Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

"[Painting women] did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light--all this silly talk about line, color and form--because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of...Painting the Woman is a thing in art that has been done over and over--the idol, Venus, the nude. The Woman became compulsive in the sense of not being able to get hold of it--it really is very funny to get stuck with a woman's knees, for instance. You say 'What the hell am I going to do with that now?' it's really ridiculous. A lot of people paint a figure because they feel it ought to be done, because since they're human beings themselves, they feel they ought to make another one, a substitute. I haven't got that interest at all. It became a problem of picture painting, because the very fact that it had words connected with it--'figure of a woman'--made it more precise." - Willem De Kooning in 'Content is a Glimpse', quoted in Willem De Kooning. The North Atlantic Light 1960-1983, Eindhoven 1983, pp. 77-79.