De Kooning at MOMA

What struck me most today at the crowded, impressive, almost overwhelming De Kooning show:

• one prominent black drip from an eyeball-shaped figure in the righthand side of Asheville (1948), which proclaims the presence of unrestraint in a piece otherwise straining with the tension of its own meticulous composition
• the close relationship with Pollock's color and composition in works like Untitled (1948-49) and Painting (1949-50)
• the depth of the lemon-beige overpainting in Excavation (1950), which simultaneously obscures and unveils figures of people, houses, trains, and objects, nestling in folds outlined in black 
• the raw flesh tones of Interchange (1955), against a background painted by Diebenkorn on Adderall 
• the adventurous blocking of Gotham News (1955), a painting whose colors are held apart by slashes of cornflower blue and slate gray
• the box of turquoise sea with a small sea monster swimming within in Fire Island (1946) 
• the vermilion blotches in Collage, which every photograph I've ever seen bleaches out
• January 1st and Easter Monday, hanging as a pair, Diebenkorn kelly greens and mustard yellows leaping out across the room. Both works prompt the question, how and why do large globs of paint mean?  I see their three-dimensional mass (especially in January 1st) as metonymic of the painter's hand, even his whole body; M sees them as paint transformed into masonry.  

What De Kooning's work is not: sly.  Before today I would have added "serene," but serenity was present in some of the rural landscapes -- perhaps not Merritt Parkway, but Bolton Landing (though it is far from my favorite work).