Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

Apr 2, 2016–Apr 2, 2017

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Entry Gallery, Floor 7

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Selected works from the seventh-floor entry gallery appear in this section.

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DE KOONING’S “WOMAN WITH BICYCLE”, 1976

Peter Saul (b. 1934) de Kooning’s “Woman with Bicycle”, 1976. Acrylic on linen, 101 1/8 × 75 9/16in. (256.9 × 191.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Sara Roby Foundation 84.49 © Peter Saul

In the mid-1970s, after skewering American political, social, and cultural mores in his work, Peter Saul took aim at the art world. He executed a number of parodic responses to Willem de Kooning’s famous works, including Woman and Bicycle (1952–53, also in this section). Here Saul spoofs de Kooning’s contorted female figure with distortions of his own, rendering the face as a grotesque cartoon and crowding the composition with lurid Day-Glo forms that both draw upon and satirize Surrealist and Pop styles. At once homage and attack, this painting challenges art history even while claiming Saul’s place within it.

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