These icons of modern painting have continued to touch some nerve at the very core of American consciousness.
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''I do think that if I don't look upon life that way, I won't know how to keep on being around.'' ''They look vociferous and ferocious, and I think it had to do with the idea of the idol, the oracle and above all the hilariousness of it,'' Mr. They are garish high-heeled figures with puckered lips and fuchsia nails, bulging eyes and bulging breasts, painted with an almost vicious enthusiasm. The female figure became the tonic note to which he returned again and again in his long career, and from this preoccupation came many of his most hotly contested works: the toothy, blowzy images of the late 1940's, 50's and 60's, which have been described every which way: as sexist and pornographic, affectionate and funny, or all these things at once. de Kooning was known, among other things, for his ''Woman'' paintings. His off again, on again marriage to the painter Elaine de Kooning lasted until she died in 1989 and his own health had already seriously declined. Late in life, he remained a striking man, half Dutch sailor, half Charlie Chaplin in baggy trousers, with his thick Dutch accent, home-grown English patois (the artist Robert Rauschenberg called it ''his beautiful lingo''), clear blue eyes and shock of white hair. Even before then he was a charismatic presence on the New York art scene, a regular at the old Cedar Bar, the famous artists' hangout in Greenwich Village, where he became legendary for his choirboy good looks, soft-spoken charm and hard drinking. de Kooning became the embodiment of its heyday in the 1950's, when the movement that he epitomized, Abstract Expressionism, rose to international prominence. He was 92.Ī near-mythic figure in American art, Mr. Willem de Kooning, who came to New York City from his native Rotterdam and radically altered the shape of American art after World War II, died yesterday at his home in East Hampton, L.I.