From Publishers Weekly
While some critics see an artistic decline in de Kooning's output from the 1970s onward, Waldman, deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum, champions his "great and innovative late body of work." Countering charges that his flamboyant "Woman" series is sexist because it portrays females as objects of male manipulation, the author retorts, "This is how women were perceived in the 1950s." She finds de Kooning's goddess-whore icons "as resplendent as any Venus that has come down to us through the ages." Combining stuffy solemnity and critical overkill, this study is nevertheless useful for its analyses of individual paintings. Its 112 reproductions (half in color) include urban landscapes, portraits fusing the real and the imaginary, black-and-white abstractions, knotty sculpture. Also here are the simple paintings of the '80s, an emptying out of all but essential shape, line and color. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
$35. art A straightforward, no-frills monograph on the life and work of one of the most important post-World War II artists. A prominent member of the New York School, de Kooning has, over 60 years, created a body of work that in its own way charts the development and direction of mid-20th-century American art. Selected works illustrate the evolution from figurative painting through the black-and-white period, the multiple studies and versions of the Woman series, the Hampton landscapes, the serious involvement with sculpture, and the current, open, essentially line and color paintings. The artist's relationships with contemporaries and with predecessors are examined. A sound contribution to this series. Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New YorkCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Willem de Kooning arrived in the United States in 1926 as a twenty-two-year-old stowaway from Holland, soon to become a leading figure in the emergence of abstract expressionist painting in New York. This volume presents over 100 illustrations of every phase of de Kooning's artistic evolution, and explains the personal and art historical background behind his groundbreaking work and its critical reception.

Author Sally Yard details the progress of de Kooning's career, from his brief stint as a WPA painter, to his first one-person exhibition of abstract work in 1948, Five years later, an exhibition of women painted in aggressive, lashing gestures stunned contemporaries, not only for the vehemence of the artist's attack, but also for the reversal of direction from abstraction to figuration. The alternation and intertwining of these two genres remained fundamental to de Kooning's work over six decades.

Lavish illustrations and Sally Yard's accessible scholarly discussion make this book invaluable for anyone seeking to understand the work and impact of this twentieth-century master.



About the Author
Sally Yard has taught art history at Mount Holyoke and Amhert Colleges, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of San Diego, where she is associate professor and chair of the department of fine arts. Her books include Willem de Kooning: The First Twenty-Sex Years in New York and Francis Bacon, coauthored with Hugh Davies.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Detailed, well-researched prose traces Willem de Kooning's remarkable career through its ever-changing phases. One of the brightest lights in the abstract expressionist movement, de Kooning challenged his own way of seeing by incorporating human forms in his mid-period work, a development that stunned critics and contemporaries alike. More than 100 illustrations illuminate this narration of the painter's 60-year career.

FROM THE PUBLISHER