The Art of de Mentia
Man, check out the human brain. I just read Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s biography of the artist Willem de Kooning; it is a lovingly and intelligently written book through and through, but what haunts me is what the authors write about near the end. Unlike that of his great rival Jackson Pollock, who died in a car crash in 1956, de Kooning’s life spanned nearly the whole of the twentieth century, falling just a few years short on either end. In his last years, probable Alzheimer’s disease — with an assist from many years of binge drinking — left him unable to do some pretty basic things. But . . . he could still paint.
To be sure, his work changed, but it changed in the way of many aging artists, not just those suffering from dementia. As with the work of others in a variety of mediums, there was a paring down, a reduction to the bare elements of his style. Compare Excavation, from 1950, to Garden in Delft, from 1987, a work completed when he was in dementia’s grip — a slippery grip, in the case of de Kooning.
De Kooning immigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands as a young man. Over the course of the following decades, as was demonstrated on a return visit to the country of his birth, he lost his original tongue. But his command of English (particularly written English) remained uncertain, too. When a woman he loved said nothing after he proposed marriage to her, he said, “You don’t supposed to be silent.” Toward the end of his life he often didn’t talk at all, even as he continued to work, suggesting what his real language was all along: painting.
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On a different theme, de Kooning’s biography may comfort many who feel like sub-par parents and spouses; he makes most of us look pretty good in that department. Reading this book in the same year that I read a biography of Norman Mailer — who stabbed one of his many wives, almost fatally — I am moved to wonder: is it possible to be a great artist and a good person? I put the question to you . . .
