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| Willem de Kooning Untitled ca. 1937 gouache on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning The Wave ca. 1942-44 oil on board Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Ellen Auerbach Willem de Kooning, New York (age 40) 1944 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Willem de Kooning Landscape, Abstract ca. 1949 oil on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Rudy Burckhardt Willem de Kooning 1950 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Woman ca. 1952 oil paint, pastel and graphite on paper Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Willem de Kooning Woman and Bicycle 1952-53 oil paint, enamel and charcoal on linen Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Composition 1955 oil paint, enamel and charcoal on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Untitled 1958 oil on paper, mounted on panel Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice |
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| Willem de Kooning Black and White 1959 enamel on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Door to the River 1960 oil on linen Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Villa Borghese 1960 oil on canvas Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao |
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| Willem de Kooning Woman Accabonac 1966 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Woman in Landscape III 1968 oil on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Seated Woman ca. 1969 bronze Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Richard Avedon Willem de Kooning, Painter, Springs, Long Island 1969 gelatin silver print Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Willem de Kooning Untitled (Woman) ca. 1974 drawing Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Whose Name was Writ in Water 1975 oil on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Willem de Kooning (age 77) 1981 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Untitled VII 1983 oil on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Willem de Kooning Untitled XII 1983 oil on canvas Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Willem de Kooning Untitled 1987 oil on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
from Persephone the Wanderer
In the second version, Persephone
is dead. She dies, her mother grieves –
problems of sexuality need not
trouble us here.
Compulsively, in grief, Demeter
circles the earth. We don't expect to know
what Persephone is doing.
She is dead, the dead are mysterious.
We have here
a mother and a cipher: this is
accurate to the experience
of the mother as
she looks into the infant's face. She thinks:
I remember when you didn't exist. The infant
is puzzled; later, the child's opinion is
she has always existed, just as
her mother has always existed
in her present form. Her mother
is like a figure at a bus stop,
an audience for the bus's arrival. Before that,
she was the bus, a temporary
home or convenience. Persephone, protected,
stares out the window of the chariot.
What does she see? A morning
in early spring, in April. Now
her whole life is beginning – unfortunately,
it's going to be
a short life. She's going to know, really,
only two adults: death and her mother.
But two is
twice what her mother has:
her mother has
one child, a daughter.
As a god, she could have had
a thousand children.
We begin to see here
the deep violence of the earth
whose hostility suggests
she has no wish
to continue as a source of life.
And why is this hypothesis
never discussed? Because
it is not in the story; it only
creates the story.
– Louise Glück (2006)