Williem DeKooning's Women

We're not quite done with Abstract Expressionsim. Today I introduced the class to Williem De Kooning (1904-1997). Many critics have accused DeKooning of being a misogynist, because he's famous for these very angular, rough, unflattering paintings of women with exageratedly large chests. I for one suspect that actually, DeKooning may have been downright feminist. I think that he was using symbolism in his paintings to satirize society's iconic ideal of beauty that had developed in the mid 20th century. Rather than expressing something Freudian about violence and desire like some people have suggested, I believe that DeKooning was both poking fun at how absurdly abstract our standards had become and trying to help push our aesthetic away from those standards. Ironic that he did it with abstract expressionist "Action" painting that was so cutting edge and "in" at the time. Besides the fact that the public viewed action painting as so absurd and overly abstract.

See what I mean? First look at one of DeKooning's "Woman" paintings, than look again and see if you can't find the symbol for death and the great American "sex-symbol."

eyes, nose, and teeth...

colors, eye-lashes, hair, and bust- of course

Another example of this kind of pro-women/anti-media social criticism is this work below. It's by my goddaughter (a former student) Victoria Shupe. Shupe is a painter in the L.A. area. This is actually a series of 14 paintings called "Living Dead Girls." Basically what you have here are Victoria's Secret models as corpses or zombies. She observed young models and aspiring actresses lured into the "sex trade" of pornography and exploitation and painted about it. I suppose how you interpret it is up to the individual viewer, is death their eventual plight due to eating disorders, drug use or sexually transmitted diseases? Is death or disapointment all they hold for the men who desire them? Are they spiritually and intellectually dead, since their value is only in the temporary and fleeting qualities of their physical beauty? Is the artist so jealous of their looks that she wishes they were dead? Is it just funny, shocking or ironic to juxtapose the erotic with the morbid or frightening? Any way you slice it , it's provocative! I'm not hanging one over my couch, and don't tell my wife I think the're cool, but I am proud of Victoria.


Now, not all of DeKooning's work is so edgy. But all of it is what you might call "painterly." By that I mean, you know you're looking at a PAINTING, not a drawing or photo or print. Here's an example of hw he does that. It all has to do with his thick, buttery impasto. So... while last time we worked with thin paint that we could drip like Jackson Pollack, tomorrow we will mix white glue in with our tempra paint, which ahould work like acrylic medium or aquapasto to thicken our paint into goo and we will paint with the pallette knives! Notice how he makes this one feel young and modern by limiting the colors to the primaries (red, yellow, & blue) and black and white?

He does that same thing with this last one, Red, yellow, blue- lots of white and a touch of black. I like how this one is quieter, just line and space, not as concerned with the surface. It reaminds me of a Matisse or a Picasso. One student interpreted the black shape as a closed eye on a sleeping girl's face. Another thought it looked more like running mascara, as though the girl had been crying. Either way it's just pretty. Which is more than we can say for most of DeKooning's women!