Elaine de Kooning (Art Drop #6)
This week began with Presidents’ Day, so let’s mark the holiday with Elaine de Kooning's 1963 portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy at the National Portrait Gallery.
Elaine de Kooning’s portrait of JFK at the National Portrait Gallery will stop you in your tracks. It is unlike any other painting in the gallery’s Hall of Presidents.
It captures the essence of Kennedy’s likeness—the hair, his eyes, his arm cocked on the arm of a chair. But it also evokes his youthful energy and mercurial presence.
Elaine de Kooning was a major figure in the mid-20th-century art movement known as Abstract Expressionism, whose artists valued spontaneity and improvisation over conventional techniques. They made “monumentally scaled works that stood as reflections of their individual psyches—and in doing so, attempted to tap into universal inner sources.”
Elaine’s husband Willem de Kooning was significant in the same movement and also better known, but when someone asked how it felt to paint in his shadow, she said: “I don’t paint in his shadow. I paint in his light.”
Elaine de Kooning’s work bridges abstract expressionism and figurative art. When you look at this portrait of Kennedy, you know exactly who it is, even though the means of conveying the image is as kinetic as JFK himself.
To some, this portrait may give the impression of being “thrown together.” But de Kooning spent many months working on it. She followed the president around and made dozens of sketches from multiple angles to capture the way he moved. This photo shows the scale and number of images she created in the process.
The Truman Library commissioned de Kooning for the portrait in 1962 because Kennedy was unlikely to sit for a long session. In the end, the decision to choose her proved prescient.
When JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Elaine de Kooning was so distraught, she was unable to work on the portrait for nearly a year. But in 1964, she described her process in an essay for ArtNews.
If you have 4:30 minutes more, check out de Kooning’s “Portrait in a Minute” below.
©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill
Thanks for reading.
Andrew, as always, great perspective and piece. I was 'back east' when you issued this one. I just returned and am catching up. I love this piece and had not seen that painting previously and it really hit home. I think I mentioned (when you started issuing your series on Sara Jane Moore) that I was also just starting to listen to the Who Killed JFK? podcast by Reiner and O'Brien. Coincidentally, the last thing I did before jumping in the car to head east was to listen to JFK's speech on Civil Rights given on 6/11/63, the day after he gave his more famous Peace speech. I had never heard the 6/11 speech before and, as it wasn't fully written when JFK was compelled to give it, the last part of it is some of his most extemporaneous and effective speeches I thought. Your piece fit right into a topic I have been keenly interested in of late. Thanks so much! Biz
Nice! Good to know about Elaine, and this is a good one.
Love your 'art drop' feature. I'll be keeping an eye out some poetic inspiration.