Where Are We Going

In the late 1950’s Wilem de Kooning created a collection of paintings that are referred to as “the highway paintings”. During this time he lived in New York. Kooning’s surroundings and lifestyle influenced his painting as he traveling by car between Manhattan and eastern Long Island during the late 1950s and early 1960s, before permanently settling in the Hamptons in 1963. Kooning’s canvases have been paralleled to the rapid expanding American Highway system. His paintings helped him become known as one of the top modern artist. John J Curley is an Assistant Professor of Art History Department at Wake Forest University, with a Ph.d from Yale in 2007. In “Running on empty” Curley states that previous critiques and "sensations" associated with driving of the “highway” paintings have been accurate but fail to probe a deeper meaning. Curley says “I believe that these paintings are not merely illustrative of an American culture in transition, but rather are deeply engaged with its anxieties, triumphs, and contradictions.” In this article I will be summarizing Curley’s article along with providing a perspective as to why this is relevant to the young adult age group of Americans.

Curley uses one of Konning’s phrases, "going to the city or coming from it", to discuss a transit biased interpretation and does a good job of correlating that between the urban and suburban settings of Kooning’s highway paintings. Curley does this well by explaining as Kooning’s paintings shift from urban settings to the open air highways, it is simultaneous middle-class abandonment of the inner city spurred on by new construction that aids this transformation and can be seen in his paintings. To support his reasoning Curley also uses the writings of other colleges such as Marla Prather (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1994), Thomas Hess (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968), and Stephen Polcari (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) to support parts of his reasoning then discussing how his prob deeper into the disparate spheres of "action painting" and driving.

Curley breaks up the article with four major categories where in each he relates back to the American culture in transition engaged with its anxieties, triumphs, and contradictions. The four categories Curley broke the highway paintings up consisted of Action Painting and Driving, Standardization and Franchises: Highway/Paintings, Semiotic Signs to Nowhere, Interchange: Doom and Progress. For each group there were paintings listed and each had a reasoning or example to how it related to the change at that time. For example in Standardization and Franchises: Highway/Paintings Curley writes “The new interstate system fundamentally restructured society; for one, it reproduced its own bureaucratic structures in the areas surrounding interchanges, according to Keller Easterling.25 Such logic helped to create one of the most influential business practices of the last 50 years: franchising.” He believes that these ideas can be taken from Kooning’s paintings. By understanding these events in time Curley try’s to express that through images and relations in Kooning’s paintings.

Kooning’s paintings certainly have meaning beyond just the canvas and the images viewed, as you can relate the events happening at the time to subtle details in the paintings. What is there to learn from these paintings and Curley’s interpretation on how they relate to the changing American landscape? What I think is also important is other relations Kooning is trying to make is that of the past and present. Curley also makes references along those lines. With the roads being pathways to and from places it could represent that you need to know where you’re coming from to get where you want to go. For young adults, understanding what is behind you is the best way to succeed in the future. These paintings have more meaning than just the simple images that are portrayed, looking deeper and probing into history behind ideas is a clear way to help guide you to where you would like to go, represented by the roads in the highway paintings.

John J. Curley "Running on Empty: Willem de Kooning in the Late 1950s"

Modernism/modernity, Volume 17, Number 1, January 2010, pp. 61-86 (Article)

DOI: 10.1353/mod.0.0186