ART REVIEW : Elaine de Kooning’s Views of the Male Animal

Elaine de Kooning died in 1989. Her work is seen in retrospect for the first time in 58 works visiting the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Before one ever gets to a consideration of her drawings and paintings, the mind is swamped by the protean name of her husband, Willem de Kooning. Imagine painting under a name that immediately captures attention, but then deflects it to another artist--and a great one at that. Elaine de Kooning found it all such a muddle she signed her work “E de K.”

Identity is everything for an artist. Elaine de Kooning’s work suggests she had her own strong character, even if it occasionally slipped her grasp. Old photographs show one of those small, resilient ‘40s style women, like the movie actress Teresa Wright.

Elaine was a kid from Brooklyn who met De Kooning in 1937. She was 19, he 33. They were married soon after. Elaine’s parents could not have been more upset if she had been Polly Peachum--the virginal heroine of “The Threepenny Opera”--eloping with Mack the Knife.

Elaine’s attraction is clear in a drawing of the period. It shows the Dutch-born Willem de Kooning as a scrumptious hunk--part dock worker, part romantic artist. It reveals Elaine as having a gift for drawing, with a knack for capturing character while revealing her own.

The most persistent piece of information in her figurative work is that she absolutely reveled in men. In a catalogue essay, exhibition curator Jane K. Bledsoe writes that Elaine de Kooning “either consciously or unconsciously, turned the tables on the traditional male painter’s rendition of woman as object, whether of desire or danger.”

Aside from a couple of self-portraits, there are no other female subjects in this show. She delighted in maleness the way J.A.D. Ingres did the opposite in “The Turkish Bath.” Frankly, her view was considerably more robust.

If a man was skinny, she celebrated stringiness. There is a full-length portrait of the painter and critic Fairfield Porter. Dressed in a suit, he’s nonetheless in a spraddle-legged pose that De Kooning must have found erotically amusing.

Her appreciation encompassed critic Thomas Hess and dealer Leo Castelli in sedate, elegant postures. She could also explode into semi-abstract images of basketball players in action. If they don’t exactly change the history of art, they’re still better sports pictures than LeRoy Neiman’s.

Elaine’s adoration of men resulted in impressive canvases. Her 1956 portrait of critic Harold Rosenberg can hold its head up anywhere. Rosenberg and De Kooning’s friend Artistodimos Kaldis blend into a male ideal for her. She admires Rosenberg’s natty dress and slender ankles, but she’s also attracted to the part that’s a bit of a meaty, rumpled beast with a cavalier beer paunch and slightly insinuating mustache.

Such frank and heartfelt admiration carries two dangers--the temptation to emulate the men and the pitfall of intimidation. Both show up in her full-length standing portraits, including one of President John F. Kennedy. It was commissioned by the White House in 1963 when aides learned that De Kooning painted very fast. It seemed like an ideal match, since J.F.K. hated to pose.

The result is thin, stiffly iconic and a little silly. Her portrait of choreographer Merce Cunningham has the same problems, suggesting she may have been intimidated by certain subjects. The deeper problem, however, is purely structural.

During this period the De Koonings were amicably separated. All the same, it’s clear that Elaine was trying to incorporate Willem’s bold abstract attack into her figurative manner.

The sum of this exhibition--organized by the Georgia Museum of Art--reveals that Elaine de Kooning was an artist of superior sensibility. As a painter she had a wonderful, light touch that produced airy abstract paintings and even better semi-figurative ones, like a set on a Bacchus theme that echoes her love of bear-like men.

But she was irresistibly drawn to her husband’s turf. Whether in homage or competition, when she took on Willem’s style of abstraction--as in “California”--the results are an unnecessary embarrassment.

She left a body of work in appreciation of the male animal that is rare in the history of art. She left an object lesson in the perils of not always being oneself.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara, through Nov. 1; (805) 963-4364; closed Mondays.