The late paintings of Willem de Kooning

January 31, 2025 5:50 PM

Are they the sad final remnants from a once-great artist crippled by dementia and exploited by his greedy coterie? Or are they a late flowering of mastery into a serene new synthesis?

Untitled 1984, Oil on canvas, 80 x 70 inches

Untitled I 1985, Oil on canvas, 70 × 80 inches

Untitled VII 1986, Oil on canvas, 77 x 88 inches

Untitled 1987, Oil on canvas, 80 × 70 inches

Untitled 1988, Oil on canvas, 77 x 88 inches

posted by Lemkin (12 comments total)

Those sure are some marks on canvases.
posted by egypturnash at 5:55 PM on January 31

Pretty sure the last one should be titled "The Emperor Has No Clothes" Hey, whats 10 million bucks nowadays anyway. Some guy paid 6 million for a banana taped to a wall. This is objectively better.
posted by jcworth at 6:01 PM on January 31

I'm pretty sure it was alcoholic dementia, which is sadder somehow.
posted by Violet Blue at 7:17 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Maybe blame the bullshit of art speculation on the speculators, not the artists.
posted by Ferreous at 7:20 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]

Both narratives could be true. Art and mental illness seem to go together like trailer parks and tornadoes. The condition that amplified his style could have made him vulnerable to exploitation.
posted by OtroGoyo at 8:11 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]

It almost doesn't matter. His achievements in the art world are superlative. I don't particularly like the later paintings, but they will be snapped up by some collector. If we are among the ones who reach their 90s, we will all get frail and mentally impacted. Or physically impacted. I recently saw the great chef Julia Child on some cooking show. She was nearing the end of her life. She was asked to help prepare the dish they were making. I think she added some baking powder from a teaspoon. I am certain she would not be able to lift any of the pots in view. So I will remember her at her peak in the 60s and ,70s on television.
posted by Czjewel at 9:00 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]

I love Willem de Kooning. I have to say though, that even his best paintings don’t photograph well. And those are some really bad reproductions in the links. But, I went and looked at the Gagosian website before posting this and even they have bad photos of these and earlier paintings. Even MoMa has bad reproductions.

Peter Schjeldahl was a real gem of a writer and I think he was right that the following decades have been much kinder. I was glad to see Brice Madden mentioned in that second article because that’s all I think of when I see the late de Kooning. I’d love to see a show of late de Kooning, Brice Madden and Joanne Greenbaumm for mark making overlap . And those late Picasso paintings. I rmemebr at one time thinking those were just crap and now I think they’re esomemof the best paintings, period. It was also really funny to see Matthew Marks referred to as almost an upstart dealer at “just 30 years old.”

Both of those articles were written at a time when that kind of speculative art market was just coming into its full form. Larry Gagosian is genuinely the king of that and it’s no surprise to see him mentioned.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 9:31 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]

Brice Marden. Fuck I hate Apple autocorrect
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 9:43 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's an either/or situation. I think what was essential to de Kooning the artist was so intrinsic to who he was that long after his dementia, which was never correctly diagnosed in his lifetime, set in there was still the artist painting at a reduced capacity. I know I am aping Oliver Sacks here but it feels right.

I saw the wonderful 2011 retrospective at the MoMA, and I was quite surprised by the late paintings in the exhibit, they had a lot more going; the surfaces were quite lovely, which is one of the key signifiers in de Kooning's work. This, of course, doesn't show up in reproduction.
Pirate (Untitled II) from 1981, is a wonderful painting, which does not square with the idea of total decline.

If I may suggest something; I think part of it, like other writers have said, is there was a desire to pare down the enterprise. I am 60 and an artist, and as a response to turning 60 recently I have been making small, basic things, a casting off, and trying to find what is essential, and get rid of everything else. I see that, but I do not know if anyone else looking sees that. In my opinion, that was part of the story with de Kooning's late work, and yes, i agree the decline, the assistants, the market, and all the other toxic vulgarities of the art world played a part, but I do think that de Kooning was also shedding years of work while making these, and that, if nothing else, makes these important works of art.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:11 AM on February 1 [7 favorites]

extraction is a motherfucker
posted by graywyvern at 5:58 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

... y'know, I see and feel more from these than some other, less conflict-ridden abstract works.
posted by stormyteal at 7:50 PM on February 1

I thought for a long time that the late de koonings were a victim of someone taking advantage of dementia---the brushstrokes became gnarled, or didn't connect, the colours weren't as robust, the lines less complex; but I had a painter friend talk about the work, and found the stripping of artifice, and a kind of simiplfied, bare bones, late work to be incredibly poignant.

de kooning painted a lot, and so there is also like severe editing to do with even his early work, and i find some of his attempts failures (i have no room for his bronzes), but the question of how to make work if one has a life time of experience, but the body is failing, has become a fascinating one for me.

In some ways it reminds me of the late novels of Iris Murdoch.
posted by PinkMoose at 8:07 PM on February 1