In this artwork, how is the History discussed?
De Kooning started Woman-Ochre, an extension of his earlier Woman series, in 1954 while living in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village along with other artists and intellectuals of the New York School. He finished it the following year.Like the other paintings in the series, it depicted a female figure, recognizable albeit highly stylized into abstract shapes. They were controversial both among de Kooning's fellow artists and critics. The former, especially Jackson Pollock, felt the artist had been unable to sustain abstract expressionism's goal of pure painting by resorting to what was still recognizably figurative art. John Elderfield, who curated a 2011-2012 de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, says that the series' power stems from its use of the thick brushes and broad strokes associated with Venetian painting juxtaposed with its subject matter: "He was using traditional techniques to make alarmingly modern paintings, and I think this hybrid quality made people uncomfortable."From outside the arts community, critic Emily Genauer attacked the works from a feminist perspective, calling them misogynistic depictions of women being tortured. De Kooning's comments on the paintings did not allay that criticism. "Women irritate me sometimes", he said. "I painted that irritation in the 'Woman' series." His wife Elaine said her mother-in-law, not she, was the inspiration.
After de Kooning completed Woman-Ochre in 1955, it was displayed at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York for two years, part of a one-man show of 21 works, mostly oils but with a few sketches, only two of them abstract. Edward Joseph Gallagher Jr., an architect and collector from Baltimore, bought it in 1957. Another pastime of his was vacationing at dude ranches in Arizona. The following year, after reading an article in Life about the University of Arizona's new art museum and its collection of Renaissance art, Gallagher called the university's president and offered to donate some of his modern paintings to the museum in honor of his son, who had recently died in a boating accident. Ultimately, he gave UAMA 200 works including Woman-Ochre, many of which were by de Kooning and other abstract expressionist painters such as Pollock and Mark Rothko. His gift came with the stipulation that the museum could never sell or give the paintings, including Woman-Ochre, to anyone else.During the 1960s, the museum loaned it to several exhibitions elsewhere. It was displayed at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1963, and then at several colleges in New England over the next two years. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) included it in one of its own traveling exhibitions, Two Decades of American Painting, during 1966 and 1967. A 1969 Smithsonian exhibit, The Disappearance and Reappearance of the Image, introduced the painting to museumgoers in several Eastern European countries, Paris and Brussels.Woman-Ochre largely remained in Arizona after that. It was loaned to another MoMA traveling exhibit, Four Contemporary Masters, in 1975. For two weeks at the end of August 1981, it was displayed at the Guild Hall of East Hampton, New York, which had exhibited many of de Kooning's other works and helped popularize him.
Smithsonian Arizona Martha Jackson Martha Jackson Gallery art museum abstract expressionist Emily Genauer feminist perspective Lausanne Baltimore Manhattan abstract expressionism misogynistic traveling exhibit abstract Eastern Europe dude ranch New England Mark Rothko traveling exhibitions Museum of Modern Art Greenwich Village modern collector Brussels New York School American figurative art Guild Hall of East Hampton Venetian painting John Elderfield Life Switzerland Paris University of Arizona Ochre Jackson Pollock Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts Renaissance art