Monday, November 14, 2011

Commercial Art Contributes to Fine Art


On a stroll through MoMA's DeKooning retrospective, I was intrigued to see wall text near "The Wave" (1942–44) that quoted DeKooning's friend Joop Sanders:
[DeKooning] used to do these things that they do in commercial art layouts—they cut out and do a sort of collage, a final pasteout. . . . that's something he did a great deal of in his early paintings.

"Pasteout" must be what we used to call "pasteup." Although we don't do pasteups any more—or for that matter call the field "commercial art"—it's interesting to see what DeKooning borrowed during the earliest of his many phases.

1 comment:

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

de Kooning was a sign painter and a "commercial artist" and a window dresser, so I imagine he'd be pretty versed in "pasteout"! I like his use of newspaper transfer on some of his paintings; he used newspapers to blot up paint and it would leave some residual newsprint behind; he supposed liked the effect.