I have been re-reading some of David Sylvester's art criticism and one of the topics is Willem de Kooning. Looking also at Hess's 1959 paperback on the artist. The quality of the illustrations is very poor but then, so it seems to me is the quality of the work. When it was made, Excavation may well have seemed raw indeed. But the work that followed it-including the Woman series now seems distressingly inept. The photographs of the early stages of Woman I are the work of a truly clumsy painter who is trying to suppress the bland and mannered side of his art. That aspect of his work was commonly present when he dealt with figures . Artists make art out of chaos but there is a limit to what can be done and Woman I is abandoned rather than completed.
