Willem de Kooning, "... Whose Name Was Writ in Water," 1975 by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum published on 2019-08-26T19:36:56Z Hear more about Willem de Kooning's "... Whose Name Was Writ in Water" (1975) from Paul Chan's "Sex, Water, Salvation, or What Is a Bather?" presentation, as part of “Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection,” the first-ever artist-curated exhibition mounted at the Guggenheim. Transcript Narrator: Although often celebrated as an intuitive Action painter, Willem de Kooning distilled his painterly vocabulary from observable reality, including figures and landscapes. "… Whose Name Was Writ in Water," created after the artist moved from Manhattan to the countryside in East Hampton, New York, in search of greater peace and isolation, takes nature as its theme. One of de Kooning’s favorite subjects was water, and his broad, slippery impasto strokes, their frayed edges speckled with drips, convey its fluidity and breaking movement. The work’s title, taken from an epigraph on the tombstone of poet John Keats, offers a meditation on ephemerality and loss. Genre Art and Culture