{"id":36035,"date":"2020-04-24T15:54:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T15:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artzealous.com\/?p=36035"},"modified":"2020-04-24T16:30:53","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T16:30:53","slug":"willem-de-kooning-abstraction-and-astrology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/willem-de-kooning-abstraction-and-astrology\/","title":{"rendered":"Willem de Kooning: Abstraction and Astrology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
If you were to conjure an image of the abstract expressionist scene in 1940s New York City, you\u2019d immediately think of painters congregating in the (now condo-ized) Cedar Bar, drinking in close quarters in dim smoky light.
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Willem de Kooning, a Dutch immigrant, would number among the crowd, a fixture in the downtown art scene. He was mostly known and revered by other artists, relatively underground until his first real show at the Charles Egan Gallery in 1948.
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Be that as it may, as art historian Karen Kedmey says, \u201cIf Jackson Pollock was the public face of the New York avant-garde, Willem de Kooning could be described as an artist\u2019s artist, who was perceived by many of his peers as its leader.\u201d
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Willem arrived in the United States in 1926 as a stowaway on a ship, and after years of making a living as a housepainter, as well as working as an artist in the WPA, he eventually began painting full time in 1935. Armed with a rigorous arts education earned as a young man in Rotterdam, de Kooning stood out amongst his peers for his cool intellectualism, and his ability to conceptualize forms in space, rendering field and subject as enmeshed surface, dripping with lush color.
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Born on April 24th, 1904 at 12:40am in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Willem de Kooning is a solar Taurus with a Leo Moon and Capricorn on his ascendant. To engage his natal chart is to engage the chart of someone who blended intellect with creative passion. With Mercury in Taurus as the planet that ruled his North Node\u2014his soul\u2019s mission in this lifetime, we see reflected in this chart the life of one destined to blend art, intellect, and sensuality.
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In order to understand de Kooning\u2019s career as an artist, I will be using a technique in which the chart is viewed through the lens of the Nodal axis. I will also use the whole sign house system, and the Hellenistic technique called zodiacal releasing. All of these techniques are specifically tailored to uncover a person\u2019s relation to the world, and discern what they will be doing in relation to that world.
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