The Face-Off Between Will and Fate

Artistic Identity and Neurological Style in de Kooning's Late Works

Bibliographic Data

ID4743532
AuthorsMariam Motamedi Fraser (0009-0005-4380-3094, Loughborough University, corresponding author), Mariam Fraser (Loughborough University)
Year1998
Volume4
Issue4
Pages1-22
Publication date1998-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBody & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1357-034X • E-ISSN: 1460-3632
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1357034x98004004001
OpenAlexW2015933228
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

This article explores representations of the artist Willem de Kooning who, during the last few years of his creative life, produced a large number of paintings at the same time as he was thought to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. My focus is on the way that these representations mobilize themes which Jane Goodall identifies as belonging to a discourse of anxiety. In a bid to suggest that the artist is uniquely positioned to adapt to the progression of the disease, commentators betray a particular concern with the relation between will and intuition. This relation is negotiated, first, by privileging the hand of the artist as a body part possessed of a brain and a will of its own and, second, by drawing on neurological explanations of the nervous system which have the effect of removing `will' from the sphere of voluntarism. Although these representations go some way to refigure conventional notions of artistic identity and creative processes, the reliance on neurology supports an elitism which justifies the exclusion of certain figures (the insane, the naive, the computer) not just from the subject-position `artist', but also from the category `human

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive science · Intuition · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Visual arts · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art Therapy and Mental Health · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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