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December 29, 2004
BOOK REVIEWS: ‘de Kooning’ Chronicles Rise of American Art Supremacy; ‘Adams vs. Jefferson’ Shows That Controversial Presidential Elections are Nothing New
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Netowrk
Hinton (HNN) — Celebrating the centennial of his birth, “de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Knopf, 752 pages, $35.00, color and black and white illustrations) is monumental in scope, by far the best art biography of 2004, rivaling the achievement of Robert Hughes in his 2003 biography of Francisco Goya, which I reviewed for this news service.
Much smaller in size, but well worth the reading is John Ferling’s “Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800” (Oxford University Press, 260 pages, $26.00, illustrated), a vivid reminder that presidential elections in this country—more often than not – are fraught with controversy. This was the election that saw Jefferson and his putative vice presidential running mate Aaron Burr tying in the Electoral College, throwing the electoral decision into the House of Representatives. President John Adams and his Federalist running mate Thomas Pinckney became sideshows in this election, with Adams’s popularity at a low in the wake of four years of bitter media and personal attacks by Jefferson, Hamilton and others.
Willem de Kooning, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1904, was one of the giants of the painting school that later was dubbed “Abstract Expressionism.” De Kooning is Dutch for “the king,” an apt description of the artist from about 1948 on.
Centered in New York and including such giants as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Arshile Gorky, Abstract Expressionism helped move the center of the art world from Paris to New York, where it remains to this day. Unlike Pollock, Rothko and Gorky – the latter two suicides, the former killed in a car crash in 1956 – de Kooning lived almost until his 93rd birthday, dying in March 1997. He “outlived himself,” is the apt description of the authors, describing de Kooning’s later years of Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, surely not helped by his years of alcoholism.
De Kooning’s mother, Cornelia, who ran a bar in rough and tumble Rotterdam, comes across as a real-life version of Tony Soprano’s mother Livia. She was as hard on her husband, whom she drove away, as she was on de Kooning and his older sister Marie. The young Dutchman worked as an art craftsman and studied at the academy in his hometown that was renamed in his honor in 1996.
As much to escape his mother as to create a new life in the new world, de Kooning left for America, where he spent many poverty stricken years working at everything from house painting to commercial art and store design, while he made the transition from purely figurative art to abstract works and abstract works with recognizable figures. He married Elaine Fried in 1938, but he was anything but a faithful husband. His daughter Lisa de Kooning was the result of a liaison with Joan Ward; but he never divorced Elaine de Kooning, who devoted her life to develop and publicize the de Kooning legend. Like Pollock’s wife Lee Krasner, a talented artist in her own right, this devotion came at the expense of her own art career.
Much of the massive book recounts de Kooning’s affairs: The diminutive Dutchman had movie-star looks and attracted many art groupies, much as rock stars did in later decades. The authors, both renowned art critics, effortlessly provide critiques of the styles of de Kooning, as well as artists who influenced him, such as Gorky and friends and competitors like Pollock. Just as Pollock started out as a figurist under the tutelage of regional painter Thomas Hart Benton, so did de Kooning produce figurative works such as “Two Men Standing” (1938) and “Seated Woman” (1940), both of which are among the excellently reproduced color plates in the biography.
Early on, de Kooning befriended fellow immigrant Gorky (1904-1948) and was profoundly influenced by the Armenian-American artist. It wasn’t until his first one-man show in 1948 that de Kooning began to receive the recognition he deserved. Even after that show, he enraged many art critics with figurative works like “Woman I” (1950-52) which portrayed a fearsome woman that probably was at least partly inspired by his mother. The critics – with the notable exceptions of Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess – wanted de Kooning and others to hew to a strict Abstract Expressionism party line—something the stubborn Dutchman refused to do.
Stevens and Swan have produced an exhaustive
cultural history of the American art scene from the Great Depression through
the war years and into the full flowering of Abstract Expressionism in
the 1940s and 1950s. Even if you’re not a fan of modern art, this
is one book that should be read by anyone interested in our cultural legacy
and how it was influenced by diverse artists, critics, collectors and
gallery owners.
In “Adams vs. Jefferson,” Ferling,
professor emeritus of history at the State University of West Georgia
in Carrollton, reminds us how brutal politicians and politics were just
a few decades after the Revolution. Nobody—not even George Washington
– was spared from virulent attacks by hired-gun editors like Benjamin
Franklin Bache of Philadelphia’s Aurora, Ben Franklin’s grandson;
and pamphleteer James Callender, “a Scotsman with a poison pen,”
as Ferling calls him, a particular favorite of Jefferson.
Historians and others who are guilty of
vilifying Aaron Burr often gloss over the attacks of Alexander Hamilton,
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and a host of other founding fathers. Burr
was often sneaky in his attacks, but so were Hamilton and Jefferson, as
Ferling demonstrates. Then as now, politicians let henchmen do their dirty
work.
Much of the book demonstrates how the two
parties, the Federalists of Washington and Adams and Hamilton soon were
opposed by the anti-Federalists, which morphed into the Republican Party
– the ancestor of today’s Democratic Party – of Jefferson
and Burr. Republicans predominated in New York and the Middle Atlantic
states and much of the South, while Federalists claimed New England as
their stronghold.
When the Electoral College tied at 73 votes
each for Jefferson and Burr in December 1800, it was left to the Federalist
dominated House of Representatives to determine which candidate would
be president. The machinations that led to the choice of Jefferson over
Burr are detailed and fascinating. The deadlock led to the adoption in
September 1804 of the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, eliminating
the possibility of similar deadlocks in the future.
Given Burr’s propensity to look longingly
on Spanish Florida and Louisiana as natural parts of the United States,
it’s fun to wonder what course the nation would have taken had the
House chose him as the lesser of two evils instead of lanky Virginian,
but Ferling doesn’t waste his space with speculation. “Adams
vs. Jefferson” is readable, well-documented history by a master
of the Revolutionary Period.
More Book Reviews by David M. Kinchen
— 10/28/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bill Kurtis on the Death Penalty; Ms. Moffett Becomes a Teacher
— 11/15/04 BOOK REVIEW: Roth Envisions a Frightening 'What If?' in 'The Plot Against America'
— 11/24/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bush, Blair and Iraq; A Shrink at Nuremberg; Updike's Sexy Geek; Potomac Fever Smites an Academic
— 12/15/04 BOOK REVIEWS: 'Past Imperfect' Covers Complexities of History, Plagiarism Issues; 'His Excellency' Reveals George Washington's Accomplishments
— 01/17/05 BOOK REVIEW: Max Hastings on Germany's 'Armageddon' as Allies from West,
East Conquer Third Reich
— 01/24/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Images of America: Huntington’ Displays Glorious Architecture of West Virginia’s First Planned City
— 01/27/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Auschwitz’ Personalizes Horror That Should Never Be Forgotten
David M. Kinchen is the Editor of HuntingtonNews.Net, repsponses and article submissions can be made to .
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