The Challenge of Preserving Modern Art: A Technical Investigation of Paints Used in Selected Works by Willem de Kooning
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The Challenge of
Preserving Modern Art: A Technical Investigation of Paints Used in Selected Works by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock Susan Lake
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) are perhaps the best-known members of the abstract expressionist movement, a group of diverse artists from disparate backgrounds who radically transformed American art during the 1940s and into the 1950s. While the development and legacy of abstract expressionism remains a subject of considerable debate, what this diverse group of artists had in common was the belief that the materials, and the ways the artists applied them, are crucial to the expression of their art. In a now-famous statement of 1947, Pollock observed that a painting had “a life of its own” that would “come through” when handling materials. Similarly, de Kooning asserted that he never intended to make a “good painting” and never worked with the idea of perfection. Instead, he painted to “see how far one could go.”1 These statements express the artists’ common conviction that their work had a serious subject matter, and paint alone had the power to convey their messages. In this way, the art experience and visual evidence of the painting process
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came to play an essential role in creating a work of art. In the light of these statements, the transformation of American painting is inextricably bound to the materials and the methods used by the artists. Although the literature on de Kooning and Pollock is voluminous, publications on their painting techniques are not extensive. In his many articles and books on de Kooning, critic Thomas Hess wrote that with the exception of the black-and-white paintings of the late 1940s, de Kooning’s paints prior to about 1960 were conventional artists’ oil paints that were simply applied in different and unconventional ways.2 Robert Goodnough’s 1951 article on Pollock’s painting method was accompanied by several of Hans Namuth’s dramatic photographs of the artist dripping paint from cans, but made no reference to the paints Pollock actually used. These photographs (later published in Life magazine) reinforced the public conception of abstract expressionism as an art that violated the accepted conventions of picture making. Likewise, the perception was established that these artists used household
paints merely as an economic decision that had no other bearing on the subject or the meaning of a picture.3 It is the premise of this article that both de Kooning and Pollock tailored aspects of art in ways that were uniquely their own: the choice and preparation of their paints and their prodigious capacity for inventing new ways to manipulate paints. In a broader sense, this research attempts to show that both de Kooning and Pollock achieved their mature styles by consciously altering the materials and techniques they used to create their paintings. As a means to this end, technical analysis indicates that these artists, and their colleagues, readily explored and exploited many nontraditional materials in
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