Introduction

Leafing through collected works of Bert Schierbeek(1918–1996), one will come across countless poemsthat have a relation to the visual arts. Out of sheer ad-miration or personal affection, the poet was inspired bythe works of diverse artists like Shinkichi Tajiri, Pierrevan Soest and Frank Lodeizen, as well as Loes van derHorst, Jan Sierhuis and Guillaume Leroy; in other words:by images, abstract graphics, large installations in pub-lic spaces, colorful canvases by mainly Dutch artistswho crossed his path.

But often the reverse also happened: many painters,sculptors, photographers and filmmakers took Schier-beek’s poems as a starting point for their creations.The most remarkable example of this is the painter JefDiederen, who was so totally impressed by Schierbeek’spoem Ezel mijn bewoner (Donkey my inhabitant) that hewas hard to stop: a series of 85 drawings and gouacheswas the result.

That mutual influence has resulted in a beautiful col-lection of collaborations, starting in 1954 with Het bloedstroomt door (The Blood keeps flowing), a text edition byBert Schierbeek, accompanied by ten black and whitedrawings by Karel Appel. Their friendship dated from theearly fifties, when Bert Schierbeek on his Parisian scout-ing trips, visited Appel’s studio at Rue Santeuil. In lateryears he would also work together with Lotti van derGaag and Corneille, whom he also met there.

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It is perhaps less known that Schierbeek showed hisaffinity to the visual arts not only in his poetry, but alsoin his prose texts. He opened exhibitions, did interviewswith artists, and wrote introductions to catalogs. Forthose activities he was widely praised. For example, re-viewing the catalog De kleur van Leo Schatz (Leo Schatz’Color, 1989) in his ‘Journaille-column’ in Amsterdamnewspaper Het Parool, Jan Vrijman paid him a compli-ment. ‘See, that’s the way to do it,’ asserted Jan Vrijmanpointedly. ‘His story and the beautiful reproductionsdrove me irresistibly towards the exhibition.’ Vrijmanthought that Schierbeek was ‘the’ person to write aboutart. And he was not alone in that. The question remainshow that came about. An often-heard answer was:Schierbeek was such an excellent observer. ‘You couldhear him looking at things,’ Diederen explained. ‘Whendriving through the countryside, he would take in every-thing. Like a child looking at things for the first time.He would loudly read slogans from billboards or trucks.Look, there goes International Movers, he would shoutenthusiastically.’

Edy de Wilde, former director of the Stedelijk Museumin Amsterdam, noticed Schierbeek’s keen eye by chance.In 1939, during mobilization prior to World War II, theyhad gotten to know each other. They would talk forhours and dream along the Hoornse Hop, an inlet fromthe IJsselmeer lake. De Wilde recalled later: ‘The wayBert used to look at the light on the clouds, or a littleship sailing, struck me immediately. I felt a certain kin-ship in that.’

Willem Sandberg, Edy de Wilde’s predecessor in theStedelijk Museum, also saw Schierbeek’s qualities early

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Schierbeek's introduction to the thinking and acting ofthe Dutch Cobra-painters (1964)

on. Instigated by him, Schierbeek wrote De Experimen-telen (The Experimentalists) in 1964. This was an intro-duction to the thinking and acting of the DutchCobra-painters, whose short biographies were included.The book was translated into English, French, Spanishand German, and was published by the publishing houseMeulenhoff in their series ‘Arts in the Netherlands’. Pub-lications by different authors appeared in that series,about for instance Wessel Couzijn, De Stijl, J.B. Jongkind,neo-realism and Van Dongen. They must have likedSchierbeek’s approach, because a request was made byBloemena of Meulenhoff for another book in the series.Did he want to go to New York to portray painter Willemde Kooning (1904–1997)?

King De Kooning

When Schierbeek received this request, Willem de Koo-ning was already world famous. Many critics called himthe greatest painter in contemporary America. In fact, atnew exhibitions the question had shifted to whether DeKooning was already past his prime. That can be gath-ered from the survived folder with reviews and articlesthat Schierbeek was reading prior to his visit to DeKooning. There are essays by Clement Greenberg andHarold Rosenberg, two critics who probably contributedthe most to the propagation of the movement describedby them as ‘abstract expressionism’ and ‘action paint-ing’. This movement emerged at the end of the fortiesand flourished in the fifties. Besides Willem de Kooning,it includes Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett New-man, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. Schierbeek

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also had pieces by Thomas Hess, who, when writingabout abstract-expressionists, was especially focused onWillem de Kooning.

Initially there was a strong rivalry between JacksonPollock and Willem de Kooning, which was not limitedto their artistic skills, but also involved women andalcohol. After Pollock died in a car accident in 1956,De Kooning was regarded as the most prominentpainter of abstract expressionism.

It was obvious to refer to the meaning of his regalname: ‘koning’ and ‘king’. Lee Hall even used themetaphor of the coronation, the happenings in the king-dom and the death of the king as base for the structureof her book Elaine and Bill, Portrait of a Marriage: theLives of Willem and Elaine De Kooning (1993). ‘Queen’Elaine Fried, with whom Willem de Kooning lived to-gether for a long time, made great efforts to enlarge thefame of the painter. One of the intrigues at the courtwas that Elaine had an affair with Thomas Hess andwrote about De Kooning in the art magazine of whichHess was the editor.

At the time that Schierbeek wants to visit De Kooning,much has changed in the painter’s life. Movements andhypes in the art world rapidly follow each other. The at-tention moves from abstract expressionism to pop art,and the abstract-expressionists are going their ownway. De Kooning has replaced the busy city of New Yorkfor rural Long Island, where many things remind him ina number of ways of the country of his birth, as Schier-beek reports extensively. Although even now the repeat-ing themes in his works and his handicraft provide for

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continuity in his work, his new direction brings manychanges.

From 1955 onwards, De Kooning started a number ofhighly abstracted urban landscapes that became moreand more rural in character, and also had the sea as sub-ject, the longer he stayed in the Hamptons on LongIsland. In the sixties, however, he again made a series ofpaintings of women. When Schierbeek comes to visit,female and other figures, abstracted landscapes and seaviews dominate.

Whether De Kooning was directly involved in his ownpublic relations, or whether he preferred to leave this topeople in his direct surroundings, it is obvious that heabove all preferred to paint. That was already the caseduring the wild years in Manhattan with friends andalcohol. Since his departure to Long Island, he oftenworked seven days a week, which at first hinderedSchierbeek, but could be nicely observed by him later.

A book or no book

Interviewing De Kooning was not as easy as initiallythought. In a letter to Jan Gerhard Toonder in January1967, Margreetje, Schierbeek’s wife at the time, writes:‘Bert has gone to Willem de Kooning for a few days – atfirst he sounded more like William the Silent – impossibleto get him on the phone or to make an appointmentwith him. After a lot of modest and respectful waiting,Bert finally got so angry that he demanded over thephone (and fortunately he got the boss himself on theline) a definitive answer: a book or no book. And thepoor man, who kept postponing because his painting

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Stedelijk Museum 1968, left to right: Willem de Kooning,Jan Heyligers, Nono Reinhold, Edy de Wilde,Bert Schierbeek

“bugged” him so much, seemed hardly aware of what itwas all about. Now everything is beautiful and wonder-ful. Bert is enormously excited. They talk days andnights and surely wash down a glass or two in between.In short, it promises to be a beautiful book.’

However, a book never materialized. There was a type-script, entitled Willem de Kooning: a portrait that wasready for the typesetter. This text was entirely in Eng-lish, but a previous incomplete version, which was foundin Schierbeek’s estate, consists of a mixture of Englishand Dutch. It is very likely that Schierbeek’s Americanfriend Charles McGeehan, who translated much ofSchierbeek’s works, translated the Dutch and correctedthe English. The strange thing is that this apparentlyhappened after the first retrospective of De Kooning,organized in the Stedelijk Museum in 1968. A few frag-ments from Schierbeek’s text had been included in thecatalog, while the complete book was announced for1969. In the mainly English text, a few Dutch lines popup occasionally: ‘En vergenoegd lachend voegt hij eraantoe: “Humor sneaks in.”’

The catalog also has an introduction by Thomas Hess,who, like Schierbeek, was one of the speakers at theopening of the exhibition, organized by the then direc-tor Edy de Wilde. De Kooning himself was also there,back in the Netherlands for the first time since his de-parture for America. At that moment there did not seemto be a problem, but when Schierbeek continued to workon the manuscript and a translation was made, somefrustration emerged. The story goes that De Kooning,who could behave other-worldly and absent minded,had not completely realized that Schierbeek had come

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for a serious publication. Thomas Hess didn’t seem to beimpressed by Schierbeek’s approach. Edy de Wilde be-lieves that Hess thought it to be superficial, and thatSchierbeek had made it too easy for himself. Schierbeekthought that Hess was afraid that he would turn DeKooning too much into a ‘Dutch painter’. Similarly,abstract expressionism had been branded as a typicalAmerican movement, the first one that could measureup to European schools in painting, and the first onethat would indicate that New York had become thecenter of the art world, succeeding Paris.

Besides Hess, also Fourcade, the gallery owner of DeKoonings at the time, was active in guarding the imageof the American master. He prevented the publication ofa monograph about De Kooning, because he thoughtthat the painter deserved a better-known author.

It remains unclear what happened at the editors’ desk,but it is a fact that publisher Meulenhoff abandoned theproject entirely. Since then, the typescript, as well asSchierbeek’s copy, had been lost. Until two years afterhis death, in 1998, the long lost manuscript was foundamong the author’s papers. The 2005 Willem de Kooningretrospective at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, his birth-place, seems the perfect occasion to finally publishSchierbeek’s text.

Karin EversGuido Walraven

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First page of the typescript of Bert Schierbeek

Nothing is positive about art except that it is a word.The artist takes art as he finds it.Art becomes a way to avoid a way.Forms ought to have the emotion of a concrete experi-ence. For instance: I am very happy that grass is green.

These statements were made by Willem de Kooning, theAmerican painter, born in Rotterdam, now 64 years ofage. He has been living in and around New York for overforty years. For the last ten years he has been one of themost illustrious of American painters, ‘the grey-lookeddean of abstract expressionism’.

His influence on American painting between the twoworld wars and thereafter is in many respects compara-ble with that of Pablo Picasso on the European scene.His personality and skill exerted a catalyzing effect onhis surroundings and his artist friends.

De Kooning was twenty-two when he sailed to America.For ten years he had attended the night-courses of deAcademie voor Beeldende Kunsten en Techniese Weten-schappen (The Academy for Applied Arts and Design) inRotterdam. He did that upon the advice of Jan and JaapGidding, ‘painters and decorators’, with whom he hadtaken up employment after elementary school.

To New York he brought along his giftedness, his skill,and his familiarity with European painting. From hismother, a headstrong, willful and domineering woman,he got his perseverance and the will to do somethingunique, without making any concessions to the outsideworld.

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‘I want to be the greatest artist, the greatest lover andthe greatest drinker.’

These he succeeded in splendidly, though not exactlyas his mother had foreseen or intended.

From his father he fell heir to unconcern, mobility, andthe unflinching swagger to battle through the toughestof situations… and maybe a kind of diffidence and shy-ness as well.

His parents separated, so at an early age he was learn-ing to look at life from two sides.

‘The ambiguity of reality’ has always played a great rolein his work and his statements.

His grey head has something catlike about it and this isone cat you can’t put into anyone’s bag.

‘What I see is a glimpse, a glimpse of reality, and thatglimpse is the essence of my reality, and I’m that spe-cial part of it and all. So what I make out of it must bereal.’

But sometimes months could slip by before he couldget his ‘glimpse’ onto canvas, for nothing is easy. Andafter some such months he would throw the irksomecanvas into a corner and despair and drink and drink toomuch. Then the confrontation could begin anew and beworked out in an hour and he could set it aside. He’d setit aside and say that it was finished, that is: finished for-ever… Yet it is said that, for those who possess works ofhis, it is not advisable, anymore, to lend him these paint-ings, because one can never be certain that he won’tstart to ‘finish’ them again.

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‘I’m not ready yet,’ is proverbial of De Kooning. He hasturned down several offers for exhibitions.

He has given a good deal of thought to the problemsand possibilities of painting, and he doesn’t stuff histhoughts under the sofa or the rug. That, in part, ex-plains for the great influence he had on his artisticmilieu.

The first contact I had with him was by telephone.We had made the appointment to meet at his place.

‘Now listen,’ he said, ‘you take the 2:07 train of theLong Island Railroad this afternoon, leaving from GrandCentral to Montauk. You take that train and you sitquiet, for people who know sit quiet on that train. Thereare many Hamptons… There’s West Hampton, Hampton,Hampton’s Bay, but you sit quiet, and when you see EastHampton you get off… and I’ll be there…’

A youthful, sonorous voice from East Hampton, LongIsland, three hours by train from New York. De Kooninghad been living there for ten years.

As the train left New York progressively behind, I wascoming right back into a Dutch landscape. Rivers, woods,lakes, dunes. Pollock had lived and worked there, so hadFranz Kline; and Harold Rosenberg still lives there, asdoes Saul Steinberg.

Elaine de Kooning, herself a good painter, to whomDe Kooning was married in 1943 and from whom he isnow divorced, described her first meeting with him asfollows:

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‘I met Bill in a bar in 1936. I thought he had seaman’seyes that seemed as if they were staring at very widespaces all day. He had an inhuman look - vacant,limpid, angelic. I visited his studio several days later witha friend. It was the cleanest place I ever saw in my life. Ithad painted gray floors, white walls, one table, one bed,four chairs, one easel, one fantastically good phono-graph that cost $ 800 when he was only making twenty-two dollars a week, and one painting - a man - on theeasel. The whole effect was that this man was great.’

Upon the platform at East Hampton stood De Kooning.A smallish, broad-shouldered man whose bearing re-minded me of the Dutch architect, Gerrit Rietveld. Hetoo had the same bright blue-grey eyes, which reallyseemed to be empty, at least to be a bit suggestive ofexpectancy with remoteness, but also of the confidenceof being able to overcome this prospect. And yet therewas also something vulnerable in his eyes. But then weshook hands; and his grip was firm, and his look wasopen. His grey forelock hung lank over his forehead. Hislarge right hand stroked it back now and then.

‘You know, last week I couldn’t receive you,’ he wassaying in an apologetic tone, ‘because there’s a paintingI’m working on now that’s really bugging me - I meanit.’

The next day I could see that with my own eyes.But first we went to a restaurant in West Hampton for

dinner.‘D’you like wild duck?’And without waiting for an answer:

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