Contemporary Artists

Willem De Kooning

Willem De Kooning was a Dutch-American painter well known for being a founder of Abstract Impressionism or 'Action Painting'. Born in the Netherlands after college in 1926 he stowed away on a ship to the USA and settled in New York.

De Kooning was notorious for rejecting the accepted stylistic norms of Surrealism and Cubism in his work and used his painterly style to create his art.

"YOU HAVE TO CHANGE TO STAY THE SAME" - De Kooning

This painting by Willem De Kooning always reminds me of someone's messy bedroom. Minus the skull and all I see are distorted figures and shapes that resemble a bedroom to me. The purple section looks like a figure of someone sitting down, the ladder is like it leads to a top bunk bed or the window, and many of the yellow sections are clothes strewn across the top bunk hanging down to the floor to me. There's an explosion of colour in this painting that gives real energy and movement to the piece.

Abstraction

Woman

In the late 1940's De Kooning shocked the art world with his aggressive series of paintings depicting the figures of women, which was conveniently the title of it. This distortive figure of a woman is disturbing. The way he's portrayed the face is almost daemonic with only one eye being recognisable. The sharp straight lines used as facial features gives a cold, hard expression. Yet it contradicts with the lovely long yellow hair and flash of pink colour into the painting.

This painting of his is quite unsettling to me, the harsh black lines of the whole figure from face to body makes me wonder about what De Kooning was thinking of when painting and what his views were on women. You wouldn't depict a woman in this aggressive way unless you had an emotion towards them.

Boudoir

Man and The Big Blonde

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois is one of the great figures of Modern and Contemporary Art. She is best known for her large scale sculptures that have been inspired by her own experiences and memories. Bourgeois had a rough childhood and used the trauma and abandonment fears as a prominent focus for her work.
Not only did she make sculptures but also drawings, prints and textile work.

Her work can be described as Feminist Art where she explored Patriarchy, Motherhood and what it meant for women to be the subject of art rather than an object of art.

Louise Bourgeoise is most known for her spider sculptures. (pictured to the left)

I'm not a fan of any creepy crawlies let alone spiders so I looked no further into her sculpture work on stuff like that. However I did discover her textile work and I think I was drawn to her pattern work as they are something i'm looking at for my own Major Project.

ODE A L'OUBLI

This is a fabric book Louise Bourgeois made in 2002. It's a beautiful book full of 32 fabric collages that Bourgeois made from her own used clothing. Bourgeois cut, arranged and stitched each pattern together.

I really liked her colour pallet for this book, it's very muted but delicate. The hint of pink that flows through each page ties each design together, yet each design is different to the other. I also like that she combined some text into the book, it breaks up the patterns while still not looking out of place.

Elaine De Kooning

Elaine De Kooning was an Abstract Impressionist and figurative expressionist painter that was known for her portraits.

Her style changed frequently over the course of her life in a constant exploration of theme, palette, and gesture. She was married to Willem De Kooning who overshadowed her for most of her career but that didn't stop her from painting.

Her style is incredible in the way that she gets across recognisable features of these people while still keeping the the abstract expressionist way of painting fluidly.

'I always say I'm an escape artist. Style is something I've always tried to avoid. I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.'' -Elaine De Kooning

President John. F. Kennedy

Self portrait

Basketball

Bacchus

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