Thursday, June 9, 2022

Elizabeth Willis

Willem de Kooning, ‘Figure in Landscape VI’, 1980, Print, Offset lithograph in colors, on wove paper, with full margins, Phillips

Willem de Kooning. Figure in Landscape VI (1980)


SELF-PORTRAIT WITH IMAGINARY BROTHER

   after Willem de Kooning

 

Eventually the “imaginary brother” 

becomes a wife or a lover, a daughter 

or a wife. A “Woman Sitting” (1943) 

is sitting in the middle of a war.

The breast that is showing 

does not appear to be loved.

It lives in a society of thieves: 

no hands.  Even the pink lady 

isn’t pink, she’s a head full of teeth. Now

it’s 1948. Painters may not be trembling, 

but the world is.  A secretary 

turns over like a piece of furniture,

her paint running upward impossibly 

from the face.  She’ll do anything you say.

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