Black Friday Highlights de Kooning’s Artistry

Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50 brings together eighteen works from a period in de Kooning’s career in which the artist demonstrated profound dynamism and creative development. The Guardian has called the exhibition “absolutely transformative,” saying that it “uncovers [the] raw intensity of [de Kooning’s] early work.” In this never-before-exhibited grouping of paintings, de Kooning’s artistry speaks for itself, and visitors witness how the artist refined the exchange in his work between figuration and abstraction through experimenting with materials such as enamel paint.

Accompanying the exhibition, a publication of the same name celebrates this formative period in de Kooning’s career, offering illuminating essays by exhibition curators John Elderfield and Mitra Abbaspour, who closely consider de Kooning’s work during this time, the environment and influences that surrounded him, and the impact of his first solo exhibition, in 1948, on both his career and the New York School. Part of the curatorial team, Lee Colón contributed a detailed chronology that provides invaluable context for the 1948 exhibition. Finally, Jim Coddington and Bart Devolder’s material study of Princeton’s own Black Friday (1948)—an abbreviated excerpt of which is shared below—offers vital perspective on the painter’s working methods.

“The facts of a painting are prosaic at first. At least at first. A support to paint on, a preparation of that support, then paint. These facts, the materials of the painting, are choices the painter makes. In the case of Black Friday, the support is a panel, a solid support, de Kooning eschewing the more historically common canvas support—something he particularly did in his works from the late 1940s. The paint is both artist paint and retail trade paints. Both choices are somewhat unorthodox . . . [and] are reflected not only in the final image but also in the many traces of the labor and thought that preceded the completed work. It is broadly understood that de Kooning’s paintings evidence such labor, as he routinely engaged in multiple campaigns of painting on his works—and Black Friday is no exception. [The reverse of the painting] portrays two figures, one in the simplified style of de Kooning’s first Woman series, and the other a head that de Kooning had reworked, yielding an even more ghostly face. The artist carried out several campaigns on this side of the board, the last of which had him block in an ocher color around the lower head and a green around the upper, a combination to be found in similarly unfinished paintings from the early 1940s. The careful blocking suggests that at this point de Kooning may have considered integrating the two seemingly disparate figures into a single composition. Thomas Hess dated this unfinished “sketch” to about 1943. It is well documented that from the 1930s to the mid-1940s de Kooning was plagued by self-doubt; during this time, he finished relatively few paintings, destroying and overpainting many. Anecdotal descriptions of de Kooning’s painting techniques and methods, recorded by visitors to his studio, also confirm his habit of reworking his compositions.

From the mid-1940s onward, de Kooning’s surfaces gradually evolved toward greater texture. This is also the time when he started superimposing drawings, sketches, and torn-paper fragments into and onto his paintings. Black Friday indeed includes fragments of paper—possibly newspaper and tracing paper—left in the paint-layer matrix. Additional evidence of a dynamic interaction between worked and reworked areas includes the thick impastoed areas rising from the panel, flanked by thinned-down washes of paint as well as traces of charcoal where de Kooning pulled charcoal sticks through a semi-wet layer of paint. There is also paint that was bulked up with sand. In the center of the top half of the painting, a piece of paper with a distinct organic form is collaged into the paint matrix, perfectly integrated within the overall composition. The sequencing of the “action” in this area is demonstrative of the artist’s continuous reworking of the materials. Once the shape was in place, and the black paint layer and white brushstrokes traversing the form had been applied, the artist reinforced part of the paper form by highlighting the shape with white paint applied with a swooping movement of the brush, visually pulling this collage element forward in the composition. De Kooning carried with him a wide variety of painting experience, from his academic training to various stints as a commercial painter. This range of experience allowed him to push his painting medium and other materials to rather new and innovative levels.

Image credit

Photo: Bart Devolder

The purposeful juxtaposition of these different techniques reveal themselves in multiple areas. Painting wet-in-wet was a common technique for artists working with oil paints, as this method allows for subtle transitions and a smooth blending of colors. What de Kooning did in Black Friday is not quite a true wet-in-wet technique but instead was realized with paints that can be partially redissolved with the solvent originally used to dilute them. With the mechanical action of the brush, for example, application of the white paint can partially solubilize the already applied black paint, working the lower layer back up in the new layer to create a lava-like or marbleized effect. Such marble-like surfaces can be found throughout the entire surface of Black Friday.”