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PARTISAN REVIEW
sinuous Ingresque line. When he left outright abstraction several years
ago to attack the female form with a fury greater than Picasso's in
the late '30s and the '40s, the results baffled and shocked collectors,
yet the methods by which these savage dissections were carried out
were patently Cubist. De Kooning is, in fact, the only painter I am
aware of .at this moment who continues Cubism without repeating it.
In certain of his latest "Women," which are smaller than the pre–
ceding ones, the brilliance of the success achieved demonstrates what
resources that tradition has left when used by an artist of genius.
But de Kooning has still to spread the full measure of that genius
on canvas.
Hans Hofmann is the most remarkable phenomenon in the ab–
stract expressionist "school" (it is not really a school) and one of its
few members who can already be referred to as a "master." Known
as a teacher here and abroad, he did not begin showing until 1943,
when he was in his early sixties, and only shortly after his painting
had become definitely abstract. Since then he has developed as one
of a group whose next oldest member is at least twenty years younger.
It was only natural that he should have been the maturest from the
start. But his prematureness rather than matureness has obscured the
fact that by 1947 he stated and won successful pictures from ideas
whose later and more single-minded exploitation by others was to con–
stitute their main claim to originality. When I myself not so long
ago complained in print that Hofmann was failing to realize his
true potentialities, it was because I had not caught up with
him.
Renewed acquaintance with some of his earlier work and his own
increasing frequency and sureness of success have enlightened me as
to that.
Hofmann's pictures in many instances strain to pass beyond the
easel convention even as they cling to it, doing many things which
that convention resists. By tradition, convention, and habit we expect
pictorial structure to be presented in contrasts of dark and light, or
value.
Hofmann, who started from Matisse, the Fauves, and Kan–
dinsky as much as from Picasso, will juxtapose high, shrill colors
whose uniform warmth and brightness do not so much obscure value
contrasts as render them dissonant. Or when they are made more
obvious, it will be by jarring color contrasts that are equally disso–
nant. It is much the same with his design and drawing: a sudden
