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Article: Dutch boy paints.(De Kooning: An American Master)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- February 28, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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De Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Knopf, 752 pp., $35)
THE American painter Willem de Kooning escaped Marx only to be done in by Freud. De Kooning enjoyed little time--perhaps only a few years in the late 1940s--between the maturation of a personal style, free of Depression-era politics ("We divorced politics from our art, although we were political," he once said), and his leveling by drink and fame. "I saw Jackson in his grave," he proclaimed at Jackson Pollock's funeral. "And he's dead. It's over. I'm number one." That was in 1956. He was already in decline.
It is hard to feel sorry for de Kooning. Add up the ...