Gagosian is staging an exhibition dedicated to Willem de Kooning (1904-97) in New York this spring. Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, which opened last month, examines the artist’s explorations of figuration and abstraction in work between 1944 and 1986, highlighting cyclical motifs throughout his decades-long career, according to the show’s curator, Cecilia Alemani, who serves as director and chief curator of High Line Art.
“The idea was to look back at a wider timeline for an exhibition that is not necessarily chronological, which has often been the case for De Kooning,” Alemani tells The Art Newspaper. “It’s to look at some of these works in dialogue or juxtaposition with each other across different decades. The exhibition will not be focused on one specific period or one specific chronology. It really kind of skips and jumps and creates rhymes, some in different decades.”
Endless Painting (until 14 June) features some institutional loans, including Untitled V (1982) and …Whose Name Was Writ in Water (1975), from the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, respectively. As well as paintings, the show will include two sculptures: Clamdigger (1972) and the colossal bronze Standing Figure (1969-84), which will be displayed indoors for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Clamdigger was also part of the Willem de Kooning and Italy show staged at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, which opened during last year’s Biennale. The exhibition at the Accademia was an important source of inspiration for Endless Painting, Alemani says, though the Venice show focused largely on the years 1959 and 1969, which the artist spent in Italy.
“The exhibition was not just gorgeous, it had a more contemporary touch to it,” Alemani adds. “He has the respect of many contemporary artists because of the love that he really showed for the act of painting.” On 15 May, Alemani will moderate a panel at the show, with the artists John Currin and Dana Schutz, exploring De Kooning’s influence.
Endless Painting also includes examples of De Kooning’s work from the 1980s, a productive decade for the artist, during which he completed more than 300 paintings, but one in which he began to develop health problems, including Alzheimer’s. A shift in the perceived style of his paintings during this time was controversial with viewers, but Alemani argues that similar themes can be observed from the earliest days of his work through to this time.
The artist’s Woman paintings from the early 1950s are his best-known sequence of figurative works, but what Alemani calls De Kooning’s “struggle with the human form” occupied many of the canvases and compositions he worked on throughout his life—he used specific techniques to transfer images from one work to another. While those images appear to be abstract, they can also be read as limbs, lips and eyes, according to Alemani.
Makeover marker
Endless Painting marked the April reopening of Gagosian’s newly renovated space on West 24th Street in Chelsea. The exhibition is the gallery’s first dedicated to De Kooning since 2013, when the artist’s foundation sold ten paintings through Gagosian to raise money. The 2013 show had a narrow scope, focusing on De Kooning’s work from 1983 to 1985.
While De Kooning has generally enjoyed a strong market for decades, the year 2022 was a particularly good one for the artist’s work at auction—his work fetched a record $195m that year, according to the Artnet price database. The artist’s record at auction was set in 2018 when Woman as Landscape (1954-55) sold for $68.9m with fees at Christie’s New York—the painting will be part of the Gagosian show this spring—but individual works are known to fetch many times more on the private market. Ken Griffin reportedly spent $300m on De Kooning’s Interchange (1955) in 2015, while Steve Cohen reportedly dropped $137.5m on Woman III (1952-53) in 2006 (both billionaire hedge fund managers reportedly purchased their De Kooning works from the entertainment mogul David Geffen or his foundation).
Staging an ambitious show devoted to a beloved Abstract Expressionist echoes the art market wisdom of banking on known quantities in uncertain times. Last month, Gagosian opened a solo exhibition by Pablo Picasso and this month turns to Takashi Murakami.
- Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, New York, until 14 June
