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How do we convey friendship? A complex question deserves a complex answer, and this painting by Elaine de Kooning of close friend and fellow artist William Theophilus Brown rises to the occasion.
This portrait is part of de Kooning’s “faceless men” series created between 1947-1956 in which she paints male friends and family with blurred visages. A cacophony of color and lines coalesce into a towering image. The work challenges us to think about the qualities that make up a portrait. Is it more than just a likeness? Gesture and shape inform more about the sitter than the face. The psychology and personality of the sitter take precedence over physical likeness. Deft and quick brushstrokes characterize Elaine de Kooning’s process. Known as “the fastest brush in the East”, she would develop a dynamic language of figuration within abstraction.
“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun,” she famously declared, “an event first and only secondarily an image.” And so, this work is an event – the interpretation by the artist of her sitter and of her friend. In painting portraits, in general and of men, de Kooning consciously rejected normal conventions, giving her own vision of masculinity and upending who and how male portraits are created and consumed.
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