The Bright Crush
de Kooning, Sweet Smell of Success
Even reproduced in a book, Willem de Kooning’s Excavation is so good I feel like I have to go take a walk around. Peter Schjeldahl on de Kooning:
“The effect was like a plane taking off, when the acceleration presses you against the seat. The painting's violent intelligence detonated pleasure after pleasure. When I turned around, everything in the show was singing its lungs out. Half an hour later I was beaten to a pulp of joy. I'll rest and go back for more.”
Robert Hughes says Excavation is:
“That tangled, not quite monochrome, dirty-cream image of— what? Bodies, is the short answer: every one of the countless forms that seem embedded in the paint, sometimes even one another in a tempo that seems to get faster toward the edges and corners, can be read as an elbow, a thigh, a buttock, or the fold of a groin, though never quite literally.”
I think this is right, basically, but it misses something important. The other de Koonings I’ve seen, like the Woman series, they’re fleshy too but in a grotesque way. Fearful of bodies and their possibilities. Fear of women and sex powered some of the greatest midcentury art, so I’m not complaining.
But Excavation isn’t like that. It’s bright and electric and warm, and if there’s sexuality it’s a presence but not a dominating force — it’s not some sort of heaving orgy, in other words. It’s a a beautiful dance of bodies occupying a space, jabbering and laughing.
Last night my roommate and I watched my favorite old movie, Sweet Smell of Success. The dense, slangy dialogue is the greatest ever, the central performances are ferocious. But what really does it for me is the relentless forward momentum that follows Tony Curtis wheeling and dealing his way through the high-end clubs and smoky jazz bars of New York, pushing his way through crowds, slapping people on the back.
New Yorkers like de Kooning know — there’s nothing better than coming in out of the cold to a warm, bright, crowded space. The first few moments when you’re pushing your way to the bar after you’ve taken off your coat. It’s one of the highs you can get naturally, like eating a big diner breakfast and drinking four or five cups of coffee.
There’s finally a chill in the air in Los Angeles. Really all you can do here is chase the ghost of that feeling, but I’m going to try this week anyway.