"de Kooning Drawings" (New York: Walker House, 1967)
Carol Lowrey
In 1967, Walker House published de Kooning Drawings, part of a series of illustrated books devoted to various aspects of art history. As you can see, the cover is relatively simple, consisting of a reproduction of Willem de Kooning’s signature and the word “drawings” in the lower right. Inside, readers are presented with facsimile reproductions of twenty-four figure drawings executed in charcoal in 1966. I’m not at all surprised that the publishers decided to do a book featuring a selection of drawings by this pioneering Abstract Expressionist. An artist who viewed drawing as part and parcel of the creative process, Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) drew incessantly throughout his career, creating highly animated works that stand out for their spontaneity, fluidity and lack of finish. As the art historian Paul Cummings has pointed out, his drawings were part of “the process of evolving a vocabulary of images and strokes to be used in the paintings. The painterliness inherent in his manner of using charcoal can be observed in the way he pushes tones and the emphatic, dark, defining lines” (“The Drawings of Willem de Kooning” in Willem de Kooning: Drawings, Paintings, Sculpture, 1983, 22). Read the rest of this post on the Spanierman Modern blog.
