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"Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter, like a flash…I still have it now from some fleeting thing—like when one passes something and it makes an impression."
—Willem de KooningExecuted in 1958, Composition emerges from a pivotal moment in Willem de Kooning’s career that marked his critical period of transition towards pure abstraction. Belonging to his highly acclaimed series of Abstract Parkway Landscapes, the present work showcases the yellow ochre and cerulean blue pigment that remained central to his palette not just for this series but ultimately throughout his practice, and signals to the lush Rubenesque color that would come to define his later oeuvre. Through his signature bold slashes and gestural swathes, the composition straddles figuration and abstraction, recalling open fields and slivers of sky whilst conjuring the sensuous fleshy tones of the canonical female nude that would together mutually dissolve into one by the following decade.
Seeing Through a New Lens
"I feel I am getting more myself in the sense of, I have all my forces...I have a bigger feeling now of freedom. I am more convinced, you know, of picking up the paint and the brush and drumming it out."
—Willem de KooningIn 1957, de Kooning began to distance himself from the urban jungle as he began to frequently shuttle between New York City and Long Island to spend more time in the countryside. Inspired by the scenic drives of blurred fields, expansive horizons, and intersecting roads passing before his eyes, he embarked on the series comprising Composition, resulting in some of the most gesturally expressive and sensorial paintings he had conceived to date. “Most of them are landscapes and highways and sensations of that, outside the city—with the feeling of going to the city or coming from it,” de Kooning explained. “I like it in New York City, but I love to go out in a car. I'm crazy about weekend drives, even if I drive in the middle of the week. I'm just crazy about going over the roads and highways…”i
Willem de Kooning, Bolton Landing, 1957. Private Collection, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York"Actually I've fallen in love with nature. I don't know the names of the trees but I see things in nature very well. I've got a good eye for them, and they look back at me."
—Willem de KooningIn a radical departure from his figurative Women earlier in the decade, de Kooning’s Abstract Parkways from 1957 to 1961 reflect the profound influence of the pastoral landscape on his painterly sensibility. As his greater attention to light blossomed in his canvases, the feverish proliferation of strokes and planes reduced to broad, sweeping brushwork that abridged his planular spatial constructions and enlarged his forms, engendering a simplified, more fluid continuity across the composition. Though this evolution in his pictorial approach comfortably situates itself in the general trend of late 1950s Abstract Expressionism, it revolutionized the course of de Kooning’s practice through an openness that allowed his subjective meditations to pour onto the canvas through pure chromatic exuberance.
[left] Franz Kline, Zinc, Yellow, and Grey, 1958. Private Collection, Artwork: © 2021 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [right] Mark Rothko, No. 13 (White, Red on Yellow), 1958. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Artwork: © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkContrarily, it is precisely the more controlled thrusts and tighter handling of de Kooning’s brush as seen in Composition that bestows the legibility—or ambiguity, as it were—of the relationship between color and form. De Kooning’s gestural orchestrations of the sumptuous blues, whites, browns, and yellows manifest themselves in a Baroque extravaganza under his heavy-laden brush, the flatter application revealing the remarkable speed of his painterly hand. Here, the immediacy at once reflects his perceptual vision of the natural landscape along with the angular twists and turns of curving roads flashing by. On the other hand, it evokes “paintings, angles and sections from the breasts and elbows of [de Kooning’s] Women, from the windows that open to their landscape, from their hands that had turned into meadows.”ii
de Kooning’s Abstract Parkways in Museum Collections
Merritt Parkway, 1959. Detroit Institute of Arts, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Montauk Highway, 1958. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Image: © 2021 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Untitled, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solmon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York), Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Lisbeth’s Painting, 1958. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Detour, 1958. Sammlung Moderne Kunst, Pinakothek der Moderne, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York-
Merritt Parkway, 1959. Detroit Institute of Arts, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York -
Montauk Highway, 1958. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Image: © 2021 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
David Sylvester: "The pictures done since the Women, are they all landscapes? They are not, in any case, non-objective; or are they in some cases?"
Willem de Kooning: "No—they’re emotions."
Encapsulating the artist’s famous mantra that “flesh is the reason why oil painting was invented,” the supple suggestion of the female body would completely liquify into the palette of the Long Island landscape in de Kooning’s canvases after his formal settlement in Spring the following decade. On the road to the artist’s eventual and lifelong move to the idyllic environs of East Hampton, Composition captures de Kooning’s preoccupations to express his raw fascination with his new environment through the language of painting, as embodied in the words of Clifford Odets upon the work’s exhibition at the Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills in 1961. “Each picture has in it the simultaneity and multiplicity of psychological life itself…here a heart, there a face, a woman’s breasts, an egg, a window or a wall, the trivial articles and shapes of everyday life and their colors. All of these things are seen, not static, but in ceaseless motion; interpreting, our view constantly changing.”iiii Willem de Kooning, quoted in David Sylvester, “Content is a Glimpse,” recorded March 1960, online.
ii Thomas B. Hess, quoted in de Kooning: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011, p. 318.
iii Clifford Odets, “Willem de Kooning, The Painter,” in Willem de Kooning, exh. cat., Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills, 1961, n.p.Provenance
Ethel and Robert Scull, New York
Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills
Luis Mestre Fine Arts, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Christie’s, New York, November 10, 2009, lot 34
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerExhibited
Beverly Hills, Paul Kantor Gallery, Willem de Kooning, April 3-29, 1961, n.p. (illustrated)
Property from an Important Midwestern Collection
12
Composition
signed and dated “de Kooning ’58” lower left
oil and charcoal on paper laid down on board
29 x 23 1/4 in. (73.7 x 59.1 cm)
Executed in 1958.
Estimate
$800,000 - 1,200,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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