de Kooning: A Retrospective, MoMA. by randee silv

 

  I don’t see it. no title,1985 is not a landscape of windblown foliage and swaying figures. I don’t care what the audio track said.  I kept staring, each glimpse conversing with its vacant whiteness and spare movement of color.  

Still dizzy from circling exuberantly around an entire sixth floor, slipping in and out through seven decades of devolving, evolving. Two hundred paintings of continual shifts. I felt compelled to settle in front of just one.  I did note that de Kooning’s last three years, labeled by some as distressingly empty, had been left out.  That couldn’t be the reason.   

I watched, amused by these two art critics who strolled straight up to the canvas, so excited, so engaged as their fingers traced the sensual rounded lines. They confirmed their conclusions with each other and walked off.  He gave a slight wave apologizing for having blocked my view. I shrugged.  I’m sure they were certain they had clearly spotted female butts. Breasts. I should’ve asked if they’d noticed any high heels.   

I continued staring as I moved back a few steps.  

I knew I wasn’t in my studio, but I found myself looking anyway with the same intent to see if I could catch any hints of the human form, determined always to cover, to distort,  to remove, not wanting to give the viewer that hook to latch onto.  

More staring.  

It was almost like I was back in the Grotte de Gargas, mesmerized by the pulse of marks on cave walls.  Dots, nested curves.  Meandering lines.  Percepts still wired right into us. Inhabiting them. Savoring them.  Endangered gestures before they trigger, congeal into something recognizable, familiar.  

I remained on the edge of vision.   Pointing to his watch, a museum guard approached.  
De Kooning had to be somewhere in that painting, tearing it apart and scrambling it together.   Unsettled. Still not clicking exactly.   With a last stare, I nodded to the Slipping Glimpster.

Randi Silv website