Better than de Kooning

“Stoned Again”, or “Better than de Kooning”, this sounds like a genre joke gone wrong, for “nobody can paint better than de Kooning”, and yet it is an ideal title for a group exhibition. In the mid-1970s Peter Saul painted a series of pictures of women that refer parodistically to Willem de Kooning’s “Woman” paintings (1950–53). He meticulously imitates the “brush strokes” and the impasto in a stylistic mix of Pointillism and graffiti art, but turns up the colour controls and makes Abstract Expressionist painting and the women themselves melt like soft ice cream in “Dalíesque” fashion (see on this the contribution “Un Autre Monde” by Marcus Weber and “Ice Creams, Atom Bomb, I-Screens, Data Bomb” by Esther Leslie in the book). In 2008 Saul again painted a version of these cartoon-like neon avatars and gave the picture the title “Better than de Kooning” … a relief of American reality.

Artists:
Tim Berresheim, Jana Euler, Maria Lassnig, Lee Lozano, Michel Majerus, Dieter Krieg, Katrin Plavčak, Jon Rafman, Gunter Reski, Peter Saul, Matthias Schaufler, Jim Shaw, Amy Sillman, Sue Williams

Exhibition:
Villa Merkel Galerien der Stadt Esslingen: 12/9–15/11/2015