Arts “The Remnants of the Faces of Women”
posted by on July 3 at 12:58 PM
Willem de Kooning, Police Gazette, 1955.
Questioned on her “attitude towards modern art,” Gertrude Stein once remarked, “I like to look at it. That is, I like to look at the picture part of it; the other parts interest me much less.” What I like to look at in De Kooning’s paintings is the yellow. I like to look at the yellow parts of even those paintings I don’t think much of. Next to the yellow, I like to look at the pink. Finally the grey. For me the name De Kooning means the chance to stare at these painted colors, not works of art or experiences of form, and certainly not the various figurative pretexts, although the remnants of the faces of women are certainly unavoidable.
That’s the first paragraph of the twelfth essay in Frederic Jameson’s new book, The Modernist Papers, and it’s cracking me up.
God bless you. Other than writing "the immense rebus of desire" on bathroom walls, I had not thought of Jameson in years. Well, except last night, when I was telling a friend that he was, in person, a pig.
But hot tip! Modernist Papers!
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