Willem deKooning Drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago July 2026

Willem deKooning Drawing at AIC is an exhaustive study of works on paper, beginning with a year-long school assignment in the artist's native Rotterdam. 

There is also a suite of illustrations done to earn some keep

and beautiful carbon and graphite pencil drawings from 1937. 

A WWII drawing establishing the rhythmic space in work to come.

1942, Woman's Head, Graphite pencil on wove paper, along the lines of his fastidious sketch of Elaine.

He starts to build a palette and vocabulary, tracing or projecting images that he then interchanges, and draws into with the other images and edges.

We are between 1942 and 1947 in these works.

1948 Women studies, recalling Picasso's Demoiselles, portending a primary motif. He is importing Gorky's smokiness, until the pencil takes him to the sword brush in the series below. We move into the 1950s with these.

1948-51, enamel on Bruning paper: commercial materials from sign painting days.

Layered, striated space.

1958 or so--pastel and charcoal--very interesting to see this and the next few opposite the enamel and sword brush drawings, all leading up to the women.

Two Women on a Wharf, a collage/print/drawings in which torsos double as heads below tinier heads, 1948

Monumental Woman, 1953, charcoal and fixative on Strathmore Seconds paper, inspired by the monuments he witnessed in Washington, DC during a retrospective of his work.

College and drawing, importing the mouth from a magazine ad. Fleshy space.

Throughout the show several paintings anchor the drawings, as capstones for process.

Two Women with Still LIfe, 1952, pastel, charcoal, and fixative on paper, in which the women meld into the landscape.

The theme continues, opening the forms, the line, and speeding the hand.

A flayed, splayed body: what I imagine how he imagines sex.

Note to self.

A few jittery drawings though in truth for me after the Women room the show starts to flatten, until

This painting, which summarizes intermeshing flesh so readily, the chunky, physical space of bodies,

and this final painting, reducing them to movement through line.

 

Unfollow (Curated by Robert Storr, Paololuca Barbieri Marchi, and Maco Boggio Sella) at FALCONNYC / 111 Broadway

Dennis Kardon summarizes Unfollow as a raucous good time on Instagram: 

"Last chance to see “Unfollow“ an exhibition organized by @falconart_nyc a group of artists determined to offer resistance to the real estate hegemony of the ruling class interests in the art world. They approach NYC landlords to let them use an unoccupied space in one of their buildings for a month rent free and then organize a big freewheeling group show with both famous and under exhibited artist with results that make the past week of art fairs look lame. Don’t let the fact that you aren’t in it slow you down, there’s much to discover and delight in here. My stellar former student, @kt_420 is paired with a Dana Schutz painting and I discovered the wild work of @michael_wetzel__ . There are Maurizio Cattelan pigeons, @joshiejosho grim reapers, a painting by Morteza Khakshoor, blue sculptures by Austin Lee, a major work by Carroll Dunham, not so great work by famous artists (I was amazed to see that a Cecily Brown painting out of the rarefied gallery context looked like a bunch of rando brushstrokes) and a little Buddha/Siva sculpture by Rudolph Stingel, lots to discover lots to thumb your nose at but full of much needed artist curated vigor and energy in these depressing times. And the space, owned by Trinity Church, is beautiful and strange. Last day is Saturday. There’s a party! 111 BROADWAY, NY, (WallStreet)"

While Robert Storr summarizes it in his exhibition essay as a waiting room between stages:

"According to most accounts, Limbo is a region between Life and Death, Heaven and Hell. Humans temporarily occupy it while the final verdict of the celestial jury that decides their eternal fate based on their earthly conduct, a harrowing condition so long as that jury remains out. It is a Western concept, and, unsurprisingly, a harrowing one. Its Eastern equivalent is the Buddhist idea of a similarly ambiguous spiritual waiting room known as the Bardo, which may be familiar to American readers since it appears in the title of George Saunders' best-selling novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Potentially less bleak than Limbo, the Bardo is a place where flashes of supernatural insight and visions of an exalted afterlife can break through the pervading gloom of the end of our existence in this world. A place where the sound of a great door closing is echoed by that of others opening. Such an existential hiatus may also be detected in the zone separating Modernism and Postmodernism--which in practice has since the advent of the former (inasmuch as Picabia shadowed Picasso (that is to say formally affirmative Cubist Abstraction) as well as Duchamp (abssurdist collaging of words and forms, not to say mocking contrariness and negation) and their spawn. We are once more adrift in a nether region right now. Accordingly, the overriding criteria for the works in the exhibition is a healthy skepticism about or indifference to the normative 'isms' of the last century's revolutions in methodologies and taste, production and reception."

Diego Perrone cast glass discs: head fulls

A powder-coated surveyor establishes the sprawling show, which spans the length of an unused office building. Josh Smith spread fliers for the show on the floor, which, with the LED light bars, created a precarious terrain to step on (or over) with irreverent punk spirit.

Jules de Balnicourt (r) channeling rhythms a la Matthew Wong and Mary Shah, beautiful painting.

Dana Schutz

Jason Fox, one of several paintings and a sculpture in the show on the devil/angel theme. I have always had a soft spot for his high school aesthetic and light touch.

Ljiljana Blazevska, Macedonian/Serbian painter, wonderful discovery, represented by Alison Jacques.. Soft versions of 1930s Miro; interpenetrating color and touch.

For more of this work visit https://alisonjacques.com/artists/ljiljana-blazevska

David Brody, whose work I've known decades. His multi-hyphenate work embraces animations and incisive reviews in addition to seriously great paintings. His remark that "your relationship to painting is the only thing that matters," sustains me. For more, see https://david-brody.com/portfolio/painting

David Brody.

Michael Wetzel caught my eye on Dennis Kardon's IG post.

Susu, who in addition to this 14 x 11 inch self-portrait extrudes paint through jute in heavier, equally layered images. See more here: https://www.artbysusu.com

In the office: crying bronze birds, part of a large collection of small bronzes.

Marcus Jamahl, new to me animal painter. Raw and exciting depictions that function equally as paintings and portraits.

Love this painting, the grumpy traveling family, an outtake of Picasso's harlequins.

Robert Storr, above- fabulous install

Cecily Brown

Rudolf Stingel

Maurizio Catttalan

Diego Perrone

To know more, visit https://falconnyc.com