Women I, 1950-52, Oil on canvas, 75 7/8″ x 58″

There’s a dimension that we don’t understand. In other words, if you have a landscape or and interior you have a space. You can deal with it in terms of images and what-not. But you can’t really understand what paint is doing. Paint is doing something that you ask it to do in order get the nose on somebody’s face. The paint also does something that isn’t the nose on the face. What is does is fascinating. It’s a new geography.

• Willem de Kooning, from de Kooning: An American Master