Gender Construction and Manifestation in the Art of Elaine de Kooning

Abstract

As a woman whose career lifted off during the era of Abstract Expressionism, Elaine de Kooning is precariously positioned between her gender and her career. She began painting in the midst of a male-dominated movement and in later years continued to use very masculine themes in her art; however, her gender sets her apart from her mostly male colleagues during the Abstract Expressionist period. The mid-century expectation of machismo and masculinity shaped Elaine de Kooning’s art and career, and there is a tension within her art as she tried to fit the established (male) persona of the typical Abstract Expressionist artist while also maintaining a female identity. As the wife of Willem de Kooning, Elaine is most often discussed with respect to this relationship. Her name is infrequently mentioned in scholarship without reference to Willem, and her contribution to art history has only recently been studied in any length in Jane Bledsoe’s Elaine de Kooning (1992) and in a series of smaller gallery publications. Furthermore, Elaine has become recognized and respected, in some cases, more for her critical writings for Art News during the 1950s and 1960s than for her art. She was an artist turned art critic, and this crossover has further complicated the scholarly attention devoted to her. Elaine consistently revisited male-inspired subject matter: in her portraiture she painted predominantly male sitters; in her cave painting-inspired work she reflected a society of primitive male hunters; in her series of sports paintings she depicted male basketball and baseball players in dynamic postures; in her Bacchus series she investigated a male god and the vitality of the statue’s writhing male musculature; and in her bull and bison series she worked with the clichéd animalistic symbol of masculine strength and virility. These subjects, combined with the ejaculatory style of Abstract Expressionism’s loose brushwork and vibrant swirling colors, provide a unique contrast to the artist, herself, as a female personality.