The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Willem de Kooning · oil, enamel and charcoal on canvas, 192.7 by 147.3 cm · one woman, frontal, nearly filling the canvas, in a ground of slashed strokes that will not settle as a room, a street or a landscape · begun in 1950 and declared finished in 1952, after about two years of repainting · first shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, in 1953, and acquired that year by The Museum of Modern Art, New York · the unit scored is the single canvas in its final state, as it hangs, whole; the five later Woman canvases are context
Mode
The figure brought back into the gestural field of abstraction; idol and pin-up in one frontal woman
Mythos
The Great Mother as idol, frontal and enthroned, with the votive figure’s stare and the advertisement’s teeth
Phase
Begun in 1950 and declared finished in 1952, after about two years of repainting; first shown and acquired in 1953
Presentation
Oil, enamel and charcoal on canvas, 192.7 by 147.3 cm; one female figure, frontal, filling most of the height, in a ground of slashed strokes
Register
Dread and comedy at once: the pinks and pale yellows of cosmetics and sunlight, struck at speed, around a grin of bared teeth
Scale
One figure, taller than a seated viewer, on one upright canvas
Governing Proposition
A woman faces the viewer from a canvas nearly two metres high: eyes staring, teeth bared, breasts set like shields, her lower legs broken off by the edge, in a ground of slashed strokes that will not settle as a room or a street. The wager of the canvas is that in 1950 the figure could be painted only by being fought for, stroke against contour, and that, fought for, it would show the ancient idol and the bright commercial pin-up to be one face.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The canvas is 192.7 centimetres high and 147.3 wide, a little taller than the common upright of four to three, and one woman nearly fills it. She faces out. Her head sits in the upper quarter, with very large staring eyes and a wide mouth of bared teeth. Below it two enormous breasts are set over the centre like shields. Her arms and hands are blocked in with a few strokes. Her lower legs and feet are broken off, by the lower edge and by the strokes themselves. Around her the ground is a field of slashed passages, pink, pale yellow, blue-green and grey, that can be read as a room, a street or a landscape, and cannot be settled as any of them.
It was begun in 1950 and declared finished in 1952, after about two years of repainting. The surface shows how it was made: passages scraped back and painted again, contours drawn, lost under later strokes and drawn again, enamel laid among the oil and charcoal lines left in it. What hangs is the final state, and the states painted over in those two years are part of its making, not separate works. In the same years and just after came drawings and pastels of the same figure and five further canvases, Woman II to Woman VI, of 1952 and 1953. They stand round this one as its company, and this one is the first and fullest of them.
The canvas was first shown in 1953, at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, in a show of the Woman paintings, and The Museum of Modern Art bought it the same year. It has stayed there since, whole and uncut, in the collection that acquired it the year it was first seen. For seventy-four years it has been in view, at the museum and on loan, and in argument.
Movement II
Everything on the canvas is organised around the eyes. They are huge, round and fixed on whoever stands before the painting, at nearly the height of a standing face, and the whole field is built as their stare. The figure does not act, turn or gesture. She sits or stands, frontal, filling the space, and waits to be confronted. That is what an idol is for, and the posture is the idol’s: the Sumerian votive figure with its enormous eyes, the palaeolithic Venus with its exaggerated breasts, the Great Mother enthroned. Here that posture is not quoted inside a picture; it is the composition.
Below the eyes is the mouth, and the mouth is a grin of bared teeth, the one passage on the canvas where the paint turns hard and white in a field of soft flesh colours. It is the advertising smile of the American 1950s, the lipsticked teeth of the pin-up, and it is at the same time the grimace of the idol. The canvas does not set them against each other. It fuses them, so that the face of the votive figure and the face of the magazine turn out to be the same face. The woman is particular, of her decade, with the line of a dress at her shoulder and a city glare behind her, and she is also the ancient image of woman that a culture keeps.
What the canvas means by this it does not say. It can be seen as homage, to the body and to the idol; as attack, on the woman or on the advertisement; or as comedy, and the grin is funny as well as terrible. Desire and fear meet in it, and the facture says they are one energy in the one who looks. The meaning is in the open, but its direction is left to the viewer, and the viewer must choose.
Movement III
Close to, the figure comes apart. Every inch of the surface is a decision made and reversed. A contour is drawn, loaded over with a stroke that dissolves it, and found again a few centimetres away. The paint is laid wet into wet, dragged, scraped and reloaded, and a single stroke of a loaded brush can make an edge and a plane at once. The body is present as the outcome of this fight between drawing and stroke, so that the image of the woman is also the record of her unmaking. Painted clean in the same pose, she would be a caricature of a pin-up; pushed further into abstraction, she would sink into the ground.
The drawing survives inside the violence. The set of the shoulders, the turn of the head and the hands blocked in with a few strokes are the work of a draughtsman of the first rank, and the figure holds frontal at every distance. The colour stays clean under the working, which is hard: pinks, pale yellows, blue-greens and greys, and in most passages the flesh is luminous rather than muddy. The painter held that oil painting was invented for flesh, and this is flesh in that sense, the matter the medium was made to render. Not every passage holds. Around the lower body and at the right the paint has gone thick and closed from overworking.
Figure and ground are made of the same marks. The teeth, almost drawn, and a slash of pale yellow at the right edge that describes nothing are struck in the same way, and each could turn into the other. There is no smooth passage and no ruled line. The edges stay unresolved and the legs are cut off: the figure is not finished, the canvas says, because it cannot be. Where that is necessity and where it is indecision cannot always be seen, and the two years show that many states could have been called the painting. The core, the eyes, the teeth, the breasts and the frontal mass, could not have been otherwise. The rest could.
Movement IV
In 1950 the New York School had turned away from the figure. Pollock was painting on the floor, and Newman’s zip was already made. De Kooning was among the painters who led that school, and the gestural field they shared was the record of an act, not a picture of anything. He brought the figure back into it, at full scale, with the brushwork of abstraction tearing the body apart rather than describing it, and he chose the subject most loaded for a painter of his generation, the woman’s body of the nude. Behind it stood the figure tradition from Rubens to Soutine’s flesh and Picasso’s women of the 1930s, and it broke that tradition as well.
The cost was real. He staked his standing among the abstract painters, and spent two years on a canvas he could not finish. When the Woman paintings were shown in 1953, some of abstraction’s defenders received them as a betrayal. The departure was not without company. Picasso’s dismembered women are its parent, though they were taken apart within Cubist construction, and Dubuffet was painting his Corps de dames at the same moment. What this canvas did was to show that the stroke of gestural abstraction could carry the figure, and that the figure could be its subject without a return to depiction. The opposition the decade had set up between abstraction and image did not survive it.
In New York the effect was immediate. The second generation of the school, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers and many others, worked in its manner, and the touch of de Kooning became the common hand of Tenth Street. The line runs further: to Pop, which took the commercial smile into painting; to German Neo-Expressionism and the figure painting of the 1980s; and to painters of flesh since, among them Jenny Saville and Cecily Brown, who name him. Much of that belongs to the series and to the manner as a whole. This canvas is where it is first stated in full.
Movement V
The literature has not closed. Thomas Hess gave an account of the making. Rosenberg’s idea of action painting found in the canvas both a counter-case and a proof. Greenberg resisted the return of the figure. The feminist critique made it central: Carol Duncan’s essay “The MoMA’s Hot Mamas”, of 1989, read it as the museum’s institutional misogyny made visible. Other readings turn it back on the painter, as a portrait of male fear.
The questions stay open: homage or assault, idol or advertisement, comedy or terror, finished or abandoned. The surface stays open with them, since the eye on each return cannot settle which stroke is figure and which is ground. Its standing has been contested for seventy-four years and has not diminished; the argument has kept it in the middle of the room. The cosmetics, the dress line and the advertising grin are of 1950 and read now as signs of their decade, and they have not come between the image and the people who stand before it.
The form is whole. The fabric is the risk: a surface of oil and enamel scraped and repainted for two years is a less stable structure than a planned oil, and that is a known danger of the method, though nothing can be charged here that cannot be seen. The canvas hangs as the painter left it. The eyes are still fixed on the viewer at nearly the height of a standing face, and the grin is still both an advertisement and a threat.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged by subtraction, part by part. Take away the eyes and the canvas loses its address: the whole field is organised as a stare at the viewer. Take away the teeth and the figure loses its double nature, idol and advertisement in one grimace. Take away the breasts, set like two shields over the centre, and the mass that holds the figure frontal goes. Those parts are required. The surround is not. The ground of slashed pinks, yellows and blue-greens could be other slashes, the hands could be other hands, and the broken lower legs mark where the painter stopped more than where he had to. Two years of repainting show that many states could have been called the painting. Compelled at the core, permitted at the edges.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Three things can be stated, and they hold. The image of woman that a culture keeps is two images welded together, the ancient idol of fertility and dread and the commercial pin-up with its bright teeth, and the canvas shows they are one face: the stare and the grin are not contrasted but fused. In 1950 the figure could not be painted whole, only won back against the stroke that dissolves it, so the body is present as a struggle and not as a likeness. And, disclosed by the facture rather than said, desire and fear in the one who looks are the same energy. These are meanings, not a mood. Held below the top because the canvas does not say which way it points, homage, attack or comedy, and because much of what it delivers is shock.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Elevation of the dreadful and grotesque kind, with a comic edge the axis does not discount. Its forms: the first sight, a figure nearly two metres high bearing down on the viewer, her eyes near the level of a standing face; the teeth, the one passage where the paint turns hard and white in a field of soft flesh colours; the near view, where every inch of the surface is a decision reversed, so that the violence is felt as time; and the strange sweetness of the colour, the pinks and pale yellows of cosmetics and sunlight, set against what the figure does. Height is real. Frequency holds it: one blow sustained by a turbulent surface, not a work that rises again and again, and many viewers register only aggression or a joke.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Myth built, not alluded to. The archetype is the Great Mother as idol: frontal, enthroned, with huge eyes and exaggerated breasts, in the posture of the Sumerian votive figure and the palaeolithic Venus. The posture is the composition, not a quotation inside it. The figure faces out, fills the field and does not act; she is there to be confronted, which is what an idol is for. The particular is kept: a woman of the American 1950s, with a lipsticked advertising smile, the line of a dress at the shoulder, a body set in a city ground. She takes on the archetype while staying particular. Held short of the highest band because the archetype is single and static, with no myth in action, no second figure and no event, and part of its depth is brought by the viewer.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the figure tradition from Rubens to Soutine’s flesh and Picasso’s women of the 1930s; and, in 1950, the New York School’s own turn away from the figure, with Pollock painting on the floor and Newman’s zip already made. The departure broke both. The figure came back into the gestural field at full scale, the brushwork of abstraction tearing it apart rather than describing it, and in the subject most loaded for a painter of that generation, the woman’s body of the nude. The stake was real: a standing among the abstract painters he led, and two years of a canvas he could not finish. Some of abstraction’s defenders received it in 1953 as a betrayal. Held below the top because Picasso’s dismembered women are its parent, and Dubuffet’s Corps de dames were painted at the same moment.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Would another form change what the work knows? Nearly all of it. The figure exists only as the outcome of a fight between drawing and stroke: the contour is found, lost and found again in the same passage, so that the image of the body is also the record of its unmaking. Paint a clean figure in the same pose and the canvas becomes a caricature of a pin-up; abstract it further and the idol vanishes into the ground. The flesh colours are the flesh, the matter oil paint was made to render. The scale meets the viewer’s body face to face. The unresolved edges and the cut-off legs say that the figure is not finished because it cannot be. Held below the top because that knowledge depends on unfinish, and the line between necessary unfinish and indecision is not always visible on the canvas.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Evidence over promise: seventy-four years of return, and a literature that has not closed. Thomas Hess’s account of its making; Rosenberg’s action painting, to which it is a counter-case and a proof at once; Greenberg’s resistance to the return of the figure; the feminist critique, of which Carol Duncan’s “The MoMA’s Hot Mamas” (1989) is the best known, reading the canvas as the museum’s institutional misogyny made visible; and readings that turn it back on the painter, as a portrait of male fear. The questions stay open: homage or assault, idol or advertisement, comedy or terror, finished or abandoned. The surface also yields on return, since the eye cannot settle which stroke is figure and which is ground. Held below the top because much of the literature argues the work’s stance more than it deepens the object.
Score: 8.8 / 10
On view since 1953, so force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force: the canvas showed that the gestural field of abstraction could carry the figure, and that the figure could be its subject without a return to depiction, and so broke the opposition the decade had set up between abstraction and image. The discount: much of the reach belongs to the Woman series and to the painter’s manner as a whole, and this canvas is its first and fullest statement. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in New York painting of the 1950s it was immediate, in Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers and the second generation, whose common hand on Tenth Street was his; further, in Pop, which took the commercial smile into painting, in German Neo-Expressionism, and in painters of flesh since, Jenny Saville and Cecily Brown among them, who name him.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the image as the painter left it hangs complete and uncut in the collection that bought it the year it was first shown. Its presence has been continuous for seventy-four years, at the Museum of Modern Art and on loan, with no eclipse; its standing has been contested rather than diminished, and the feminist critique has kept it at the centre of argument. Fame earns little here. The fabric is a heavily worked surface of oil and enamel, scraped and repainted, a less stable structure than a planned oil; nothing is charged that cannot be seen, but the method is a known risk. The cosmetics, the dress line and the advertising grin are of 1950 and read now as period signs, though they have not stood between the image and its viewers. The fabric and the dated surface hold it.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Judged as command of oil painting with the brush, to the anchors every medium answers to. The making is load-bearing. The drawing survives inside the violence, in the set of the shoulders, the turn of the head, the hands blocked in with a few strokes: the work of a draughtsman of the first rank. The paint is laid wet into wet, dragged, scraped and reloaded, with a loaded brush that makes a contour and a plane in one stroke. Pinks, yellows, blue-greens and greys stay clean under heavy working, which is hard, and in most passages the flesh is luminous, not muddy. The figure holds frontal at every distance. The costs: passages around the lower body and at the right have gone thick and closed from overworking, and the method spent two years reaching a state it could not plan.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the teeth, hard, white and almost drawn, the most legible thing on the canvas; and a slash of pale yellow in the ground at the right edge that describes nothing. They obey one law. Every passage is a stroke struck at speed that is at once a piece of the image and an event of paint, and figure and ground are made of the same marks, so that each can turn into the other. There is no second kind of making, no smooth passage, no ruled line. The law covers a wider range than the abstract fields of its decade, from legible anatomy to pure gesture, and holds across it. Held below the top where the law blurs into indecision rather than ambiguity, and for the territory: one figure, one register of violence and comedy.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The orders held, in one figure: the body and sexuality; the sacred, as the mother idol; mass culture and commerce, in the advertising grin; consciousness, the painter’s and the viewer’s, desire and fear; art’s own tradition, the Venus and the odalisque turned round; and the city, faintly, in a ground that can be read as street and glare. They are integrated: one face holds the idol and the advertisement, and one stroke holds figure and ground. What holds the axis lowest is what is absent: no second person, no family, no labour, no state, no history but what the viewer brings, no natural order beyond the body. A single figure on one canvas; the figure describes the form. Below Cézanne’s Large Bathers, which hold a company and a town; above the abstract fields of its decade, which hold no person.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form, Pressure on Tradition, The Imperishable and The Made at 9.0, with The Swerve at 8.9. A form in which the body exists only as the outcome of a fight between drawing and stroke; a canvas that broke the decade’s opposition of abstraction and image and gave a generation its hand; an image whole and continuously in view for seventy-four years; a drawing that survives inside the violence, with colour kept clean under two years of working; and the figure returned to the gestural field at the moment that field had banished it.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the body, the sacred, commerce, consciousness, art’s own tradition and, faintly, the city are held in one figure; a second person, the family, labour, the state and history are absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 8.2 and The Unconcealment at 8.3: the core is compelled and the surround permitted, and the disclosure, real, is one the canvas leaves the viewer to choose among homage, attack and comedy. The three are one fact: a single figure, fought for and left unresolved.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 9.0, The Inner Law at 8.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on one of five: Pressure on Tradition at 9.0, The Imperishable at 9.0, The Swerve at 8.9 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.3 falls short by two tenths. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.2, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. The twelve sum to 103.0, an average of 8.58 that displays 8.6, below the 9.0 the summit also requires; the placement in Tier IV is settled on the aggregate and on the gate alike.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas as it hangs at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2026, and of how it was made and received. No image or written source was consulted. The image and the critical record are known well; the surface at close range, where enamel meets oil and where the charcoal lies, and the condition of the canvas are known less well, and the judgments that turn on them, the making and the survival above all, are held more loosely. The work scored is the single canvas in its final state, whole and uncut. Nothing of it has been lost, replaced or rebuilt; the states painted over in the two years of its making are part of that making, not separate works. Woman II to Woman VI (1952 to 1953), the drawings and pastels of the same years and the photographs of the canvas in progress are context and are not scored, and reach that belongs to the series is discounted. No words of the painter’s are quoted: his view that oil painting was invented for flesh is paraphrased. The only words quoted are the title of Carol Duncan’s essay of 1989. Facts that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the number of states and the order of the layers, the course of the making between 1950 and 1952 beyond its two years of repainting, who saw the canvas in the studio and when it was set aside, whether a mouth cut from a magazine advertisement was pasted on in any study or state, the painter’s own later remarks on the figure’s sources and on the Woman paintings as landscapes, the publication history of the photographed states, and the canvas’s conservation history.