Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983–1985
This book was published on the occasion of Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983–1985 at Gagosian, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. Organized in collaboration with the Willem de Kooning Foundation and curated by John Elderfield, this focused exhibition featured paintings from a critical three-year period in the final decade of the artist’s long career. Beginning in 1983, de Kooning initiated a dramatic reinvention, condensing the richly tactile, painterly qualities of his earlier work into ever narrower bands of prismatic hues set against variously toned whites. Thin, mobile lines of vivid color seem to buckle and turn in pictorial space, shaping an elusive figuration within paintings that are both visually open and densely embodied.
The catalogue includes tipped-in color plates of the paintings, along with details and archival photographs of the works in process. Elderfield offers close interpretations of each work in “Ten Paintings, Ten Themes,” an essay that contextualizes de Kooning’s major stylistic shifts during this period. In another section, painters Cecily Brown, Albert Oehlen, David Reed, Jenny Saville, and Terry Winters each reflect on de Kooning’s late works—Brown and Winters via excerpts from talks given at the 2011 de Kooning Now symposium and Oehlen, Reed, and Saville in conversation with Elderfield. The volume also includes a foreword by Larry Gagosian, a detailed chronology of de Kooning’s career from 1983 through 1985 compiled by Lauren Mahony, and full cataloguing for each of the works.
Publisher: Gagosian
Publication date: 2013
Contributors: Cecily Brown, John Elderfield, Larry Gagosian, Lauren Mahony, Albert Oehlen, David Reed, Jenny Saville, Terry Winters
Designer: McCall Associates, New York
Printer: Shapco Printing, Minneapolis
Distributor: Rizzoli International Publications, New York
Format: Cloth hardcover
Dimensions: 10 3/4 × 12 1/2 inches (27 × 31.8 cm)
Pages: 120
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-935263-91-3
