Different strokes: the late work of Willem de Kooning

ArtForum, Jan, 1997 by Peter Schjeldahl

What does "knowing how to paint" mean? Nothing in theory, practically anything in practice. Late de Koonings strike me as embodied theories of painting: meaning nothing, and meaning it with precision. They are pictures of pure capacity. The work entails fantastic abilities not even for their own sake, but for no sake.

Its sustaining urge makes the Beckettian "can't go on, will go on," everybody's favorite survival formula, seem a baroquely prolix sentiment. It is an urge prior to any word or idea. I propose that late de Kooning is the degree zero of painting, attained not through simplification but, fully complex, through being emptied of anything not identical with its execution. This work henceforth defines the verb to paint. Every painter from now on will learn from it or will know nothing strong.