that 'flesh was Indeed, his maxim Velazquez was reason why invented!' time the oil-painting yokes honoured with human anatomy.4 Titles that by painterliness turns perhaps imply a transcendent, supernal or moral aura this realm of earthly delights. They include counterpoise Orestes, Itinerant chapel, Fallen angels, Easter Judgment day, Monday,
scenes

of them also many ? the analogous social tradition of'Carnival' and which bear striking parallels to those in To be sure, de Kooning's the work of de Kooning. debt to sources - notably Arshile Gorky, Pablo Picasso, modernist Chaim and other School of Paris Soutine, Henri Matisse awareness of nineteenthand painters, together with his from existentialist thinkers, twentieth-century ranging to Jean-Paul Sartre and his post-War Soren Kierkegaard ? was and unquestionable. American popularisers huge that fundamental identified with can be found, the aim of this article to repeat, let alone dis solid scholarly premises. mantle, Instead, the purpose is to expand such a framework by suggesting further, earlier that might have de Kooning wellsprings predisposed concern with dimensions towards his later of pleasure, angst and despair, caricature, corporeal distortion, lacerating tur Hence those moil, As a seeing and ethereal transcendence. judgmental instance of the artist's association of these ideas, we typical should recall his comment in 1951 about the atomic bomb's out 'The eyes that actually saw the light melted explosion: it is not

themes

and motifs

of sheer ecstasy. For one instant, everybody was the same A truly Christian color. It made angels out of everybody. terse shifts of thought in light, painful but forgiving.'6 The in their double-logic. this statement are quintessential Apoc alypse is tied to light and vision, while the darkest humour that 'melted out of sheer ecstasy') and a latter-day pun (eyes ishment from above transform us into redeemed, timeless Ifwe recognise here that can be remotely angels. anything in then it is, oxymoronically, rooted called theological,
secular irony.

Black Friday, The

and . . .Whose

time of the fire, various Crucifixion

was writ in water. Lastly, over

name

mordant

is the leitmotif of the artist's origins arching these polarities in Holland, by David Sylvester's often-quoted exemplified for a 1994 essay: 'the Dutch masters of the starting-point modern at home, the Dutch masters of seventeenth century worked times worked 'low' abroad.'5 Grimness and hilarity, and

was unquestionably De Kooning familiar with the con of the cepts of irony, wit and sinfulness in, say, the writings is Danish theologian, Kierkegaard.7 Equally clear, however, the likelihood that someone who was born in Rotterdam, its Academy for of Fine Arts, stayed in Belgium several months in 1924, visiting museums in Brussels and a strong sense of Dutch and always retained Antwerp, would have been familiar with his Netherlandish ethnicity to de artistic forebears and their world. In fact, according no modern was as good as the greatest old Kooning, masters.8 That the artist's style and approach bear compari son with his Netherlandish and Flemish predecessors is thus another touchstone a few notable notwithstanding predictably
4 Scrivani, op. cit. (note 2), p. 167. s D. Sylvester: 'Flesh was the Reason',

attended

the past 'high', carnality and spiritual gravity, all therefore coalesce here in an idiosyn and the present, cratic mix of opposites. if anything, might link these disparities? An what, answer to the overlooked, obvious, but nevertheless mostly question may lie in the fine art and popular traditions of de Yet Kooning's In short, it is in the universe background. as Hieronymus such Netherlandish by depicted painters or imitators) their workshops Bosch and Pieter Bruegel (plus native
In preparing this article, I thank for their help and stimulus: Frederick Bearman, Elizabeth Cowling, Laurinda Dixon, Timothy Hyman, Judith Wolfe and Carolin C. Young. 1 C. Greenberg: ed.: Clement (1955), inj. O'Brian, '"American-Type" Painting' and London 1993, III, p.222. Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, Chicago T. Hess: 'De Kooning Paints a Picture', Art News 52 (March 1953), p.31. 2 G. Scrivani, ed.: The Collected Writings ofWillem de Kooning, Madras and New York 1988, p.84. 3 See C. (20th Pepper: 'The Indomitable de Kooning', New York Times Magazine November 1983), p.45.

culture

in the critical exceptions,

the references

literature. Yet, are

inM.

Prather:

exh. cat. Willem

de Koon

(National Gallery of Art) 1994, p. 15. ing: Paintings, Washington 6 De in Scrivani, op. cit. (note 2), p.60. John Hersey's Kooning novella-length article in the New Yorker 'Hiroshima' (1946) was amuch-read starting-point for the belief that the A-bomb had, atworst, actually dissolved its victims. 7 On the modern art and its criticism, see existential framework of de Kooning's D. Cateforis: Willem de Kooning's 'Women' of the IQ50S:A Critical History of their Reception and Interpretation, Ann Arbor 8 Scrivani, op. cit. (note 2), p. 108. 1992.

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21. Detail

(Kunsthistorisches

of The peasant wedding, by Pieter Bruegel. Museum, Vienna).

1567. Panel,

114 by

163 cm.

22. Seated figure

de Kooning. (classic male), by Willem panel, 137.5 by 91.5 cm.

1940. Oil

and charcoal on Z?rich).

(Daros Collection,

to a seventeenth-century context and the painterly panache as well as evinced by Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Rubens, the luminosity of such landscapists as Jan van Goyen.9 That evidence also said, considerable implies that de Kooning asmuch not more, to artistic exemplars if in the responded, may most Low Countries from the sixteenth century. On this score, it also seem a striking coincidence that one of the fore of ironic wit, who revealed the absurdi practitioners ties of humanity's fallen condition, should have been another (albeit far earlier) native of de Kooning's birthplace, Itwould be no exaggeration to observe Desiderius Erasmus. a special niche in In Praise of Folly occupies lore and de Kooning would Dutch doubtless have everyday it at grass-roots encountered level. to bracket de Kooning at this and Erasmus However, should therefore first con stage is at best premature. We that Erasmus's sider the more concrete signs that point towards his involve ment with the realm of the northern Renaissance of the late to sixteenth centuries. fifteenth In this regard, de Kooning's
9 See the and L. Marin in D. Bozo et al, essays by R. Rosenblum prototypical eos.: exh. cat. Willem deKooning, Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou) 1984, pp.i 1-15 and 31-39. 10H. Gaugh: Willem de Kooning, New York 1983, p. 113, note 106. 11 see also L. Dixon: Ibid., pp.80-85; 2003, pp.264-65. Bosch, London Gaugh recurs in de Kooning's added that Bosch's beak-faced monster Clam digger (1966). 12See T. Hess: Willem deKooning Drawings, Greenwich CT 1972, pp.54?55. 706 OCTOBER 2OO3 CXLV THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE

overt during became the latter part of his predilections ? on career. In 1983, Harry F. asserted the basis of Gaugh interviews with de Kooning's Elaine that the artist wife, more, been fascinated by Bosch's work'.10 Further that de Kooning's Man Gaugh convincingly proposed Stone Gallery, New the (1967; Allan York) paraphrased as Satan, seated man-devouring often identified demon, 'has always

at the lower right of the right-hand panel of Bosch's de Kooning made several of earthly delights.11 Lastly, in the summer of 1969 while in Spoleto, drawings Italy, that are openly based upon a of Bruegel's Parable of reproduction the blind.12 Do these late clues alert us to a far earlier, perhaps even foundational, phase in de Kooning's strategies? In researching the imagery of Judgment day (Fig.25), Lisa Mintz Messinger raised the possibility that its four anthro located Garden the kind of fantastic creatures pomorphic beings resemble that Bruegel had portrayed, while also declaring that de was an avid reader of the Museum of Kooning Metropolitan Art's Bulletin.1* Messinger adds that the June 1943 issue of
13L. Messinger:

exh. cat. Abstract Expressionism: Works on Paper, New York (Met of Art) 1993, pp.22 and 30. ropolitan Museum 14The term in the grylli is applied to the fantastic creatures seen, for example, of medieval manuscripts, whose heads and legs are jammed into their marginalia often nearly spheroid bodies. Various late drawings by de Kooning unequivocally depict such humanoids. 15 H. Davis,: 'Fantasy and Irony in Peter BruegeFs Prints', Metropolitan Museum of

DE

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seen".'15 Here actual

influence

throughout abstract and the figurative, beauty and repulsiveness, ground craft and demotic and space, old-masterly subjects. The atti the sometimes termed by critics (following tude at stake an 'either/or' one of Kierkegaard's title of books) ideology ? most famous pro in two of de Kooning's is summarised nouncements. First, his remark that 'even abstract shapes must me one
23- Detail o?Ecce homo, by Hieronymus 75 by 61 cm. (St?delsches Kunstinstitut, Bosch, c.1470 or later. Panel, Frankfurt).

in nuce, surely, is a presentiment (if not an de Kooning's paramount principle upon) his work and aesthetic of uniting antitheses: the

'that's what fascinates have a likeness' and, secondly, I can never be sure of, and no to make something else can either'.16 This apotheosis of ambiguity may be the moral certitudes of Erasmus dichotomies. upon comparable knack for voicing had a renowned a kind that one of his biographers of quips'. Thus he once told Mrs John

ethically, from light-years, builds its structuring yet Likewise, de Kooning tantalising witticisms dubs 'mixed-meaning

24. Seated man (clown), by Willem de Kooning. 1941. Oil on board, 103.2 by 61 cm. (Allan Stone Gallery, New York).

bucks' and D. Rockefeller, Snr., 'You look like a million 'I have to change to stay the same'.17 This idiot? declared, savant-like synthesis of absurdity and sageness enunciates as 'the in another setting, has been aptly characterised what, a description that derives from an of the riddle', wisdom does Bosch's account of Bosch's work.18 Nor pertinence end there. On the contrary, itmay explain certain otherwise in de Kooning's output of the 1940s. baffling phenomena of sources Yard and others have invoked amultitude Sally that of men and women to rationalise the strange depictions de Kooning began in the late 1930s and continued the next decade. The chosen art-historical models through encom

frescos, Ingres, pass Mesopotamian Pompeian figurines, ? not to that mention the assumption Picasso and Gorky are either self-portraits, mannequins and/or the subjects and Rudolph friends of the artist such as Edwin Denby scant of influences, this plethora Burckhardt.19 Despite explanation (clown) or, countenance male) other (Fig. faces still exists for the angry glare of Seated man the thick-lipped, in a different mould, fleshy of Seated figure (classic and bulbous physique ? as are various both of them distinguished, 22)

several of Bruegel's this journal reproduced prints which most such monstrous contained humanoids, accurately Davis's McParlin termed grylli.** As it happens, Howard trait of discerning '"All human each other: in conjunction with opposites have two sides which like the Silenus of Alcibiades, things, .... What at first sight is beautiful may really are dissimilar be ugly; the learned ignorant; the noble, base .... Lift off the mask of Silenus, and you have the opposite of what you have article also cited Erasmus's remarkable

in this phase, by fashioned that de Kooning to the noses.20 Unless, that is, recourse ismade protuberant In and Bruegel. in paintings by Bosch caricatural visages man (clown) recalls the of Seated the demeanour particular, and scowling, toothy physiognomies big-nosed beady-eyed, the faces for example, that often occur in Bosch: witness, in the crowd

Seated in his Ecce homo (Fig.23). Likewise, - as to its face is so peculiar especially figure (classic male) its with have little in common, upon close examination, the rocky in Picasso: for instance, kin closest putative in Young acrobat on a ball (1905; Pushkin male saltimbanque the of Fine Arts, Moscow). State Museum By contrast, ? its pouting details of Seated figure (classic male) lips, singular ? do bear some owlish eyebrows, big nose and bulging body
18 and B. Vermet: Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete P. Vandenbroeck J. Koldeweij, 2001, p. 100. Paintings and Drawings, Rotterdam 19 See S. Yard: 'Willem De Arts 53 (November 1978), pp.96? Kooning's Women', 101; idem: 'Willem de Kooning's Men', Arts $6 (December 1981), pp. 134-43. ? ? in both 20 repro See, for example, the sharp-nosed heads drawings and paintings duced inHess, op. cit. (note 16), pp.20, 24 and 34, and also the pointed, aggressively peering Seated man (1939; Hirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington). CXLV OCTOBER 2003 7^7

Art Bulletin i (June 1943), p.293. 16T. Hess: exh. cat. Willem de Kooning, New York (Museum ofModern Art) 1968, ArtNews 71 (Septem de Kooning', 'Interview with Willem p.47. H. Rosenberg: ber 1972), p.58. 17L. Hall: Elaine and Bill: Portrait 1993, p. 102. J.Wolfe: of aMarriage, New York exh. cat. Willem de Kooning: Works from 1?51-1?81, East Hampton (Guild Hall) 1981, p.16.

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resemblance

to

Peasant wedding physique, while

in Bruegel's the figure of the bagpiper even if hybridised onto a Picassoid (Fig.21), the red and olive/ochre colour pairing is influence

also mutual.21 At its inception, Bruegel's potential rather than iconographie. may have been merely stylistic even if such connections de between Thus far, however, are granted, the question and Bruegel and Bosch Kooning have focused on the latter pair of why the former might
of artists remains unanswered. Two reasons present them

selves. When

The both

first is contextual, are combined with

al parallels concerning ent coincidences may overall The witnessed likelihood.

iconographie. the aforementioned pictori the treatment of figures, then appar further cohere into the realm of

the

second

and its aftermath years of the Second World War a surge of interest, especially in the United States, The prominence of the fantastic, in Bosch and Bruegel. irrational in their works horrific and apparently perfectly to in which it had become suited a period commonplace remark that those qualities dominated reality everyday so to speak, by the apocalyptic chaos of war.22 This upended, on from of the rediscovery itself followed development the Surrealists had Bosch earlier in the century when a lineage that duly claimed him for one of their precursors,

de Kooning. 2s. Judgment day, by Willem 56.2 by 72.4 cm. (Metropolitan Museum

1946. Oil and charcoal on paper, of Art, New York).

2?-christ ^^^B^^^^^^^^i||^^^^^^^^^^^^^8
thorns, by mmB^^^^^^E|^?^^^^^^^B|^^^^^^^^^^^^B| Hieronymus g^^^^^HpHHsHHp'S^^S^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Bosch. HW^^^^ ill^Gifll^aflH^^^HHi^^^^^^H C.1479.
?aJ^HEit t, ^HV ^^^ h??i?^I^^^HI^I^^' ^^^Hh^^^^I^^^^^^HB'"'

the artist's inclusion in Alfred H. Barr's exhibi peaked with of and Surrealism at the Museum tion Fantastic Art, Dada, to object that in 1936. Moreover, New York, Modern Art, aversion de Kooning's (or at best apathy) temperamental towards trend
as less a

J^^lEBfe^^iJInBi

* I^^Bjta^' ^^|ff

l^lkb''' ^HI^H ^^H^^^HhH^I

Jk^m (Nationai
Gallery, London).

cm. fll^H by 58.5

Surrealism

would by

have
than

excluded
whose

is to ignore how,
proto-Surrealist

the 1940s, Bosch

someone

this him from was regarded

vision was

stylistically freshly ness of the anxieties, brutishness In a similar vein, Howard condition. beset the human text in the Metropolitan's Bulletin took pains Davis's 1943 as 'highly to describe prints Bruegel's phantasmagoric and rational',23 while well-illustrated 1947 monograph conscious of the popular
master's

'modern'

both

and in terms of its aware that and general menaces

^^^BH^Hj^El^

' -MIL )^^BBHp i

' j

period

discourse
relevance.

slim but Daniel's Howard on Bosch typified the tone the Netherlandish regarding
In Daniel's words, the

? 'almost incidental surrealist characteristics [my italics] of Bosch the smoke and fire of devastating Hell, violent death, the to end all nightmares, the landscapes and weird nightmare ? so him into infinity make constructions disappearing to the people of our troubled world'.24 interesting in Bosch articles reproducing appeared Simultaneously, ones mainstream (Magazine of Art) and vanguard journals also illustrated de Kooning's such as The Tiger's Eye, which latter's piece on Bosch, work.25 The by Kurt Seligmann, even began by viewing the Garden of earthly delights as

contemporary

though sition:

it were 'Despite

an 'all-over' Abstract the wide

is Perspective over the whole wilfully destroyed by gigantic objects spread of gradually the flight into depth counteracting panel, the most apposite and beings.'26 Probably diminishing things intensity and distinctness. of all discussions champion for our purposes Expressionism, came from Clement the leading Greenberg. of Abstract

space. Background, painted with equal

compo Expressionist there is little feeling of expanse are distance and foreground middle

21 Is there the stool on which Seated figure (classic male) perhaps a parallel between the two rectan sits and the stool legs to the right of the bagpiper, not to mention and the rectangular pictures on the wall at gles at upper left in the de Kooning man 'breast' of de Kooning's upper right in the Bruegel? Similarly, the bulging may recall the volume of the bagpipes that the yokel clasps. The bagpiper is also If the title Seated one of the most frequently reproduced details of the painting. a typical 'take' on what is figure (classic male) is indeed the artist's, then itwould be plainly an anti-classical personage. 22 See S. Stich, ed.: exh. cat. Anxious Visions, Surrealist Art, Berkeley (University 708 OCTOBER 2OO3 CXLV THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE

Art Museum) 1990. 23Davis, op. cit. (note 15), p.292. 24H. Daniel: 1947, p. 5. Hieronymus Bosch, New York 25 Seznec: 'The in Art', Magazine of St. Anthony ofArt 40 (March J. Temptation on the Right of Night: Observations 'The Hollow 1947), pp. 87-91; K. Seligmann: of the Tryptic by Jerome Bosch', The Tiger's [sic] "The Garden of Delights" Wing Eye 9 (October 1949), pp.60-67. 26 op. cit. (note 25), p.61. Seligmann, 27C. 'The Flemish Masters' Greenberg:

(published

in the Nation,

nth

August

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The

critic's 1945 review of Joseph van der Elst's study The Last Flowering of the Middle Ages in effect thrust early Nether landish art into the limelight of the New York avant-garde's 'plastic means' to the painting was even far

Bosch's attention, specifically instancing out of all relation which 'show amodernity then around

him. Brueghel, his continuator, ther ahead of his times than van Eyck had been.'27 this background Against celebrating Bosch's modernity, not have been anomalous during the early to mid itwould to have looked to his predecessor's 1940s for de Kooning achievements.

The title of Judgment day may apocalyptic therefore be only one of several hints that the old master was on his mind. Although the exact order of de Kooning's production during the 1940s cannot be finalised until the of a catalogue raisonn?, Judgment day has by all publication a special significance. It is probably the catalyst initiated the extraordinary of progressively sequence over compositions with incidents that densely packed into each other which continues with Pink angels (Fig. ever more abstract in the landmark creations of becomes accounts next three years (1948; Princeton such asMailbox that all tear 3 8), the
27- Tabletop of the seven deadly sins and the four last things, by Hieronymus 1500-25. Panel, 120 by 150 cm. (Museo del Prado, Madrid). Bosch.

Art Museum) of Attic (1949; Metropolitan Museum of and Excavation Art, New York) 5). So what might (Fig.3 there be of Bosch about Judgment day? has described Judgment day's design as com Messinger of four quadrants, each filled by a biomorphic prised entity, titanic maelstroms centred evokes

(Fig. 29) and Black Friday in the and culminates

around a small glaring white disc. This arrangement that of Bosch's Christ crowned with thorns (Fig.26), a that was well in colour in an article painting reproduced on artWilliam Gaunt in the issue of by the English writer The Studio for October the vertical 1938.28 Notwithstanding format of the Bosch, it too presents four tormenting pres ences that beset Christ's central, still and riveting gaze. De at least two nails (at upper cen also incorporated Kooning tre left), below them a strangely shaded spheroid that hints at amemory of the highlighted armour-clad hand of Bosch's at upper left and, in the upreaching persecutor appendages of the two lowermost grylli (a yellow one at lower left, the an echo of the similar gestures of red one to its right), the hands of the two antagonists in the lower half of Bosch's art aspects of Judgment day have preoccupied picture. Other are that de historians while full exegesis. These eluding so far as to describe went the imagery as 'the four Kooning at the Gates of Paradise' and that his assistant, Milton angels who enormously Resnick into enlarged the finished work a ballet entitled another that became the backdrop for called Labyrinth (1946; Allan Stone Gallery, New York) the central white circle the 'eye' from which the artist
worked.29 28. Detail of Fig.27.

it not then be plausible that de Kooning notori Might ous for compacting allusions and fragmented images into and who said 'I can open almost layered, complex wholes I could be and find a painting any book of reproductions ? influenced by' into the conception of Judgment dovetailed day a second work by Bosch?^0 If so, this could well be the

that eventually concludes I945)> m O'Brian, op. cit. (note i), II, p.31. Greenberg painting of the period 'only leaps forward once more with Bosch and Brueghel'. Three years later Greenberg of the again lauded Bosch's strength in 'The Necessity Old Masters', Partisan Review 15 (July 1948). 28Note tormentor at upper left the arrow(?) thrust through the hat of Bosch's and the diagonal in an identical position jutting from de Kooning's gryllus-cum corner. All of the works by Bosch discussed here had in the upper-left biomorph been in C. de Tolnay: Hieronymus reproduced (note 15), concludes by referring to de Tolnay. Bosch, Basel 1937; Davis, L. von Baldass: Hieronymus op. at. Bosch,

Vienna 29The

1943, also reproduces the Tabletop and the London Crowning of thorns. tangled history ofJudgment day's genesis, its relation to Backdrop for Labyrinth (the ballet itself was performed at New York's Times Hall on 5 th April 1946) and the record of who saidwhat about it, is summarised in Prather, op. cit. (note 5), p.94 and p. 102, notes 5-13, and in S. Yard: Willem de Kooning, New York 1997, p.3o and p. 119, note 46. 30De quoted inR. Shiff: 'Water and Lipstick: Kooning in Prather, op. at. (note 5), p.67. de Kooning in Transition',

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29- Mailbox, composition

de Kooning. 1948. Oil, enamel and charcoal on byWillem board, 58.7 by 76.2 cm. (Private collection).

on de Kooning. 32. Zot, by Willem 1949. Oil on paper, mounted of Art, New York). panel, 45.7 by 51.4 cm. (Metropolitan Museum

30. Christ carrying the cross, by Hieronymus Bosch, ci515. Panel, 76.7 by 83.5 cm. (Museum voor Schone K?nsten, Ghent).

Tabletop of the seven deadly sins and four last things (Fig.27), since it is there that we find a unique of the conjunction motifs that, by his own account, engaged de Kooning. First, the Last Judgment (that is, 'Judgment day') in the roundel at upper right, complete with its 'four angels' (Fig.28); second, 'the gates of Paradise' in the vignette at lower right; third, at the exact centre.31 The of God 'eye' inscription beneath God's iris drives home the message that the evil scenes arrayed around the rest of the 'table', and its very pic the torial organisation, make 'Beware, beware, amply graphic: God sees.'32 In turn, the warning and its associations lead to the crux of ideas that de Kooning first essayed in this period to pursue long afterwards, although inways and continued that radically changed their import. These fundamental themes can be gathered under a reli or theological mantle without the least inference that gious de Kooning was devout by any conventional definition (and - an a secular he was not).33 Rather, outlook that theology filters religious concepts and subjects through a decidedly - runs art lens existential, subjective through de Kooning's and imagination to end. Some of his almost from beginning earliest graphics drawn while he was still in Holland depict a fallen or wicked world: a nasty street pimps, prostitutes, kiss (1925; Allan Stone he portrayed entomb York).34 Gallery, dramas (The dead man, c.1938; private collection) ment-type and actually fallen human beings.35 Nor was the Crucifixion ? ever far from de Kooning's it be in the whether thoughts36 ladder, skull and nails seen in Abstraction [sic] (c.1949; Museo New Thereafter the study of 1950 inspired, Madrid), Thyssen-Bornemisza, to Hess, Griinewald's Isenheim according by altarpiece, or the sequence of Crucifixions in charcoal from 1966 are two scenarios (Fig.40).37 At stake in these disparate brawl and the femme fatale of The

31. Detail of the right panel of The garden of earthly delights, by Hieronymus Bosch. C.1470. Panel, 220 by 97 cm. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

31 For the Gaunt see 'A Fifteenth-Century Surrealist: Hieronymus reproduction, and opposite where another Bosch', The Studio 116 (October 1938), pp.189-96, 'Bosch' is reproduced, text 'The Last Judgment'. Gaunt's incorrecdy captioned interest revives just at the psy begins: 'Bosch is one of those old masters inwhom chological who moment, stirrings of the present.' gives the weight of the past's authority to the impatient

32 For an apposite discussion of this theme's history, see A. Schmidt-Burckhardt: 'The AlLSeer: God's Eye as Proto-Surveillance', in T.Y. Levin, U. Frohne and P. Weibel, eds.: exh. cat. Ctrl [space]: rhetorics of surveillancefrom Bentham to Big 2002 , pp. 17-31. Brother, Karlsruhe (ZKM Center for Art and Media) 33De second parents were Kooning's registered as Protestant but his mother's husband (Lassooy, with whom de Kooning lived) was Roman Catholic. The most

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constants around which a judgmental gaze from

the works of the 1940s first pivot: on high and a fallen world below, tribulation.38 corporeal more into manifold, inflected ad infinitum.

supernal salvation and earth-bound, two extremes The then dispersed subtle oppositions For example, tormentor hybrids that fills Mailbox that de Kooning the biomorphic of Judgment and

?ryi/ws-cum-Boschian into the tumult is subsequently to the abstracted day multiply

of body parts that dominates Zot kaleidoscope (Fig. 3 2) and Excavation. As befits a fallen domain, are carnal ? they replete with disembodied eyes, limbs akimbo, snarling mouths, swollen curves and so forth, as well as tonalities that mostly have the pallor of skin eviscerated, as the pictorial fabric of Excavation is, by blood-red ruptures.39 To stress the point that the Crucifixion entailed the misfortunes that befell Christ's substance is no more than to offer a religious equiv alent to Greenberg's and Hess's talk of 'savage dissections' and 'Procrustean' methods. Decades later, de Kooning linked flesh to otherworldliness when Soutine: discussing 'There's a kind of transfiguration, a certain fleshiness, in his
work . . ..'40

de Kooning. 33- Orestes, byWillem 61.3 by 91.8 cm. (Private collection,

1947. Enamel and paper collage on board, courtesy of Sotheby's, New York).

on de the standpoint practice and Kooning's from Judgment day onwards, itmust recognise a iconography visual arena in which laceration reigns: expressively in the of the interlocked shards of the abstrac razor-sharp edges tions of the late 1940s; in the collage process metaphorically ? de Kooning assembled them and subsequently whereby Woman I- from torn and cut fragments serving as templates that were attached to the surface and then either removed or Whatever and manually, in the paper scraps that are to the surface of brutally pinned (1950; private Collage collection, New York) with thumbnails.42 The circular head of the thumbnail stuck almost at the centre of Collage must hark back to the similarly placed eye-disc of Judgment day. In turn, one reason for Bosch's Christ crowned with thorns to have overpainted;41 notice could be the fact that its central caught de Kooning's action is the tearing of Christ's robe. To be sure, the almost monochromatic of the late 1940s have in their compositions ancestry Analytical other modernist modelling First World the kind Cubism precedents and Beckmann's nightmare War years). Nevertheless, tableau epitomised and Picasso's Guernica such as Cezanne's (among faceted of the post

de Kooning. 34. Gansevoort Street, by Willem 1950-51. Oil on board, 76.2 by 101.6 cm. mounted (Harry andMargaret collection, Atherton CA).

on cardboard Anderson

of

interiors it seems probable that ? 2. claustro by Mailbox

thought religion was not of theWillem de Koon

amalgam of grimacing heads, bumps and criss-cross finds at least as close a match in such nightmare visions as Bosch's Christ carrying the cross (Fig.30).43 And even Picasso's fierce treatment of the female the 1920s during cannot the violence out to humanity meted in equal the guise of the impalings, lacerations and other atrocities phobic vectors
Kooning's Crucifixions as both tragic and comical, secular 'takes' on a predicament at once sacral and carnal. Yard, op. cit. (note 36), also discerns the same polarities, although I differ with a number of her proposed sources. 38Cf. the following recent comment on Judgment day that almost presupposes what is here proposed as its second source in Bosch: 'These floating figures suggest a as de Kooning looks to a higher power - the religious metaphor, heavenly judge - to and K. Stayton: ruling on mankind terror'; B. Rapaport explain aman-made exh. cat. Vital Forms: American Art and Design in theAtomic Age, 1940?1960, New York (Brooklyn Museum of Art) 2001, pp. 102-04. 39The eponymous lettering in Zot, lower-left corner, is threatened by an arrow like shape to its immediate right. The actual word 'zot' in Dutch means 'fool', 'foolish' or 'absurd'. The first two senses could be related to the importance of man's foolishness in Bosch's ideology, while 'absurd' has clear existential connota tions. The ambiguity is pure de Kooning. 40De Kooning (1972) in Prather, op. at. (note 5), p.22; and which painter uses pink as frequendy as de Kooning, if not Bosch? 41 See Hess, op. cit. (note 16), p.47, for a description of this procedure. 42 See Yard, op. cit. (note 29), p.51. 43 in colour in J. Combe: Jheronimus Bosch, London Reproduced 1946, pi. 104. THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE CXLV OCTOBER 2003 Jll

authoritative important

Life, Training and Work, 1904?1926, Ann Arbor 1996. The vamp of The kiss drags her male victim down the one street-fighter to the ground. And, of course, the is knocked wards, while Parable of the blind is about the fallen. 35 For a of this pencil drawing, see D. Waldman: De Kooning, New reproduction York 1988, p. 39. For the prostrate, presumably dead, bodies, see Study for 'Inquest' (1939) and Untitled (1941), in exh. cat. The Artist's Hand: Willem deKooning Draw & Nash) 2002, nos.7 and 8. ings, 1937-1954, New York (Mitchell-Innes 36Cf. Elaine de in S. Yard: 'The Angel and the "demoiselle" - Willem Kooning de Kooning's "Black Friday'", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 50 ( 1991), p. 14: 'Bill always had the Crucifix [sic] in the back of his mind.' The Mus?es des Beaux-Arts in Brussels - one of the first cities that de visited Royaux Kooning - own a Bosch Crucifixion with donor. That it has a crucifix may not be T-shaped altogether irrelevant to the letter "T that recurs in Zot, Orestes and Noon (1947). 37 See Hess, op. at. (note 12), pp.39-40. Hess, de Kooning's confidant, got the de secular-religious see-sawing notably right in this monograph, interpreting

historian of the artist's youth, Judith Wolfe, to either family. I am grateful to Amy Schichtel for this information. ing Conservancy 34 See The Young Willem de Kooning: Early J. Wolfe:

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35. Excavation,

by Willem

de Kooning.

1950. 203.5 by 254.3 cm- (Art Institute of Chicago).

36. Orpheus killed by themaenads, by Pablo Picasso. 1930. Etching, first state, 31.3 by 22.3 cm. (Mus?e Picasso, Paris). 7I2 OCTOBER 2OO3 CXLV

37. The

triumph of death, by Pieter Bruegel.

c. 1562-64.

Panel,

117 by 162 cm. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

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38. Pink angels, de by Willem 1947. Kooning. 132 by 101.5 cm. (Frederick R. Weisman collection).

39. Detail of Diana and Actaeon, by Titian. 15 56/15 59. 198 by 206 cm. (National Gallery ofScodand, Edinburgh).

the also anticipates by Bosch (Fig.31).44 Bosch to the gigan jarring disparities in scale, from the minuscule tic, that render the space of the abstractions of the late 1940s imagined doubly ambiguous.45 More generally, sometimes Bruegel's, own in the second share the sentiment it is the whole and of Bosch's, realms that accords with de Kooning's 1950s. They and absurd: and tor trembling tenor

(1948) and Noon of the Crucifixion. Tehran Museum Gansevoort Street

the day and the hour respectively the titles of Light inAugust (1946; of Contemporary Art), Orestes (Fig.33) and (1947), Even

of reinforce this palimpsest (Fig. 34) may Faulkner's novel Light in August climaxes with meaning.47 a terrible act of laceration, the castration of its anti-hero, Joe Christmas. This obscenity alone would place de Kooning's titular allusion within the orbit of Boschian suffering. How it has escaped notice that there is another episode at the ever, novel's gether divine attain denouement coincidentally) gaze averted which uncannily repeats Bosch's (and of course alto dramaturgy of God's to vileness. Striving 'hero', the Reverend I have 'What could

half of the 1940s and early as threatened of humanity

de Kooning fear, famously emphasised ment in his talks and texts at the time, such as 'ADesperate and Order' View' (1950), (1949) and 'The Renaissance on that earlier age with people which opens its rumination destruction and 'being hung or crucified'.46 Apocalyptic eschatological perspective: overtones are also corollaries of this mutual in Bosch's 'Last Things' and 'divine obviously concern with worldly and Bruegel's horrors; judgments' more peripherally in de Kooning's titles such as Black Friday

from humanity's salvation, Faulkner's secondary envisions damnation: Hightower, save disgrace and despair expected away of such paintings turned in very

and the face of God were aware shame?'48 If de Kooning Bosch as Christ crowned with thorns and by

44 In one of the prints illustrated in Davis, op. at. (note 15), p.295, 'Saint James lets to pieces'. the demons tear Hermogenes 45 That a recent art historian could speak of its 'labyrinth of the gaze' raises anoth er vivid reason why de Kooning might have been attracted to Bosch's Garden of earthly delights in the 1940s; see H. Belting: Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly London and New York 2002, pp.2off. Delights, Munich, 46 Scrivani, op. at. (note 2), pp.9?14 and 17?36. That the tide of Queen of hearts female monarch ("Off with their heads!") of (1943?46) references the evil-comic to observe, had it never be too obvious Alice's Adventures inWonderland would been noticed. 47 The debate about the of de Kooning's tides will probably never authenticity

were invented by, or in conjunction with, Elaine de Kooning (as the author, April 5th 2002), my by Allan Stone, in conversation with conclusion remains that their thematics are too consistent for them to be deemed ad hoc or irrelevant. 48 W. Faulkner: Light inAugust (1932), New York 2002, pp.366-67. The passage . . terrible continues with 'the crucified' and 'the final and supreme Face itself. This situation is, in effect, a reprise of a because of Its omniscient detachment'. rest. Ifmany reiterated notion expressed centuries before in the (c)overt All-Seer of Bosch's Tabletop of the seven deadly sins. If the eye-disc of Judgment day derives from that work, it too must skirt the concept of the deus absconditus.

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New

as The Flies in into English in 1946 and published the following Sartre's lurid fable of year, early Orestes's talk of blackness or dark plight is saturated with of dismembered and cut flesh, and of a retributive glare ness, from above.53 In fact, everything happens in The Flies under the vengeful white eyes of the God Zeus (and his statue).54 Translated York the point be laboured that Orestes's dark saturnalia is almost wholly monochromatic, con full of cutting-edge scratches that radiate from its top edge tours, slashed with and is presided over by a prominent ocular-like disc in the

Need

corner?55 upper-left The same dynamic - ferocious, often female, aggression the body and a transfixing vision - also argues for a against reassessment of de Kooning's other sources in this period. as indicative Two stand of why certain examples must models would have meshed with the artist's interests where as others are less apt.56 Picasso's a still from Guernica, Giuseppe De Santis's film Riso amaro (1949) and a Paul Klee watercolour have alike been put forward as inspirations for Excavation.^ Be that as itmay, Picasso's Orpheus killed by the maenads (Fig. 36) uniquely of displays not just a modicum to Excavation - note especially formal correspondence the lineation that radiates from, and almost parallel to, the upper but also the subject of the male anatomy rent edge in both So does the detail of the fierce goddess by female violence.58 herself from Titian's Diana and Actaeon (Fig. 39), who could two Picassos well from the late in the 1920s join a formal genesis of the key Pink angels (Fig.38).59 Again, (notice the little dog in Titian that de Kooning into a droll biomorph in the lower right metamorphoses is not merely at issue. Rather, Diana's corner) gaze is the torn to shreds by gesture that will see Actaeon judgmental his own hounds.60 And what is the pictorial consequence of all these cuts, strokes from above and marks of retributive destruction? It will to assert that the sound melodramatic equivalence methods and 'Procrustean' 'savage dissections' such as the red-drenched Gansevoort Street that carry the force of visual conflagrations or bloody Yet what did de Kooning have carnages.61 reproduction beside him as he completed Excavation? Itwas a fiery, hell result of de Kooning's are pictures

de Kooning. 40. Drawing with eyes closed, by Willem 25.5 by 20.4 cm. (The Overholland Collection).

1966. Charcoal,

Faulkner's flash of transcendence into plunged would have struck an instant chord.49 After all, in abjection the 1940s de Kooning wrote words such as 'hope' across the of his pictures and 'man' across the bottom.50 top The titles of Orestes and Gansevoort Street could broach the same territory Orestes is some by another route. Although times held to have been named by John Stephan, editor of The Tiger's Eye, he remembered this as unlikely.51 Whoever was the author, the title invites that he or she speculation knew Sartre's play Les Mouches whether (1943): by coinci dence or otherwise, the leitmotifs of this text are in accord with de Kooning's contemporaneous preoccupations.52

so forth,

ish survey of justice inflicted from the beyond upon mankind below: Bruegel's death (Fig.37).62 Triumph of

49De knew the novel, even declaring he would 'like to Kooning unquestionably see C. Stuckey: 'Bill de and Joe Christmas', Art in paint Joe Christmas'; Kooning America 68 (March 1980), p.71. In his passage through the world's misfortunes, Christ mas also rehearses the Christian is, perhaps the narra typology of Everyman, which tive of Bosch's Vagabond (c.1488; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam). 50Elaine de in ibid., p.71. Kooning 51 Yard, op. at. (note 36), p.24. 52And is the tide of Fire Island a double (c.1946; Margulies family collection) edged allusion to 1). a Boschian place of flames and 2). the summer beach resort on Long Island well known for its amorous pleasures? 53 Published by Alfred A. Knopf Inc., on February 20th 1947. To take one of many scream at of 'the Crowd' instances, at the end of The Flies members possible Orestes: 'We'll tear you limb from limb . . . I'll pluck out your eyes.' 54 In the Abstraction red drips and diagonal strokes rain Thyssen-Bornemisza's down from the work's upper edge. 55 The scarification of the surface appears to have been done with a Stanley knife or similar instrument. My thanks to Leslie Prouty of Sotheby's, New York, for the to examine Orestes closely and under ultra-violet opportunity light. 56As de Kooning's dialogue with the old masters balances his debts to modernism so, 7I4 analogously, his ostensibly Sartrean brand of existentialism is strikingly

on for instance, the former's meditation prefigured by Blaise Pascal. Compare, toMe' (Scrivani, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 59-60) and space in 'What Abstract Art Means Pascal's Pens?es, XV, nos. 198-201. The latter were republished in translation in 1946 by the Peter Pauper Press, Mount Vernon NY. 57 See Prather, op. cit. (note 5), p.101 and p. 105, note 5. *8Zot is a diminutive forerunner of Excavation. It contains a single small blood-red smear above right of centre. This to the same position within approximates as the point where the composition in Orpheus's body is lanced by the maenads Picasso's etching. 59The Picassos were set forth by Sylvester, op. cit. (note 5), p. 19. convincingly 60 Fritz Bultman's The hunter (1949; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) see A. Gibson: Abstract Expressionism: probably also refers to the Actaeon myth; Other Politics, New Haven and London 1997, p. 12. 61 With street name, de Kooning made a typically layered this Lower Manhattan reference. roots: the Gansevoorts an old Dutch were First, it signals Dutch American in Ganzfort on the Holland-Germany border. family who originated - as in the Manhattan of yore de Kooning was any night-wanderer Secondly, knows that Gansevoort Street was the heart of the city's meat market (where ranks of red raw animal carcasses were a standard sight) and street prostitution. In short, a site of carnality in 'Gansevoort Street' denotes senses. C. Brock: multiple

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As a coda to this entire early phase of de Kooning's art, we may well wonder whether the relevance of Bosch and and the themes that they appear to have impelled Bruegel to pursue disappeared with the brazen return to brazen in Woman I and the new moods he explored figuration over the subsequent decades. On the contrary, Woman Vs continues63 gorgon-gaze admittedly by an extreme act of and iconographie transference the root psychological a vision fixation with that pierces the beholder. This had him de Kooning's repertory with Judgment day, its cen tral eye-circle and the implications of its proposed relation to the two Boschs. The subsequent also have leaps of mood an interface with a logic that permeated the ideology of its stress on bodily Bosch and Bruegel's epoch: abjection entered and metamorphosis, humour and the conventions Kristeva northern the mutuality of tragedy and bawdy or reversal of ambivalent breakdown asMikhail and boundaries. For, Bakhtin, Julia shown, this is the late medieval tradition of'Carnival'.64 and

and others have Renaissance

Few artists fit the concept of the carnivalesque better than de Kooning carnival's 'double after the late 1950s. Under ? sinners become saints, anxiety yields to logic' whereby laughter, fatness (Mardi Gras) confronts fasting (Lent), death ? meets an almost de Kooning undertook life, and so on series of ironic reversals and twists.65 programmatic once the images were horrific, Where increasingly they became hilarious. The grotesquerie of La Guardia in a paper hat (1972; private New the collection, York) epitomises Museum (1955; Metropolitan of Art, New makes humorous York) play, by punning allusions to Hollywood movies and the like, upon the old same applies to The time of themes.66 The 1940s religious thefire (1956; private collection). Could de Kooning have satirised his past had it not been so seminal? too, the tyranny of the gaze in the iconography Crucially, of the 1940s (whether of the staring portraits, Christ, eye the gorgon or the subsequent Women) discs, Diana, segues to the scattered anatomy in Woman as landscape (1955; Janet and Robert and the ludicrous corps morcel?s into Kardon) which his people veritable Rumplestiltskins deconstruct the early 1970s. With the erstwhile by objectified body ? ? in water its writ, as it were, dispersed and deliquescent is replaced by the aesthetics of demonic (or divine) gaze
de Kooning's "Asheville"', M.A. 'Describing Chaos: Willem Painting Collage thesis (University of Maryland, 1993), fascinatingly correlates de Kooning with Dutch 'butcher's stall' imagery. seventeenth-century 62 E. Lieber: Willem de Kooning: Reflections in the studio, New York 2000, p.34: to complete Excavation. The day after it 'Elaine watched Bill working frantically left the studio for the XXVth it had reminded Venice Biennale, she remarked that something about her of Bruegel's Triumph ofDeath. Bill walked over to his painting underneath itwas a black-and-white table and lifted up amagazine; reproduction the springs (untitled 1), by Willem de Kooning. 4L Morning: 203 by 177.8 cm. (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). 1983.

transformation.

Easter Monday

a tensions become a 'slipping glimpser', de Calling I'm falling, Kooning praised his own folly: 'Because when I'm doing I say, hey, this is when I'm slipping, alright; to a state of grace interesting!'67 If'falling' was tantamount in i960, its first matrix was still a fallen world. Even the in the white point of old leitmotif of centring established ? in the Drawings with eyes closed day Judgment lingered as they were begun by de Kooning's (Fig.40) insofar placing glance. Freudian himself his hand Christ himself tomake the first black mark.68 in the paper's middle off the cross in this topsy-turvy slips endgame. structure itself is freed from gravity in the pictorial

own the painter's creative manoeuvre.

Finally, the 1980s (Fig.41) only to evaporate

as the tangles of the 1940s are reprised, ? a in a transcendent far, but lightness69 from the themes of darkness, judgment and resonant, cry destruction with which de Kooning had begun.
de Kooning's handling of the figure. 65 This change was altogether in the line of Bakhtin's theory of the 'translinguis - a intersection of meanings tic' rather than polyphonic leading to open-endedness a fixed conclusion; p.211: 'Bloodshed, dismemberment, burning, death, beatings, ... - all these elements are blows steeped in "merry time", time which kills and and never ceases to gener gives birth, which allows nothing old to be perpetuated ate the new and the youthful.' 66 K. Powell: in de Kooning's "Easter Monday'", Smith 'Resurrecting Content sonian Studies inAmerican Art 4 (Summer-Fall In short, the ear 1990), pp.86-101. lier bona fide apocalyptic drive here becomes ironic scepticism ? what Bakhtin calls 'Paschal laughter'. On this switch, see F. Kermode: The Sense of an Ending, London and New York 67De Kooning Scrivani, op. cit. 68 See R. Shiff: 1966, pp. 1off. in the film script Sketchbook N0.1: Three Americans, quoted in (note 2), p. 176. de Kooning's in exh. cat. Willem 'The Gravity ofWillem Twist'

of the Bruegel.' 63 S. Duncan: Hot Mamas', Art Journal 48 (summer 1989), pp. 171 'The MoMA's a Greek gorgon I. Far more 78, proposes sculpture as the source for Woman too, this gorgon is the source for Woman (1949; Boris Leavitt collec recognisably, tion). See D. Anfam: 'Beginning at the End: The Extremes of Abstract Expres and D. Anfam, eds.: exh. cat. American sionism', in C. Joachimides, N. Rosenthal Art in the 20th Century, London of Arts) 1993, pp.87-88. (Royal Academy 64 See M. Bakhtin: Rabelais and his World 1984; see also T. (1965), Bloomington and R. Malbert, eds.: exh. cat. Camivalesque, Brighton Hyman (Museum and Art Gallery) Bruegel. 2000. Davis, op. at. (note 15), passim, details several camivalesque Kristeva's notion of the bodily 'subject in process' has numerous aspects in echoes in

de Kooning Valencia (IVAM) 2001, p.80. 69 Cf. de (c.1968) in ibid.: 'I try to free myself from the notion of top and Kooning bottom... secret is to free yourself from grav should float... The whole Everything into water and weighdessness. ity!' In sum, laceration and conflagration modulate THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE CXLV OCTOBER 2003 7^5