Friedlander/De Kooning,
Portraits & Figures
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
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Lee
Friedlander’s monumental portraits (8 x 10 inches all) gain by being seen at
a distance of twelve or fifteen feet (this is the portfolio dedicated to
Garry Winogrand, and includes a portrait of the photographer). Up close, they are often uncannily like Diane
Arbus, and there is one of her (with her daughter Amy). At a distance, they stand unmistakably in
the line of American folk portraiture so-called. The effect appears to be as deliberate as
Rembrandt’s famous Juno
in the Armand Hammer collection, which is all squiggles
and dabs without an intervening space.
De Kooning can draw like Ingres, he
shows you. His element is Gorky, the
problem is Picasso. So, for ten or
fifteen years he solves it in myriad ways. Sometimes laborious, sometimes fun,
sometimes (once at least) Van Velde. There isn’t really anything
going on, apart from the meditation on Picasso. You can’t really solve Picasso, you can
look at the Demoiselles d’Avignon,
do what you want with that, treat it as a model you inhabit, like a comic
strip or can of soup. Variations on a
theme, all of them interesting, of course, and in an exhibit so vast (Willem de Kooning: Tracing the Figure)
you are caught by the side of your eyes with the breathtaking charm of this
or that unexpected variation, which is one of the great pleasures De Kooning
must have derived from such activity. Along with a jest on
Picasso’s Chef d’Œuvre Inconnu. |
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