Willem de Kooning's Woman I: Abstract Expressionism Explained

Rauschenberg began his career by challenging Abstract Expressionism through monochrome paintings—pure white canvases that were 'empty' compared to the 'spiritual color fields' of artists like Rothko. He then created black paintings that were 'too material to be painting.' In 1953, he created 'Erased De Kooning,' where he obtained a drawing by Willem de Kooning and spent three weeks erasing it with fifteen different erasers. This work demonstrated that erasure was itself an artistic action, and that the blank canvas could serve as a mirror reflecting the external world.

After World War II, as the United States emerged economically stronger while Europe struggled, artists rejected the elitist and introspective nature of Abstract Expressionism (represented by Pollock, Rothko, and De Kooning) in favor of movements that embraced everyday reality; the New Dada movement, exemplified by Robert Rauschenberg's 1953 'Erased De Kooning Drawing' and Jasper Johns' use of newspaper in his targets, fused painting and sculpture with found objects, while the Nouveau Réalisme movement, founded by critic Pierre Restany in 1960, similarly celebrated mundane objects through techniques like César's compressions, Arman's accumulations, and Christo's wrappings, marking a transition toward the complete object-based approach that would culminate in Pop Art.

Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) represents a pivotal work in the neo-dada movement, where the artist deliberately erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning to explore the concept of emptiness in art; unlike his combine paintings or white paintings which contain visible elements, this artwork embodies the idea that absence can be emptier than literal emptiness, as the act of erasing creates not just a void but a profound conceptual absence that challenges viewers to reconsider what constitutes art.

In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg's act of erasing Willem de Kooning's drawing represents a pivotal moment in art history where the artist employed 'kenosis' (emptiness or despojamiento) to create distance from artistic tradition, transforming the erased work into a fundamental piece that bridges Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art while challenging the notion that nothing new can be created under the sun.

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) achieved notoriety during the transition from abstract expressionism to Pop Art. He was famous for his 'Combines' using non-traditional materials and objects. In 1953, he stunned the art world by erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning - then a god in the art world. After spending a month meticulously erasing the drawing, he placed a sign reading 'Drawing by De Kooning Erased, 1953,' completing that particular 'work of art.' Art consists in undoing a previous work, as if the purest aesthetic act were eliminating all trace of creation. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) considered chance decisive in artistic creation, believing results expressed the subconscious where creativity resided. In 1913, he began creating ready-mades - everyday objects becoming art through the artist's mere desire. The first was a bicycle wheel on a stool.

Gesture painters dominated Abstract Expressionism's action painting approach. Jackson Pollock, despite his macho image, was a troubled artist who lost a finger in childhood and suffered alcoholism; his drip technique involved pouring house paint from cans onto unstretched canvas, creating continuous streams that soaked into the surface. Critics initially dismissed his works as 'glorified wallpaper,' but Pollock described them as capturing the American West's stampede of animals. Willem de Kooning, born in Rotterdam, looked outward to the world rather than inward, complicating Abstract Expressionism with figural references. His Woman series (1950-1953) shocked critics with aggressive figuration based on Mesopotamian sculptures and American advertisements. Unlike Pollock who succeeded by overcoming artistic drawbacks, de Kooning had to overcome extensive technical training to achieve freedom and spontaneity. Joan Mitchell competed successfully with male-dominated Abstract Expressionism, bringing French sensibility to American abstraction. Her process involved working at night, rarely painting from life, and building paintings slowly with careful, confident strokes. Her sources were named in titles created after painting was complete, reflecting her connection to nature and human emotions.

The Woman series (begun 1950) represents one of the most significant artistic statements of the 20th century, embodying the fundamental tension between figuration and abstraction that defined de Kooning's career. When pure abstraction dominated the art world, de Kooning provocatively returned to the human figure, creating grotesque, powerful women with slashing brushstrokes and distorted anatomies. Critics like Clement Greenberg labeled this regressive, yet de Kooning defended his approach: 'Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.' This work sparked intense debate—some viewed it as misogynistic, while others praised its raw power and psychological depth. Unlike Pollock's all-over drip painting or Rothko's color field painting, de Kooning explicitly rejected classification as an Abstract Expressionist, preferring to explore the tension between order and chaos, between pure abstraction and figurative painting. His continual reinvention and resistance to being pigeonholed exemplified the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on emotional authenticity over technical perfection, ultimately helping to redefine the possibilities of modern painting.

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was a Dutch-American painter who became one of the most influential figures in Abstract Expressionism, known for his aggressive brushstrokes and unique fusion of abstraction with figuration; he moved to New York in 1926, worked on the WPA mural project, and was recognized by critic Clement Greenberg as a principal American artist, ultimately achieving success after age 44 despite early struggles as a foreign artist in an unfamiliar country.

Abstract Expressionism had distinct trajectories. Willem de Kooning, living near Pollock, created painterly works with visible brushstrokes and sometimes painted representational figures (women on beaches). Mark Rothko developed color field painting featuring broad bands of translucent color with meditative, calming qualities. While Pollock's action painting was physically active, Rothko's approach created immersive atmospheric experiences, showing the diversity within this major post-WWII art movement.

Abstract Expressionism emerged as America's first major international art movement. Jackson Pollock pioneered action painting, dripping and flinging paint onto canvases to create dynamic, all-over compositions. Mark Rothko developed color field painting, using large rectangles of color to evoke emotional responses. Both artists abandoned representational content entirely, focusing instead on the physical act of painting and the viewer's emotional response to color and gesture.

De Kooning engaged with more defined figuration in his Woman series, all six exhibited in 1953 and shocking purists. These works were consistent with his path—aggressive Woman based partly on Mesopotamian figures he saw at the Met and partly on American magazine ads featuring glowing women (he cut them out and sometimes pasted precedent smiles on top). Though appearing spontaneous, they were worked on for months—the paint is thick in some places, thin in others, opaque here translucent there. By the early 1960s, de Kooning moved to Long Island near Pollock and began landscapes returning to more fully abstract mode. In the 1980s, failing health developed an entirely different abstract style using primary colors and ribbon-like forms. Some say his later works declined in quality due to dementia onset, while others argue since painting of his sort doesn't come from the brain but from intuition, instinct, and the artist's hand, it stayed with him until his death in 1997.

Dutch-American painter Willem de Kooning's women came partly from American advertisements featuring white smiles and dominating glamour girls. Like Munch and Soutine, his women represented anxiety—taking the expressionist fear of the fatal woman to comic extreme. They were squat, broad, overwhelming, primitive glimpses rather than analyzed figures. His spontaneity of touch and looking ran through both figurative and abstract work, handling expressionist distortion after WWII when reality had outstripped art.

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, Holland, and studied at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts as a teenager. In 1926, he immigrated illegally to the United States, living as an illegal immigrant until 1961. He worked as a house painter and commercial artist to support himself. He met American artists like Stuart Davis in 1929 and met Pollock in 1942. His first solo exhibition was in 1948 when he was 44, and he didn't start selling his work satisfactorily until the mid-1950s. He said he liked cubism most of all movements because it had a wonderful unsure atmosphere of reflection. His work shows clear cubist fragmentation, with figures broken down in ways that Cubist art often isn't. He used cardboard templates to create rhythmic shapes and let viewers see his ambivalences and changes of mind. When asked how he knew when a work was finished, he replied that he refrained from finishing it, maintaining the work's ambiguity. In 1948, he moved to abstraction for about two to three years, using household paints rather than artist paints. Unlike Pollock's loss of self-consciousness, de Kooning always maintained control, manipulating and organizing his work. 'Excavation' (1950) was one of his last and largest major abstract paintings, containing fragmented bodily imagery like teeth and fragmented human figures.

Willem de Kooning, born in the Netherlands and arriving in America in his early 20s, co-founded abstract expressionism with Jackson Pollock—the most significant US art movement of the 20th century. His 'Woman' series from the early 1950s was revolutionary because while peers remained entirely abstract, de Kooning returned to depicting female figures. 'Woman - Ochre' features large eyes, a toothy grin, a ghoulish face, a triangular torso with pronounced breasts, and aggressive gestural brushwork. Another 'Woman' painting sold for $137.5 million in 2006, making it one of the most expensive artworks ever sold.

Alex Katz describes how commercial imagery from the 1950s—including TV ads, movie close-ups, and billboard advertisements—influenced his artistic development. He was particularly drawn to the flat, simplified images and the way subjects were positioned within frames. This exposure to mass media aesthetics helped him understand new visual languages that differed from traditional fine art approaches.