In the early 1960s Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, also an artist, decided to move to East Hampton, New York, where they had on occasion been weekend guests of Jackson Pollock. Near an unfinished painting in the studio, Elaine and Willem de Kooning relax in rocking chairs.
The unpretentious exterior of the studio/home blends effortlessly into the countryside.
Eames chairs provide seating in the living room, and pre-Columbian figures fill the shelves. The paper unicorn on the left is by Willem’s daughter, Lisa, an art student, as is the sculpture of a mother and child next to the large piece of rock crystal.
Another view of the studio reveals the wall of glass, with its north light.
The easel on the left, holding a work in progress, is propped up by two oil cans, a “temporary” measure unchanged since 1963.
De Kooning’s paints, brushes, and canvases in the studio.
The studio interior glows in the night.
Published January 1982
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AUDIO SLIDE SHOWMaster of AbstractionSeptember 26, 2011“Bring open eyes and an open mind,” writes Peter Schjeldahl in his review of the Willem de Kooning retrospective at MOMA. “The samplings of his several periods, in which he continually reshuffled aesthetics of figuration and abstraction, whetted my appetite for more of each. The show demolishes a canard that the artist’s work declined after the nineteen-fifties. Only his fame did. Out of fashion, and almost to the last, de Kooning made extraordinary art. I rate him the greatest of American painters, and lesser only than Picasso and Matisse among all artists of the twentieth century.”http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2011/09/26/110926_audioslideshow_w…