Art. Willem de Kooning and Harold Rosenberg

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Willem de Kooning was born on 24 April 1904 in Rotterdam Netherlands. He died on 19 March 1997 in the United States. His early life was a difficult one as his parents divorced when he was aged four years. The parents struggled for his custody, and eventually, it was granted to his mother (Hess 11). His interest in art started at an early age, and he showed a remarkable talent in drawing. This led him to become an apprentice under Jan and Jaap Gidding, who were interior decorators. These mentors saw that de Kooning had an extraordinary talent, and he enrolled in evening classes in the Academy of Art and Technology and studied drawing. It was at this institution that De Kooning became grounded in “art theory and practice” (Hess 11). He gained the grounding because he joined classes that taught proportion, life drawing, perspective, the imitation of wood grain, and marbling. He also learned theoretical instruction of non-European and European art from ancient times up to the renaissance.

He went on to work in a department store in Rotterdam. He served as an assistant of Bernard Romein, the art director. His knowledge in art continued to increase because Romein showed him the works of the De Stijl group and Piet Mondrian. This made de Kooning become interested in painting which he began even though he seemed somewhat detached to the medium at first as he later wrote in 1960, “when we went to the academy dong painting decorating, making living-young artists were not interested in painting per se” (Hess 11). To him, therefore, the painting was for the old people, and it seemed an ancient practice to him that did not fit his idea of modernity because he was still a young man. On the contrary, he felt he did not quite understand the painting medium and its true nature. Albeit having these feelings, he continued his studies at the Art Academy. By the year 1924, his skills in art had improved tremendously, and he could now finance study trips to Belgium to horn his skills further through painting portraits and signs. This interest in painting led him to re-enroll in the academy in the year 1925.

While going through his studies, he figured himself in commercial or applied art. He wanted to develop his career in either design or painting. This quest made him migrate to the United States illegally in 1926. He worked as a sign painter, carpenter, window dresser, and commercial artist. He met other artists in New York and such as Arshile Gorky and John Graham, and he joined the Federal Art Project (Willem de Kooning 1). He worked for the Project from 1935 to 1939, and thus his devotion to painting entirely began in earnest.

His early works were inspired by Gorky’s Surrealist style and Picasso’s painting. Jackson Pollock and Franz Killen aroused his interest in black and white art in 1946, and later in 1959, he did such abstracts again. In the early 1950s, he did his first women’s pictures that raised criticism due to their vehemence. For instance, in Woman 1, “the figure of a human being is recognizable, but it is disintegrating into a chaotic blend of color and textures” (Krall 1). This kind of work gave rise to what is known as abstract expressionism. Through it, he was able to go beyond the confines of art and go into the unknown, thus creating a new form of expression. De Kooning explains his abstract expressionism came because “Ambiguity prevails in an art and in an age where nothing is certain but self-consciousness” (Krall 1). He wanted his art to speak to all irrespective of their race, age, pain beliefs, and so on. The only way he could do that was through abstract art (Espinel 1096). De Kooning’s work aroused a lot of criticism, and Harold Rosenberg was one of his critics.

Harold Rosenberg was born in 1906 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at City College from1923 to 1924 and then enrolled at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, to study law. After he finished law school, he started to study the writings and philosophy of Karl Marx. He also wrote poems. He was a supportive critic of abstract expressionism.

He wrote an essay titled The American Painters in 1952 and compared Willen de Kooning and other artists like him to “heroic existentialists wrestling with self expression” (Harold Rosenberg 1). He described abstract expressionists as action painters who used the canvas as their stage. The artists worked on their canvases without following the conventional rules of painting, and thus, they painted images that expressed their unique individuality and humanity. The images were not just mere pictures, but they captured the moment that the artists were in; thus, they were an event.

He met de Kooning during the Depression era while working as a writer. They would discuss abstract art, and these discussions led to a friendship. This encounter led to a turning point in Rosenberg’s career. He learned more about abstract expressionism, and he started to criticise this kind of art (Harold Rosenberg 1). He wrote articles about abstract expressionists and thus brought this emerging form of art into the limelight. Rosenberg preferred de Kooning’s work and championed it through the articles he published. This made de Kooning famous, and many people admired him and paid attention to his art.

De Kooning was a man who stood out due to his individuality. Rosenberg had respect for him and referred to him as the “heard of independent minds’’ (Knopf 2). It is said that de Kooning was available to the young artists, and he made time to be with them. He must have a good relationship with Rosenberg, whom he helped to learn the theories of abstract expressionism.

Their relationship can be said to have been cordial because Rosenberg wrote good things concerning de Kooning’s work that other people often considered incomplete. He took his time to understand de Kooning’s work, and thus he was able to call it action painting. Through painting, de Kooning was not trying to come up with an image that had a particular meaning, but he wanted the person looking at the painting to come up with his or her own meaning. This relationship led to the Rosenberg publishing his work ‘American Action Painters’. This piece was well-received, and Rosenberg gained recognition in the art world. Therefore, the relationship benefited the critic and the artist (Harold Rosenberg 1).

Lastly, through the critic of people like Rosenberg, the abstract expressionism movement became widely appreciated, and many artists joined the movement. The movement left a lasting legacy, and today, we still talk of Willen de Kooning and his work. This kind of art opened the way for artists to use art in expressing themselves without fearing upsetting the set conventions. De Konning’s work is a masterpiece and keeps abstract expressionism alive.

Works Cited

Espinel, Carlos Hugo: De Kooning’s late colors and forms: dementia, creativity and the healing power of art.” The Lancent, 347(1996):1096-1098.

Harold Rosenberg. theartstory.org. 2010.

Hess, Barbara. Willem de Kooning: 1904-1997: content as a glimpse. Los Angeles, CA: Taschen, 2004.

Knopf, Alfred. When de kooning was king. nymag.com. 2010.

Krall, Aaron. Aarons Willem De Kooning Gallery. Stfrancis.edu. n.d. 2010.

Willem De Kooning. willem-de-kooning.com. n.d. 2010.

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Art. Willem de Kooning and Harold Rosenberg

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