Last night at Berry Campbell, the opening of Elaine de Kooning’s exhibition felt like a reunion. The turnout was overwhelming, but what struck me most was the warmth. Old friends, people close to the artist, and many younger artists came together with an affection that gave the evening a special intimacy. They were celebrating a great painter and art critic, and a woman whose tenderness remains alive in the memories of those who knew her.
For me, that was the strength of this opening: seeing different generations gather around a body of work and an affection that continues to endure.
The exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper made between 1948 and 1988, revealing the breadth of a practice that found possibilities in abstraction, portraiture, and figures in motion. According to Berry Campbell, several works are being shown for the first time since the artist’s death in 1989. The opportunity to encounter these rarely seen pieces gives the exhibition particular significance.
A restless question connects the different aspects of her painting: how to capture a presence without arresting its energy. In Elaine’s work, gesture builds a figure while also threatening to dissolve it. A brushstroke can give someone physical substance or carry them toward abstraction. That tension asks us to look actively; recognition happens as the image seems to continue taking shape.
