Elaine de Kooning first worked at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque in 1973. Four years later, she returned for a second residency, during which she produced a suite of eight lithographs titled Jardin de Luxembourg. The series grew out of an encounter the artist had the previous year with Jules Dalou's 1885 monumental sculpture Le Triomphe de Silène, located in Paris's Jardin du Luxembourg. The sculpture depicts Silenus, the drunken companion and tutor of Dionysus, riding atop a donkey, while attendants struggle to keep him from falling amid the chaos of a bacchanalian procession. Although de Kooning mistakenly identified the figure as Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, the works she created in response became known as the Bacchus series, a title that remains associated with the works today.
The sculpture would become an enduring source of inspiration for de Kooning. Beyond the lithographs produced at Tamarind, she revisited the subject in numerous paintings and drawings, finding in Dalou's monument a vehicle for exploring movement, light, and gesture. Rather than focusing on the sculpture's physical details, she became interested in the energy it conveyed. The works oscillate between representation and abstraction, the balance between them remaining central to de Kooning's artistic practice throughout her career.
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg III, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
Although Elaine de Kooning is often associated with the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, as she participated in the landmark Ninth Street Exhibition in 1951 alongside Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, she never truly abandoned figuration in her work. Throughout her oeuvre, one can find portraits, animals, landscapes, and historical imagery, with an approach at times abstract and at others expressionistic. The Jardin de Luxembourg lithographs exemplify this tendency, retaining the presence of Dalou's sculpture—with a detail on the upper left quadrant that captures the facial expression of one of the attendants—while filtering it through the gestural language for which de Kooning remains highly celebrated.
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg III, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
Writing in Tamarind Suite 15 (1977), art historian Gustave Von Groschwitz remarked, "Elaine de Kooning is a painter as well as a lithographer," noting the distinctly painterly character of her prints. "This is a beautiful print—a view of nature by a modern artist adapting the technique of impressionism, in a way not unlike the slashing strokes of her paintings. Her other three lithographs are variations of the same theme, with enough subtle variations to make one feel pleased that there are four versions instead of one," he wrote.
Elaine de Kooning with preliminary studies of Jardin de Luxembourg, photo by Kim Jew from the catalogue Tamarind Suite 15 (1977)
Von Groschwitz, who was present at the Tamarind Institute during the production of de Kooning's prints, noted, "It was fascinating to see how the forms and composition develop as each stone is printed... In all [of the] lithographs the figures and setting are seen stripped down to the essentials, which is what abstraction really is." The process of layering colors, as apparent in both prints, demonstrates how de Kooning was able to build atmosphere gradually, ultimately creating works more concerned with visual sensation than literal representation.
ELAINE DE KOONING | Jardin de Luxembourg I, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
Seen together, Jardin de Luxembourg I and III reveal de Kooning's exploratory approach to printmaking. Rather than producing a single definitive interpretation of the sculpture, she used lithography to investigate the same subject from several distinct perspectives. Forms emerge and recede, colors shift in emphasis, and the balance between figure and environment continually changes. The works are not reproductions of a monument, but rather independent responses to the experience of encountering it.
Rooted in direct observation yet energized by abstraction, the prints demonstrate de Kooning's ability to transform a recognizable subject into an exploration of movement, atmosphere, and perception. As Von Groschwitz wrote of the series, "[A]s one becomes aware of the amorphous shapes of the leaves, writhing like organisms under an enlarging microscope... I feel a tremendous vitality... I believe that it is the artist's essential purpose to convey a quality of intense, vibrating movement—to make us experience visually the exhilaration of touching a hot wire."His observation speaks directly to what makes Jardin du Luxembourg I and III so compelling. Rather than documenting Dalou's sculpture, de Kooning uses it as a catalyst for investigating the expressive possibilities of color, gesture, and form.
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg I, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
Impressions from this series are held in the collections of the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, the Housatonic Museum of Art, the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Miami University Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Tamarind Archive Collection at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum.
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MORE DETAILS
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg III, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg III, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg I, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
ELAINE DE KOONING | (Detail) Jardin de Luxembourg I, 1977. Lithograph, 30 x 22 in (76.2 x 55.9 cm). Collaborating printer: Lynn Baker, printed and published by Tamarind Institute
Artwork photgraphy by Marylene Mey © Estate of the Artist
