Willem de Kooning: Picasso and Me

You can say that I was influenced by Picasso. 

 Oh, what am I saying, I was inspired by him! Even my friend Arshile Gorky was in awe of him. (See my previous post). The fact that Picasso founded the Cubist movement is such an amazing thing that earned him my respect. I’m quite sure he was the main reason why I ended up trying to also emulate that quality of having the subject or foreground blend with the background until you can’t differentiate them. And I’m quite happy that I’ve somewhat managed to do it now (despite the numerous tantrums and failures I’ve experienced) That being said, our works are actually still quite distinct from each other:

Woman I (1950 - 1952)
by Willem de Kooning
Oil on Canvas

Weeping Woman (1937)
by Pablo Picasso
Oil on Canvas

Firstly, I think it would be easier to mention the similarity between our works. You can see we’re preoccupied with drawing women at certain stages of our lives. And it’s also obvious that we’re…um… not exactly treating them kindly in our canvases. 

Another thing to note also, like I previously mentioned, Picasso influenced me on trying to make the edge between subject and background ambiguous so in my work, you can see how I tried to do just that. But that is pretty much where all the similarities end and the differences start! 

For one, the way we paint the women’s figures is different. Picasso, being a cubist, of course relies on heavy black lines to delineate the forms and shapes that create the woman in the painting. The forms and the shapes itself are highly geometrical with many sharp angles and edges. Me? I would like to describe my lines as being more…”organic” in a sense. Those lines are anything but solid and instead, are smudged and mixed with each other. 

Picasso also disfigures the woman in the painting by skewing the face symmetry, highly simplifying yet at the same time stylizing features and squashing perspectives. I, however, exaggerated features of the woman: her eyes, her teeth, her mouth, and her bosom. And while you can still somewhat roughly identify the entire woman’s body part in Picasso’s painting, in mine you just can’t make out certain parts. Her hands and arms are totally obliterated by splashes of color and her left leg is also already blending to the background. 

On color palette, Picasso uses very garish, contrasting flat colors making the painting look very disjointed because the individual geometrical shapes seem to be accentuated. I, however, decided to paint it in a rather muted palette in comparison and if you look closely, I do have a bit of shading to bring out the three dimensionality of the subject. Although I used red, green, blue and yellow, their tones are somewhat grayish and since there are indeed a lot of gray in my painting, the colors and elements in the painting are somehow unified. I think all these differences may be accounted to the different intention we have when painting. 

For Picasso, it is to try and depict how much pain, suffering and grief can be expressed through the human face. He based this on one of his mistress’ face, Dora…Marks? Mare? Maar? I can’t remember her name. Argh. Dementia’s acting up again. I think it is Dora Maar. (edit by Chua Ek Kay: Yes, it’s Dora Maar, people.) He keeps on saying, "Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines."

On the other hand, I paint because of lust. Unlike Picasso, I can’t remember who that lady was but I can tell you she was one pretty lady. *drools* 

Erm, but anyway, I set to do this painting and did what I did. You can say this is an expression of pent-up sexual frustration but if there’s anything “Woman I” did to me it is that it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light, because that motif was the one thing I wanted to get hold of. I thought I might as well stick to the idea that it's got two eyes, a nose and mouth and neck! Okay, you ladies out there might be thinking very low of the two of us right now. I…can’t say we’re not guilty but trust me, when we love a woman, we respect them...

Portrait d'Olga dans un fauteuil
Portrait of Olga in the Armchair (1918)
by Pablo Picasso
Oil on Canvas

Portrait of Elaine (1940)
by Willem de Kooning
Pencil Sketch

...because any male artist should think twice, or even more than that, before he decides to make his girlfriend look disfigured in her portrait! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!

That is all for now from me. Bless your heart, readers!

Chua Ek Kay: Comparison between Chua Mia Tee and My Works

Chua Ek Kay
Old Street Scene - Chinatown
Chinese Ink on Paper, 69 x 78 cm

Chua Mia Tee
History of Human Spirit (1983)
Oil on Canvas

Both Chua Mia Tee and I painted the Chinatown scenes. There are some similarities as well as differences between both artworks.

The both of us have similar thematic concern. For Chua Mia Tee, the Chinatown scenes are vivid memories from his childhood and he wanted to document these scenes before they get forgotten and vanish from the urban landscape. Similarly, "The streets and lanes hold fond memories of my childhood as well as dreams of my present and future". So, i wanted to paint the "old Singapore streets, with their varied architecture and suggestion of a way of life gradually fading into the past, into tropical decay, or encroached upon by modern high-rises". Therefore, both of our works are inspired by our childhood memories and hold similar intentions.

We used different mediums to paint our artworks. In "Old Street Scene", I painted the Chinatown scene using Chinese ink while in "History of Human Spirit", Chua Mia Tee used oil paint to paint his work. The use of ink, a Chinese traditional medium, creates a black and white effect, to portray a scene back in the olden days. Moreover, Chinese paintings often make use of positive and negative spaces and this effect produced is similar to that of the black and white photographs in the past. On the other hand, Chua Mia Tee used oil paint to paint his work but he managed to create a sepia effect through the warm hues. So the painting looks vintage too. Therefore, although the mediums both artists used are different, both artworks are able to create a vintage effect.

Also, both of our paintings depict subject matters differently. For example, in my painting, the painting is devoid of human presence. However, in "History of Human Spirit", human figures are depicted engaging in their daily routines or activities. Even though i did not paint any human figures, I painted dark doorways in the foreground which implies activity beyond the doorways. So these black patches serve as an abstraction of the human activities or engagements. On the contrary Chua Mia Tee painted people in the midst of their activities. The people seem oblivious of being painted as Chua wanted to capture the moment of a typical Chinatown scene. Therefore, the subject matters in our paintings are depicted differently since the subject matters in my painting are abstracted while the subject matters in Chua's painting are painted realistically.

Lastly, the perspective of our works are similar. Both of our works depict an atmospheric perspective, where the subject matters are not painted clearly at the background to show a vanishing point. This creates depth in our work. In addition, subject matters diminish in size in the background.

In conclusion, there are similarities -- the perspective, thematic concern and choice of subject matters-- but these are painted differently. I have adopted the Chinese traditional ink painting while Chua is influenced by the western art and he chose to use oil paint. Therefore, the visual impacts differ.

The Beginning of an Artist's Journey | Chua Ek Kay

你好，I am Chua Ek Kay. Since young, I always have a deep interest in listening to music and reading Chinese literature and poems. I remember that back when I was in Catholic High School, I could recite poems from memory and my teachers would be very proud of me.
As mentioned earlier in the previous post, I did not come from an affluent family. That was why I only started learning traditional Chinese ink painting when I was 28 years old. My Master was Fan Chang Tien and his valuable lessons have taught me how to fuse poetry with calligraphy in the painting and use "expressive ink", to be expressive in whatever subject matter I choose. I remember that he once said, "There must be rhythm within each stroke and each dot. There must be a graduation of black within black." His teachings are etched in my memory and as you can see from the painting of the bamboos on the left side, the black ink is carefully mixed with water and the colour gradually fades from the bottom to the top of the bamboo. 

Fan Chang Tien's Bamboo Painting
(99cm x 35cm)

Chua Ek Kay's bamboo paintings

Not long later, I decided to pursue my studies at University of Tasmania to widen my horizon of western concepts in paintings. I was deeply fascinated by the new avenues of thoughts, approaches and techniques that Western art offered and so, I went back to school (LASALLE) in Singapore to study. My thinking had broadened and I realised that a brush is a very important tool of universal language for I am able to manipulate it to apply brushstrokes that can express my emotions with grace and confidence indecisively. I felt so overwhelmed by the power of brushstrokes and was emotionally compelled to just paint with freedom and that was when I painted one of my most personal piece of work Song of Cicada.

Song of Cicada (1995)1800 x 3600 mm X 4 幅

Song of Cicada is a very simple yet complex work. The work appears simple as each of the scroll is painted with not more than two leaves, which creates vast areas of empty spaces. The concentration of white, empty spaces represents the serene, calm and quiet state of mind I possess. However, despite the emptiness of the painting, there is a certain intensity exuded, bewildering the viewers  and inviting them to imagine and envision experience from within the painting. So, although this work might seem simple on the surface, it is actually a complex work charged with my sentiments and intentions.

Basically, I spent decades learning and practising Chinese ink painting in the inception of my life as an artist. Now, it is time for me to stop writing and I will end off with a quote, "Without a strong foundation in calligraphy, where will your artistic lines come from? Without reading, how can you conceive art? Without good learning, how can you be an expert?"

The Beginning of an Artist's Journey | Willem de Kooning

Hello, Bill here!

Some of you may be wondering how I ended up becoming an artist. Truth be told, I am still quite amazed at how life had unfolded for me. My journey was not a smooth one.

My first encounter with art was when I was 12. Quite a late age don't you think? I became an apprentice at this firm called Gidding and Sons in the heart of Rotterdam. They're a bunch of talented artist and craftsmen who specialized in design and decoration. Despite the amount of talent concentrated there, somehow I managed to grab the attention of the owner but for the life of me, I can't remember his name anymore. That's a shame since I am forever indebted to him - he's the one who convinced me to really join the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. Thank you kind sir.

So the next chapter in my art journey began. I was studying in the academy and I considered myself very lucky: I've learnt about commercial design from the time I worked as an apprentice and now I got to learn about the more refined principles of high art. Below are a few paintings I did as a student. Ah, the memories...

Still Life (1916/17) by Willem de Kooning
34.3 x 38.1 cm
Oil on Cardboard
The painting I did when I was 13 years old 

Still Life (Bowl, Pitcher, aand Jug) (1921) by WIllem de Kooning
Did this 4 years later. Still very proud of it!

And...as you all know, I hid in a British freighter ship to go to America in 1926. It's not really because I thought America was the place for artists though, mind you. In fact, quite the opposite, I never even once considered America as having any serious artist at all. I just wanted to go to the US because it sounded cool. (I was young, okay?)

As it turned out I'm quite mistaken. There were indeed serious artists but almost all of them were poor. But that's what fascinates me; their devotion to the arts. There's one more thing that finally convinced me to become an artist though. I've told you that I met a lot of artists, but then I met Gorky. Arshile Gorky, to be precise:

"If you were serious, you studied the work of modernist masters such as Picasso, Matisse and Miró, and you aspired to equal or better their achievement," he said last time. Whoa.

And that was how I finally became a full-time artist. 

However, his modernist ideas, which I really admired, clashed with my classical training, which I also quite like so that was a horribly rough period for me. You can ask my friends (or perhaps the garbage man) how many canvasses I threw out last time.

Then, along comes Elaine:

Portrait of Elaine (1940) by Willem de Kooning
"I was a lot of fun," Elaine said in an interview quite recently. "I mean a lot of fun."
And yeah, I can't agree more.

I guess the two of them had a significant impact on my works. Gorky planted the idea of departing from classic art convention, and Elaine was the one who finally gave me the courage to do so:

Seated figure (male classical) (1939) by Willem de Kooning

Seated Woman (1940) by Willem de Kooning

Standing Man (1942) by Willem de Kooning

Queen of Hearts (1943) by Willem de Kooning

Somehow I managed to delve into the realm of abstraction yet still pay homage to the old masters by keeping a clear reference to the human figure in my paintings of these period.

Portrait of Master Bill (1929 - 1936) by Arshile Gorky
You see how Gorky influenced me?

But then, things went down the drain. I was broke, World War II happened, The Holocaust happened and Rotterdam, my city of birth, was reduced to rubble. At that very frustrating time period, I, together with my friend Franz Kline, went to buy black and white enamel household paint (read: too poor to buy anything else) and just vent. Like really, we just went cuckoo.

Dark Pond (1948) by Willem de Kooning
Enamel on composition board

Black Untitled (1948) by Willem de Kooning
Oil and enamel on paper

Untitled (1948) by Willem de Kooning
Oil and enamel on paper

But I think something good did come out of it in the end...I had my very first solo exhibition that year at the Charles Egan gallery. Not a big one, and only a few paintings were sold but at least it got people talking about me.

I decided to explore this style further and was a bit pleasantly surprised that people compared me to Jackson Pollock:

Attic (1949) by Willem de Kooning

Excavation (1950) by Willem de Kooning

But I still feel that my works still bear more 'resemblance' to the real world than Pollock's work and that is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. I respect Pollock. Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

But for me, even abstract shapes must have a likeness.  I just feel that I'm more suited to draw human figures and so, to the surprise of a lot of people, I ditched black and white paintings and focused back on human figures. Or maybe to be precise, I should say, women: 

Woman I (1952) by Willem de Kooning

Woman II (1952) by Willem de Kooning

Woman III (1953) by Willem de Kooning

And that I guess somewhat summarizes my journey of being an artist. Even though the Women series may seem to be my most popular series, I did not stop there. I continued experimenting in many, many different styles. With my dementia nowadays, it would be difficult for me to tell you why I painted certain paintings that way. All I can say is that after the Women series I paint with bolder and less messy lines. Sometimes completely random things inspired me too such as... 

Highways:

Montauk Highway (1958) by Willem de Kooning

A Mediterranean Garden:

Villa Borghese (1960) by Willem de Kooning

Or landscapes:

Untitled (Landscape) (1977) by Willem de Kooning

And now, as old age and diseases are starting to affect me, my painting style once again changes. Much much cleaner if you compare them to my earlier works:

Untitled XII (1985) by Willem de Kooning

Untitled (1988) by Willem de Kooning

My journey never stops. I always evolve from time to time. 
That is all for now, everyone! Bless your heart and see you next time!


sources:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/willem-de-kooning-still-dazzles-74063391/?page=1
http://arthistory.about.com/od/artistsaz/a/Artists-Quotes-Willem-De-Kooning.htm

The Birth of Chua Kooning

Greetings!

Before you start wondering what kind of parent would give their child a name as weird as Chua Kooning, it might help to tell you that it's not a person's name. This blog is shared between us and that quirky name is the result of mashing our names together. Who are we? Oh right, we forgot to mention that. We are Chua Ek Kay and Willem de Kooning. You might be wondering how on earth can we meet each other when we're literally living on opposite sides of the world. Well, the magic of internet, we would say. Both of us coincidentally met online on Facebook and started talking about art. Now, we're close pals and have recently decided that we should create a blog to share with you more about us as artists.

So..., here's a bit about us:

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Hallo, hoe gaat het? I'm Willem de Kooning, but you can call me Bill like my friends do. As you can probably tell, I'm a Dutch American, born on 24 April 1904 Rotterdam, Netherlands. 

My parents are, sadly, divorced when I was 3, and I lived with mother. If there's anything I remember about her is that she's fierce. Very fierce. Anyway, I studied at Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques for 8 years but moved to USA in 1926. It wasn't really a pleasant journey partly because I felt seasick most of the time but I guess it's mostly because I'm afraid people will find out where I'm hiding and know that I'm not supposed to be on that British freighter. It was worth it though, I finally reached the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave! 

I took on many jobs to make a living, such as being a sign-writer, house-painter and odd-job man. However, I finally settled down as an artist and lived in Manhattan Studio since 1937. In 1938, I took, Elaine Marie Fried, or simply Elaine, in as my apprentice. One thing led to another and um, yeah, she became my wife in 1943. Google her up! She also became an artist, you know? 

In 1948, I held my first solo exhibition at Charles Egan Gallery, New York. I continued painting and if I remember correctly, I was at my most productive in the 1980s; I painted more than 300 canvases during that time. 

Now, as I age, my memory is deteriorating due to dementia and I'm starting to show signs of Alzheimer's disease. How sad. Oh, and one last thing before I forget, I am getting more and more forgetful nowadays because of dementia and people say I might have Alzheimer's disease. It's tough being old, sigh.
Anyway, Chua Ek Kay, bless his heart, will now tell you more about himself.

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你好? I am Chua Ek Kay, a Chinese artist. I am born in Guangzhou, China on 21 November 1947 but moved to Singapore shortly after I was born. My family is not rich at all and as the eldest son (6 younger brothers, for goodness sake can you imagine that?!), I had the responsibility to earn money for the family. 

So it was only until in 1975 that I learned traditional Chinese ink painting and seal carving from Master Fan Chang Tian, a "Shanghai School" (calligraphy, classical poetry, painting and seal-carving ) ink painter. 

In 1985, I decided to be a full time artist while teaching at the National Univeristy of Singapore's Extramural Studies Department to support my passion. My watershed periods were during the late 1980s to 1990s when I held my first exhibition at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, featuring a selection of Chinese brush paintings and calligraphy and won the UOB Painting of the Year and Juror’s Choice award at the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards. I also went to pursue further studies to learn more about Western paintings. Now, people call me the "bridge between Asian and Western art". I am flattered!

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So that is the end of our self introduction! We hope that you might know us better after reading this post! See you in the next one!