Willem de Kooning e Walt Whitman

Willem de Kooning, Untitled, 1966

Charcoal on paper, 25,4 x 20,3 cm

The Museum of Modern Art, Nova Iorque

Willem de Kooning 

Pintor estado-unidense, nascido em Roterdão. Um dos pintores mais celebrados do Expressionismo Abstracto que inclui nas suas obras uma fusão de movimentos artísticos como o Cubismo, o Surrealismo e o Expressionismo. Em 1950, cria uma série de quadros sobre mulheres, intitulada "Woman", que são ainda hoje as obras mais discutidas do artista.

Walt Whitman

This is the female form,

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless 

vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was 

expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed,

Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response 

likewise ungovernable,

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all dif 

fused, mine too diffused,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swell-

ing and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of 

love, white-blow and delirious juice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the pros-

trate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born 

of woman,

This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the 

outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the 

exit of the rest,

You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,

She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,

She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,

She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as 

daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,

As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, 

sanity, beauty,

See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female 

I see.

Relação entre o poema e a obra

O desenho de Willem de Kooning propõe uma desconstrução do corpo feminino. É-nos apresentado um corpo fragmentado, um corpo estranho, em contraste com o que o poeta Walt Whitman descreve nos dois primeiros versos do poema ("This is the female form, / A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot"). Se a verdade é que somos, de facto, atraídos ao ver a imagem desta mulher perturbadora não é de todo pela sua forma divina e bem desenhada (deformação vs. ideal).

Neste esboço a figura feminina, nua e com o corpo em forma de cruz, remete para a ideia da submissão da mulher ao homem (vejam-se os versos: "mine to difuse", "she is both passive and active"). Trata-se, pois, de um corpo idealizado pelo  voyeurismo masculino.

Ana Palhão