et al. [2017], with permission.
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning is another abstract expressionist whose story may be illustrative for the coexistence of dementia and continuous artistic output. His case is discussed in detail in a separate chapter of this book, so here we will mention only key facts allowing for comparison with James Brooks and Agnes Martin. de Kooning was born in 1904 in the Netherlands and moved to USA in the late 1920s. Similarly to Brooks, de Kooning started his artistic work in New York, contributing to the Works Progress Administration Federal Act Project. He later started painting male figures and eventually explored further areas, concentrating on figurative representations of women. His painting style was very aggressive, even damaging the canvas with the strokes of his brush. He used paper magazines to work on his paintings, stripping them out at later stages to leave patchy reflections of printed text. He also used magazine images of women’s smiles placed in the position of the mouth, which he then painted over. His female figures had a more iconic appearance, rather than being mere portraits of actual individuals. Between the late 1950s and early 1960s, de Kooning focused on the abstraction of landscape with various themes, such as urban, parkway or pastoral. He started using softer dyes and less aggressive painting techniques [dekooning.org, 2018a]. In the late 1960s, de Kooning returned to painting female figures, stimulated by the emerging pop culture. These figures had more erotic features, such as prominent red lips and blond hair [The Art Story, 2018b]. de Kooning used other means of art expression and created clay sculptures, inspired by his trip to Italy, and he also created lithographs, inspired by Japanese ink drawings and calligraphy [dekooning.org, 2018a]. In the late 1970s, de Kooning’s artistic activity slowed down. At that time he started showing cognitive problems, likely related to alcohol addiction, and he withdrew from the art scene [Espinel, 2007]. During this period he experienced panic and anxiety attacks, insomnia, and even personal neglect, requiring hospital admission on a few occasions. He resumed painting in the 1980s and became very productive. During this period, de Kooning was becoming disorientated and had significant short-term memory problems, with difficulty memorising names and facts, etc. de Kooning started new paintings only on the basis of drawings of his previous works, which would suggest that he required a trigger to start. At the later stage of his disease these drawings were projected onto the canvas he worked on, and he added colours and developed the abstractions further. The use of projected images raised a concern regarding the validity of de Kooning’s work and the projections were stopped. However, when facing an empty canvas, de Kooning was only able to draw a few whirling lines and would later add only a few lines from time to time. He would never finish the painting, instead sitting in one place and staring at the unfinished canvas. This was suggestive of a need for stimulation to trigger his artistic production. Eventually the projections were restored and de Kooning was able to return to his full abstract creation [Espinel, 2007]. In this period of his artistic activity, de Kooning managed to combine figurative art with abstraction and his technique became more simplified. de Kooning shifted from applying the paint thickly with visible brush marks into more flat and sanded textures, which resembled his techniques from the beginning of his career. In addition to this, he started using new ribbon-like patterns with lively colours superimposed on a more serene background. His artistic style evolved to pure abstract, whereby he was able to dim all resemblance to any recognisable shapes or patterns [Espinel, 2007]. de Kooning’s late paintings proved that abstract expressionism was able to communicate through emotional and spiritual terms. In addition to this, his late paintings were considered very consistent with his initial works, but stripped of irrelevant elements, which was taken as a sign of abstract mastery [Bonetti, 1995]. Of note is the fact that these late artistic creations were produced at the time when he was formally declared as lacking mental capacity and dependent in activities of daily living. It is important to note that, similarly to the case of James Brooks, no formal neurological diagnosis was given to de Kooning [Espinel, 2007]. de Kooning completed his last painting in 1991 and he died in 1997 at 92 years of age.
A potential explanation for the preservation of artistic abilities was suggested by Espinel [2007] by a syndrome of “Creating in the Midst of Dementia” as an isolated impairment of semantic memory in the context of preserved working, procedural and episodic memory. In addition to this, brain reactivation in response to previous artistic productions could serve as a surrogate of semantic memory, which is supported by the fact that projections of sketches onto a canvas were triggering the existing patterns of behaviour and creation.
Forsythe at al. [2017] postulated the deterioration of de Kooning’s artistic abilities, demonstrating a steady decline in fractal dimension from the age of around 40 years and continuing until his late productions (Fig. 2). Similarly to the case of Brooks, one may argue that this change could merely be a sign of mastery in abstraction, which is synonymous with simplification and decreased levels of detail and complexity.
Agnes Martin
Agnes Bernice Martin was born on March 22nd, 1912, in Macklin, Saskatchewan, in Canada to a family of Scottish Presbyterian settlers. Her father, who was a wheat farmer, died when Martin was 2 years old and her mother had to sell their property to cover their living expenses [The Art Story, 2018c]. Martin had a difficult relationship with her mother, and she believed she was hated as a child and that she was emotionally abused. In a documentary made by Mary Lance (With My Back to the World), Martin said that she could remember exactly her moment of birth and she gave some insight into her mother’s influence on her life:
I was very happy. I thought I would cut my way through life… victory after victory… Well, I adjusted as soon as they carried me into my mother. Half of my victories fell to the ground. My mother had victories. [Martin, 2003]
The family moved to Vancouver, where Martin swam competitively and was even considered for qualification for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. In 1931, Agnes Martin immigrated to Washington. She attended the Western Washington Stage College in Bellingham and eventually studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York, where she was awarded her bachelor degree. She was collecting prints of famous paintings at that time, and also demonstrated promiscuous behaviour in her later teen years. Agnes Martin pursued her education further at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and returned to Columbia to earn her Masters in 1952. At the same time, due to her aversion to chaos, Martin started following Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In 1947, Martin became engaged in artistic programs under the auspices of the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico. At that time she was producing abstracted landscapes with intermingled pointed shapes. In the late 1950s her work was noticed by Betty Parsons, who was also involved in helping other abstract expressionists develop their careers. Martin relocated to New York and joined the bohemian lifestyle of other lower Manhattan artists. Parsons helped Martin in exhibiting her paintings, which became associated with abstract expressionism and colour field [Schjeldahl, 2016; The Art Story, 2018c]. However, she did not join the 10th Street abstractionists, but instead moved to Coenties Slip by the Seaport and Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, which stood away from alcohol, socialising and the brawling lifestyle of the 10th Street artists. It is important to note that Agnes Martin was a closeted lesbian and Coenties Slip was welcoming of homosexual artists, and she did not consider herself to be a woman [The Art Story, 2018c]. Due to the political and societal climate in the 1950s, coming out as homosexual would be very risky and could potentially end any professional career. The Coenties Slip was in a way an enclave in two senses – one in distancing from the 10th Street abstract expressionist lifestyle, and the other in allowing people to develop in different artistic directions. When living in the Coenties Slip she befriended, among the others, Robert Rauschenberg (abstract expressionists and pop artist), Ad Reinhardt (abstract expressionist, minimalist and monochrome painter), Ellsworth Kelly (colour field and minimalism painter), Jasper Jones (abstract expressionist, neo-Dadaist, and pop artist), and Barnett Newman (abstract expressionist, colour field/“zip” painter). She was influenced by her artistically divergent surroundings in the
