Willem De Kooning

Art has always played a key role in shaping world culture, and it has always been a very important part of the culture in the United States. But it hasn’t always been what it is today. Long before colonization and the establishment of the United States, Art was an integral and influencing factor of European society. In Europe the art movement was already defined, shaping European life and culture in full scale on a day-to-day basis. European Artist where already well known in the rest of the world and set the standard for what was known as visual art in the forms of painting, sculpture and architecture. In Europe, the Renaissance and Neoclassicism periods had come and gone and Artists such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Davinci, and Raphael

One of these Artists was Willem De Kooning. Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian were some of the artists that heavily influenced De Kooning. His early works showed hints of cubism combined with biomorphic shapes and strong color with heavy visible strokes and lots of texture. Through the middle of his career he produced several works with no color, using simply black and white, but manipulating his style and technique in a way to give meaning through the texture and composition of his work. But his most famous works would become his women series. In these works, De Kooning painted the woman figure in a style, which brought mixed emotions of aggression, fear, pleasure, and conflict. He used both cubism, and abstract expressionism to successfully create the series of paintings which themselves influenced artists like Picasso in his late

It was during this movement that many artists began to question and challenge the ideals of classical and traditional art and bring about a style, which became controversial yet extremely popular. No longer was art reserved for the elite, the highly intellectual, or wealthy classes of society. Through its use of popular culture and mass media, Pop Art opened the Art world to a whole different genre of people and to mass culture. The Pop Art movement began when artists like Richard Hamilton started producing works such as “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, 1956”. In his piece, Hamilton incorporates a collage of popular culture subjects and items, creating a satirical view of society and the establishment of traditional art. In the United States, it was during this time that artist like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg among others came to be known. But of all artists of the movement, Warhol would prove the most