They say he was so preoccupied by process he could never sign his work until it left the studio. This total creative immersion is behind the sheer brilliance in Willem de Kooning s art. His ambiguity in design is manifest in both the intensity of color and the soft fluidity of form and line. In Process, on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art until May 28, showcases de Kooning s work from 1970 to 1987 and focuses on his modifications between painting and drawing. Because process was such a vital component of de Kooning s art, several of the pieces displayed are variations of one another, either with a different medium or an alternative approach to the form or abstractness of the design.
Several pieces are actually preliminary sketches or cartoons of a completed work or one in progress.
Tracings from one of de Kooning s best known works, The Dancer, are displayed both in entirely charcoal line drawings and in charcoal with some painted areas. These works highlight de Kooning s obsession with allowing his art to take different forms. The line drawings allowed him to give clearer shape and structure to his paintings. In the late 1970s, de Kooning began using pieces of paper on his wet canvases to either soak up excess oil or slow the drying time. If the image on the piece of paper was pleasing, de Kooning made use of it as a piece of his creative modification process.