Black and White

"Throughout his life, DeKooning would regularly strip the fanciness from art, searching for grittier expression that was not 'artistic' and would not yield easily to a fluent brush. In the late forties it seemed not only inexpensive but right to dip into a can of commercial enamel and start painting in black and white. An artist moves into black, according to Barnett Newman, to clear the ground for new approaches. DeKooning used black and white, the critic Thomas Hess believed 'to achieve a higher degree of ambiguity-of forms dissolving into their opposites-than ever before.' There was no one explanation, of course, for his decision. DeKooning was an artist of intuition rather than reasons. But he kept the two original cans of enamel for the rest of his life, making sure not to lose them whenever he changed studios. They became a symbol of what to do, a key, a support, a rabbit's foot. Sometimes, he would use the empty cans to prop up a picture."

— from deKooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens & Annalen Swan