A metal box, it's been housed inside this wall. The face, its lid opens the wrong way. It swings up on a bent hinge where a sock wraps around the brass coat hook that is holding it fast to the rafter above. The cloth wires are all gone. Inside there's just some tape and whiskers now. This would have been used with pride, men would have seen to that. Now they're rarely opened. Instead, they sit darkly in basements fading towards the rust.
Willem DeKooning, Excavation (1950) oil on canvas Yesterday at work I bumped into this piece by Donald Kuspit on DeKooning's retrospective over at Artnet . Then this morning I bumped into this one on L Magazine's site, by Paddy Johnson . I don't know that Paddy Johnson demystifies DeKooning as much as she takes issue with his pallet, declaring it repetitive and boorish en masse. By contrast, Donald Kuspit writes an article painting DeKooning as a sadistic brute inextricably tied to the modern tradition in general and Picasso specifically. Together they make for some interesting reading, particularly as Kuspit never addresses the show itself in favor of drawing his conclusions from individual works. While Johnson seems to wear the show like an imaginary wool shawl, noting it's uncomfortable, out of style, and the zipper is broken. But she doesn't seem to get to a place that addresses what was actually there either, only what she felt was missing or to her mind ...
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