"Is there something I'm doing wrong," asks she? When the hammer is broken, we blame the nail. When the nail breaks then the picture won't hang. If the picture won't hang then a thousand words remain unsaid. If a thousand words are never shared then the story ends...
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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