Magazine 2011 S2

Mining the painting for meaning and context becomes something like an archaeological dig, beginning quite literally on the surface of things.  Good for MoMA that Gotham News is best viewed in person, because reproductions cannot convey the textual richness of de Kooning’s large and thick brushstrokes. Measuring 69 x 79 inches, the painting presents a busy traffic jam of complementary colors, near accidents between red and green, blue and orange, or black and white. If it could talk, the work would yell. The mottled pink passage near the bottom left suggests the presence of mortal flesh in a world of zigzags and sharp corners.

Yet, an in-depth look at a particularly hectic mixed media canvas, Gotham News, a work dating from 1955, can begin a stimulating inquiry into multiple facets of the artist’s life as well as the social context of making art in New York City in the mid-1950s. Mining the painting for meaning and context becomes something like an archaeological dig, beginning quite literally on the surface of things. Good for MoMA that Gotham News is best viewed in person, because reproductions cannot convey the textual richness of de Kooning’s large and thick brushstrokes. Measuring 69 x 79 inches, the painting presents a busy traffic jam of complementary colors, near accidents between red and green, blue and orange, or black and white. If it could talk, the work would yell. The mottled pink passage near the bottom left suggests the presence of mortal flesh in a world of zigzags and sharp corners.

As a metaphor, and clued by the work’s title, Gotham News expresses the busy energy of New Yorkers in their city. But wait! We can read actual text in this painting, courtesy of the bits of newspaper transfers de Kooning applied to wet paint. Begin by directing your attention to the top middle, and look for the upside down and reversed newspaper ad. That’s a movie theater notice for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 movie To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Read on. It’s like opening an old box in the attic where the fascination comes not with retrieving what’s stored in the box but with the crumpled old newspapers used for packaging.

In addition to the reds, whites, blues, and greens of the thickly layered brushstrokes, the newspaper transfers depict scraps of advertisements for diamond wedding rings, clearance sales, a cartoon woman, and something about television. The vigorous painting whips up a controlled chaos, the many voices of the imagined mythic Gotham all at once engaged in the persuasive practices of journalists and ad men.

Several titles of paintings that precede Gotham News reference life in post-war New York – Fire Island (1946), Secretary (1948), Night (1948), Black Friday (1948), and Night Square (1948). Gansevoort Street (circa 1949) is a swirling study in blood red, appropriate for the meatpacking district. Curator and arts editor Katherine Kuh said she gave Gotham News its name. As an organizer of the American section for the 1956 Venice Biennale, Kuh said she wanted to include works by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and de Kooning, but the biennial theme of “American Artists Paint the City” made it tough for abstractions.

As recounted by Avis Berman in ‪My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator‬, Kuh explained, “At that time I was inclined to believe that all three of them were at least partially indebted to New York.” Visiting Kline’s Third Avenue studio, she picked out a couple of paintings, naming one of them “New York.” Kline called the other one “Third Avenue.” De Kooning’s studio was nearby, and so the two walked over by way of the rooftops. Kline told her that one of the de Kooning’s paintings in progress was a knockout.   

MoMA situates Gotham News within de Kooning’s Woman to Landscape period, 1950-1956, as the painting follows shortly after his notorious third Woman series. Tough, grotesque, and aggressive, these three-quarter portraits of female figures are characterized by their big breasts and huge teeth, wild eyes and a general carnal knowledge. Aside from their garish irritation, the works indeed bothered the artist as much as they upset his critics.