Elaine de Kooning 1918-1989

By Patrick Heath

Elaine de Kooning, Harold Rosenberg #3, 1956, Oil on canvas, 203.2 x 149.9 x 2.5cm, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning (12th March 1918 – 1st February 1989) was a celebrated American painter, committed to blending figurative elements with Abstract Expressionism in her portrait work. De Kooning operated in the dynamic New York art scene of the mid 20th century, she was an important member of the 8th Street Club in Greenwich Village alongside Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, and Hans Hofmann. She wrote extensively on the subject of art criticism and was an editorial associate for James Clarence Hyde’s Artnews magazine, regaled for her perceptive essays on the likes of Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, and Arshile Gorky.

Elaine de Kooning was born in 1918, the daughter of Ellen O’Brien and Charles Fried living in Flatbush, New York. Art played an important role for de Kooning from a very young age; her mother, an Irish Catholic, decorated her room with reproductions of the Old Masters’ work and would take her to the Metropolitan Museum regularly. At school, de Kooning is purported to have been an accomplished sportswoman, using her tall stature to her advantage in ballet, baseball, and hockey. Her childhood friend, the art critic Hedda Stern later recalled that ‘she was a daredevil.’ At the age of 8, de Kooning was drawing pictures of her classmates and selling them, and by the time she had finished High School, de Kooning wanted to pursue art professionally. After a short stint at Hunter College, de Kooning ceased her academic study and enrolled at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in 1937.

In 1938, in a Manhattan cafeteria, de Kooning (née Fried) was introduced to Willem de Kooning, a Dutch artist whose work Elaine had shown some interest in before their meeting. Willem and Elaine would later enter into a tumultuous marriage, but, in the meantime, Willem became her teacher for the next four years in his loft at 134 West 21st Street. Willem was a famously harsh critic of his students and Elaine was no exception; he "impelled Elaine to strive for both precision and grace in her work", tearing up the drawings that were not up to standard. The couple married in 1943 and Elaine moved into Willem’s loft where they would share a studio space. The 1940s were a relatively quiet time in artistic output for de Kooning, she focused mainly on self-portraits in the process of cultivating an individual style. One of these, ‘Self-Portrait #3’, completed in 1946, demonstrates the genesis of de Kooning’s style; she confronts the viewer from a seated position and is surrounded by several objects that create a sense of pictorial organisation, exhibiting the still-life skills that she had developed with Willem.

The New York School art scene was far from lucrative, so, to supplement the income of herself and her husband, de Kooning took up writing for the Artnews magazine. In her criticism, de Kooning championed Abstract Expressionism, likening it to the art found in palaeolithic caves with the same spontaneity and sense of improvisational purpose. The 1950s were rather hectic for de Kooning, she was given several solo exhibitions in New York at the Stable and the Tibor de Nagy Galleries, she also conducted several affairs with influential men in the New York art market to promote her husband’s work. De Kooning was painting at a time when women, particularly within Abstract Expressionism, were seen as accessories to art, only put in place to accentuate the masculinity of male figures. As a result, de Kooning started signing her paintings with just her initials as not to be confused with her husband or be disregarded on account of her gender. Notable works from this period include portraits of Thomas B. Hess (1956) and Harold Rosenberg (1956); de Kooning’s figurative depictions of these men, surrounded by markedly abstract backgrounds, accentuate their respective eminence. Elaine and Willem would part ways in 1957, both had become dependent on alcohol and were having too many affairs to make the marriage feasible; however, they never actually divorced and the two would reconvene after a couple of decades.

In 1962, de Kooning received her most important commission, a portrait of President John F. Kennedy for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. After making hundreds of sketches, she finally settled on a full-length portrait capturing the restless energy of the President, its colours evoke a coolness and detachment not always obvious to his admirers. Following his assassination, the following year, de Kooning would cease painting until 1964. To support herself, she took on a series of short-term teaching jobs, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the University of California in Davis, at Carnegie Mellon, at Southampton College on Long Island, at the Cooper Union and Pratt in New York, at Yale, at RISDI in Rhode Island, the University of Georgia and the New York Studio School in Paris. Her travels, particularly to New Mexico, deeply influenced her creative output; suddenly, de Kooning started making decidedly more abstract landscapes, she also begins to paint animals, capturing their movement with quick, decisive brushstrokes and vibrant warm colours. Furthermore, her trips to Europe inspired a series of works of the Roman god, Bacchus and studies on the cave paintings of Lascaux in France, she realized that the geological formations and textures of the cave wall were the same as her ground of flying colour, drips, washes, and strokes, animal forms and drawing rising out of its contours, giving her the affirmation to her own way of working.

Elaine de Kooning died in 1989 after a battle with lung cancer. In 205, she was commemorated by the Smithsonian National portrait gallery with a celebrated exhibition of works spanning her entire career. She is recognised as one of the fundamental figures in the battle for the recognition of female artists in the 20th Century, challenging institutional norms and producing some incredibly evocative canvases.

Bibliography

Curtis, Cathy. "Elaine de Kooning". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Jan. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elaine-de-Kooning. [Accessed 7 March 2021].

Gabriel, Mary. Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: five painters and the movement that changed modern art’, (New York, 2018).

Hall, Lee. Elaine and Bill: Portrait of a Marriage, (New York, 1993).

Moonan, ‘Wendy, Why Elaine de Kooning Sacrificed Her Own Amazing Career for Her More-Famous Husband’s’, Smithsonian Magazine, New York, 5 April 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-elaine-de-kooning-sacrificed-her-own-amazing-career-her-more-famous-husbands-180955182/ [Accessed 7 March 20201].