Willem de Kooning more or less accidentally became a sculptor, although his sculpture is a logical extension of his concerns in painting. Visiting Rome in the summer of 1969, he encountered an old friend from New York, Herzl Emanuel, who had recently taken over a small bronze foundry in the Trastevere district. Emanuel invited de Kooning to visit and offered him some clay to work with. De Kooning visited the foundry several times, making many small clay figures, and eventually selected thirteen to cast in bronze. When they later arrived in New York, neither de Kooning nor his dealer, Xavier Fourcade, took much interest in them. But the British sculptor Henry Moore saw them while visiting New York and responded with great enthusiasm, suggesting they be enlarged to monumental scale and thereby rekindling de Kooning’s reengagement with them. The sculptor David Christian, working for the firm Sculpture Services, enlarged two of the thirteen small figures, but de Kooning kept only one of them, Seated Woman. He then turned his attention to making new, larger sculptures that were closer to life size, the first of which was the standing figure Clamdigger.
De Kooning had begun to move his life from New York City to the village of Springs on the South Fork of Long Island in the early 1960s. The wavering reflections of the water and the activity of life around Long Island Sound would permeate his work for the remainder of his career. A persistent bicyclist, while riding one day de Kooning saw men digging for clams lit from behind by a bright sun, a vision that inspired the title of the subsequent sculpture.
Unlike many of de Kooning’s paintings, in which luscious and luminous color clamors for our attention, here the dark bronze invites our eye to follow the sinuous lines, the folding curves and concavities, the constantly shifting structure. Unlike painting, sculpture engages physical exploration, urging us to move our own bodies to more fully experience the work we are observing. Almost certainly de Kooning was influenced during his time in Rome by the exuberant physicality of Baroque sculptures, which permeate one’s sense of being in the city. De Kooning in his sculpture attains a comparable visual exhilaration.
The figure itself appears and feels primordial; Peter Schjeldahl likened it to “a stolid, glowering figure of Neanderthaloid maleness.” The extremities—hands, feet, genitalia—are overlarge, swollen, in contrast to the attenuated arms and legs. The head feels almost shrunken, sinking into the body. Clamdigger is a figure of existential tension, recalling and renewing Modernist figurative sculpture in a lineage that stretches from Auguste Rodin to Alberto Giacometti. In his sculpture, de Kooning brings back the urgency and intense inventiveness of paintings by the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Of these artists, de Kooning alone with his sculptures sustains and recaptures that spirit.
Notes
Peter Schjeldahl, “De Kooning’s Sculpture,” in De Kooning: Drawings/Sculptures: An Exhibition Organized by Walker Art Center, edited by Philip Larson and Peter Schjeldahl (New York: Dutton, 1974).
Willem de Kooning more or less accidentally became a sculptor, although his sculpture is a logical extension of his concerns in painting. Visiting Rome in the summer of 1969, he encountered an old friend from New York, Herzl Emanuel, who had recently taken over a small bronze foundry in the Trastevere district. Emanuel invited de Kooning to visit and offered him some clay to work with. De Kooning visited the foundry several times, making many small clay figures, and eventually selected thirteen to cast in bronze. When they later arrived in New York, neither de Kooning nor his dealer, Xavier Fourcade, took much interest in them. But the British sculptor Henry Moore saw them while visiting New York and responded with great enthusiasm, suggesting they be enlarged to monumental scale and thereby rekindling de Kooning’s reengagement with them. The sculptor David Christian, working for the firm Sculpture Services, enlarged two of the thirteen small figures, but de Kooning kept only one of them, Seated Woman. He then turned his attention to making new, larger sculptures that were closer to life size, the first of which was the standing figure Clamdigger.
De Kooning had begun to move his life from New York City to the village of Springs on the South Fork of Long Island in the early 1960s. The wavering reflections of the water and the activity of life around Long Island Sound would permeate his work for the remainder of his career. A persistent bicyclist, while riding one day de Kooning saw men digging for clams lit from behind by a bright sun, a vision that inspired the title of the subsequent sculpture.
Unlike many of de Kooning’s paintings, in which luscious and luminous color clamors for our attention, here the dark bronze invites our eye to follow the sinuous lines, the folding curves and concavities, the constantly shifting structure. Unlike painting, sculpture engages physical exploration, urging us to move our own bodies to more fully experience the work we are observing. Almost certainly de Kooning was influenced during his time in Rome by the exuberant physicality of Baroque sculptures, which permeate one’s sense of being in the city. De Kooning in his sculpture attains a comparable visual exhilaration.
The figure itself appears and feels primordial; Peter Schjeldahl likened it to “a stolid, glowering figure of Neanderthaloid maleness.” The extremities—hands, feet, genitalia—are overlarge, swollen, in contrast to the attenuated arms and legs. The head feels almost shrunken, sinking into the body. Clamdigger is a figure of existential tension, recalling and renewing Modernist figurative sculpture in a lineage that stretches from Auguste Rodin to Alberto Giacometti. In his sculpture, de Kooning brings back the urgency and intense inventiveness of paintings by the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Of these artists, de Kooning alone with his sculptures sustains and recaptures that spirit.
Notes