Walk into any major museum—the MoMA in New York, the Tate in London, the Guggenheim—and you’ll eventually hit a wall that looks like a colorful car crash. It’s messy. It’s violent. There are thick globs of oil paint that look like they were applied with a trowel rather than a brush. You’re looking at Willem de Kooning paintings, and honestly, even seventy years after he shook up the art world, people are still standing in front of these canvases whispering, "My kid could do that."
They’re wrong, of course. But you can’t blame them for feeling a little overwhelmed. De Kooning wasn’t trying to make things pretty. He was trying to capture the frantic, vibrating energy of post-war America. He was a Dutchman who moved to New York as a stowaway on a British freighter, and he brought a European mastery of anatomy only to tear it apart on the canvas.
The thing about de Kooning is that he never really "finished" a painting. He just stopped working on it. He would scrape away weeks of work, leaving behind a "ghost" image of what was there before, then paint right over it again. It’s that layering—that struggle—that makes his work so valuable and, frankly, so exhausting to look at for too long.
The Woman Series: Why Everyone Was Mad in the 50s
If you want to understand the controversy surrounding Willem de Kooning paintings, you have to look at the Woman series. Specifically Woman I.
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By the early 1950s, the "cool kids" of the art world—the Abstract Expressionists—had decided that representational art was dead. Jackson Pollock was dripping paint. Mark Rothko was painting blurry rectangles. Art was supposed to be about pure emotion and color, not "things." Then de Kooning, one of the leaders of the movement, spent two years painting a giant, toothy, bug-eyed woman.
His peers felt betrayed. The critic Clement Greenberg, who was basically the kingmaker of the era, thought de Kooning had lost his nerve. People called the paintings misogynistic because the women looked monstrous. But de Kooning wasn’t attacking women; he was attacking the "pretty" version of art. He was influenced by everything from ancient Mesopotamian idols to the "Chesterfield Girl" cigarette ads he saw on billboards.
He once said that "flesh was the reason oil paint was invented." You can see that obsession in the way he handles the surface. The paint is thick, almost like skin, and he uses pinks, yellows, and reds that feel uncomfortably human. It’s not a portrait. It’s an encounter.
The Scrape and the Rebirth
De Kooning’s process was insane. He didn't just paint. He attacked.
He would pin drawings to the wet paint, tear them off, and paint over the residue. Sometimes he’d spend months on a single corner of a canvas. Woman I took nearly two years. He actually gave up on it at one point and threw it in the trash. It was only because his friend Meyer Schapiro encouraged him to take another look that he pulled it out and finished it.
That "finished" state is deceptive. If you look closely at a de Kooning, you can see the history of its own making. There are drips he didn't wipe away. There are charcoal lines peeking through the white lead paint. He wanted you to see the work. He wanted you to see the mistakes.
Transitioning to the Landscapes: A Shift in Tone
As the 1960s and 70s rolled around, de Kooning moved out of the cramped, sweaty energy of Manhattan and out to East Hampton. You can see the change immediately in the Willem de Kooning paintings from this era.
The jagged, angry lines started to soften. The colors changed from city grime—greys, ochres, and harsh blacks—to the blues and sandy beiges of the Atlantic coast. These are often called his "Pastoral" or "Landscape" abstracts. They feel more fluid, almost like the paint is melting.
- Pastorale (1958)
- Door to the River (1960)
- Montauk Highway (1958)
These works aren't literal pictures of the beach. Instead, they’re about the sensation of light reflecting off the water or the wind hitting the grass. He was still using that aggressive, "action painting" style, but the mood had shifted from a fight to a dance.
Some critics argue these are his best works because they show a master who is finally comfortable with his own chaos. Others miss the grit of the New York years. That’s the thing with de Kooning: everyone has a favorite "version" of him, and they usually hate the other versions.
The Late Works and the Alzheimer’s Debate
Now we get to the part of the story that still makes art historians uncomfortable.
In the 1980s, de Kooning’s style changed again. The paintings became sparse. The thick, muddy layers were gone, replaced by thin, ribbon-like lines of primary colors—mostly red, blue, and yellow—on clean white backgrounds. They are elegant. They are airy. They are also incredibly controversial because, during this time, de Kooning was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
This raises a massive question: Are these paintings the work of a genius reaching a state of "pure" expression, or are they the products of a declining mind?
The market has made its decision—these late works sell for millions. Many experts, like Gary Garrels of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, argue that de Kooning’s "muscle memory" allowed him to continue creating masterpieces even as his cognitive functions faded. He had been painting for seventy years; his hands knew what to do even if his brain was elsewhere.
There’s a certain beauty in these late Willem de Kooning paintings. They feel like a man letting go. All the struggle, the scraping, and the anger of the 50s has been stripped away, leaving only the essential movement of the brush.
How to Actually Look at a De Kooning
If you find yourself standing in front of one of these things and feeling lost, try a different approach. Stop trying to find "the person" or "the house."
- Check the edges. De Kooning often painted right up to the very edge of the canvas, sometimes even continuing the stroke onto the wooden frame. He hated the idea of a "window." He wanted the painting to be an object in the room with you.
- Follow the speed. Some strokes are fast and flicked; others are slow, heavy, and deliberate. You can literally track his physical movement.
- Look for the "ghosts." See those faint grey lines under the bright yellow? That’s a whole different painting he destroyed to make this one.
- Ignore the "Abstract" label. De Kooning famously said, "I don’t paint abstractly, I paint what I see." He saw a world that was messy and colliding.
What the Market Says (And Why It’s Ridiculous)
Let’s talk money for a second because it’s hard to ignore. In 2016, a painting called Interchange sold privately for about $300 million. At the time, it was the most expensive painting ever sold.
Why? Because de Kooning is one of the few artists who bridges the gap between the old-school mastery of the Dutch painters and the "anything goes" attitude of modern art. He’s a blue-chip investment. But more than that, his work is rare. Because he destroyed so much of what he started, the pieces that survived are precious.
Collectors like Kenneth C. Griffin aren't just buying paint on canvas; they're buying a piece of the 20th century’s soul.
Actionable Insights for Art Enthusiasts
If you’re looking to deepen your connection to this kind of art, don’t just read about it.
First, get yourself to a museum that houses the Woman series. Seeing these in a book or on a screen is useless. You need to see the scale. You need to see the physical height of the paint coming off the surface. The MoMA in New York is the mecca for this.
Second, try to sketch one. You’ll quickly realize that "my kid could do this" is a myth. The balance of his compositions—how a tiny streak of red in the corner keeps the whole giant blue mess from falling apart—is a feat of incredible technical skill.
Finally, read De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. It won the Pulitzer for a reason. It paints a picture of a man who was terrified of being "finished" or "pigeonholed," someone who chose to live in the messy middle of every argument.
De Kooning once said, "Style is a fraud." He spent his whole life trying to outrun a signature style, and in doing so, he created some of the most recognizable and polarizing images in history. Whether you love the "ugly" women or the "empty" late lines, you can't deny the guy had guts. He didn't paint for us; he painted to see what he could get away with. And as it turns out, he got away with everything.
To explore the evolution of Abstract Expressionism further, research the specific technical differences between de Kooning’s "wet-on-wet" technique and Jackson Pollock’s "drip" method. Understanding the physical chemistry of the oil paints de Kooning used—often mixing them with water and safflower oil to keep them pliable for days—provides a practical window into how these complex textures were achieved. For those visiting New York, a self-guided tour of the 10th Street studio locations offers a geographic context to the "gritty" atmosphere that defined his mid-century work.