De Kooning's women have at least as much to do with America in the 1950s
as with women. Many viewers at the time and since have seen them as
*terrifying - and, to use the title of a book about women at that time -
"on the edge of revolt."
A proverb of Blake's occurs to me: "He [sic] who suffers you to impose
on him knows you." And I think that knowledge - and the artist's
knowledge of that knowledge - renders invaluable (quite apart from their
formal qualities) works that might otherwise strike one as cruel.
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