Art critics Swan and Stevens spent a decade researching and drafting this biography of abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning (1904–1997).
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Distinguished critics Stevens and Swan are indefatigable in their factual chronicling, vivid in their characterization of an immense cast of colorful characters, measured in their psychological interpretations, and sharp in their explications of the visions and politics that drove New York's striving art world from 1926, when the handsome young Dutch man arrived as a stowaway, to his death in 1997. [1 Nov 2004, p.461]
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Outstanding
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The New York Times Janet Maslin
Perhaps because it has two authors, ''de Kooning'' deftly alternates between fact-finding narrative (there is substantial new material here) and incisive criticism.
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Outstanding
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The New Yorker Peter Schjeldahl
Stevens, the art critic of New York, and Swan, a veteran arts writer and editor, have achieved something rare that emerges gradually in this long but swift book: they explore what it was like to be de Kooning, and register the vicissitudes and effects of de Kooningness on intimates and on the culture at large.
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Outstanding
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Wall Street Journal Harry Rand
Carefully presents all this turmoil, making it one of the few truly useful biographies of a figure from the postwar New York School.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Joyce Johnson
One of the virtues of this outstanding biography is its authors' healthy respect for the mysteries of the creative process.
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Outstanding
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The New York Times Book Review Red Grooms
Altogether, de Kooning's life traces a great arc across a century like some of the liquid swirls in his late paintings. He was such a wild man, and always a vagabond, but his achievement grows great-er and greater as his story unfolds.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Christine Temin
The only thing lacking is enough illustrations. Some of the works discussed are in color; most images are in grainy black-and-white. There's no dearth of splashy coffee-table books on de Kooning's work around, though. It's helpful to have one or two at hand to consult while reading this biography.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Anthony W. Lee
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, two New York-based art critics, provide the kind of robust rags-to-riches story for which observers of de Kooning's prolific career have been waiting.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Christopher Andreae
Compellingly written, exhaustively detailed biography.
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Hilton Kramer
To tell that story on an appropriate scale, Stevens and Swan have given us a clear and candid biography that is itself Balzacian in scope. [14 Nov 2004, p.R9]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
This comprehensive biography, which attempts to explain de Kooning's art through a careful catalogue of his personal life, is a must read for his admirers.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Kenneth Baker
Stevens and Swan try, with considerable success, to restore full humanity to de Kooning for those who, like the critic Peter Schjeldahl, have viewed him approvingly as "a hand with a man attached."
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