 |
 |
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.