Legend Willem De Kooning Analysis

In his biographical essay “Legend: Willem de Kooning,” Baron Wormser accounts Willem de Kooning’s odyssey from Rotterdam, Netherlands, to New York City, and explores de Kooning’s transformation from an amateur sign and furniture painter to a professional abstract expressionist artist. Respectively, Wormser frames his essay based on Willem de Kooning’s frame of mind, not only to reveal de Kooning’s subconscious thoughts and feelings on his life and work, but to also pay homage to de Kooning’s authentic sense of self which was one of both color and black and white: the color representing his “instinctive romantic[ism]” (202), passion, and grit, and the black and white signifying the grey and rusts of his soul in a hopeless era. Unlike most of

As a post World War II artist, Wormser’s de Kooning was impressed by innocence and ambiguities instead of “the callous maxims of realism” (204), his work contains endless movement as he “revels in metaphysics, but does not care about definitions. He cares about paint [… because …] paint cares for the world. Paint is practical” (202). From Wormser’s perspective, it is impractical for him to describe de Kooning’s works as they lack an overarching goal or particular purpose, yet the absence of an objective in de Kooning’s work is reassuring in that it allows subjectivity. Correspondingly, instead of providing an answer, de Kooning’s artworks pose a question and allow whoever their viewer is to relate to the artwork and find the answer they are looking for, and that answer may be different for everyone, because there is no absolute – right or wrong – in de Kooning’s work, only movement, line, and shape. And that is why de Kooning’s work is considered living art, because viewing his art is a unique experience to every individual, and if Wormser was to explicitly describe de Kooning’s artworks he would have spoiled the experience for his readers and take away the subjectivity of the artwork that lies within each individual’s imagination. As Wormser explains, back when de Kooning was still an amateur painter, he

As an abstract expressionist, de Kooning’s artworks were and are considered a part of his being, and yet in his essay “Legend: Willem de Kooning,” Wormser restrains himself from describing de Kooning’s pieces because to do so would be to identify de Kooning – to leave room for misinterpretation. Even if Wormser were to know exactly how to interpret the artwork – since he was confident enough to write an essay as a narrative monologue that interprets de Kooning’s stream of consciousness – describing an abstract, surreal piece of art is to try to explain color to a blind man, or to ask a dog to see rainbows in color; it would be impossible, especially when the piece of art is a painting from the century of the shattered frame where the artwork is continually being reinvented and reinterpreted in people’s minds. However, despite not explicitly describing de Kooning’s paintings, Wormser describes what other painters see in de Kooning’s work when he says, “they realize something exquisite is present. They realize that there is more sensitivity than anyone might know what to do with” (210). Correspondingly, Womser suggest that de Kooning’s painting embrace a certain delicacy and naivety that seem to “engage everything through the medium of