† Christopher Wool
(American, b. 1955)
"Woman III", 2005
silkscreen ink on paper
artist proof, edition "1/3", signed and dated lower right, annotated "III" and numbered lower left, verso with "New York Studio School" benefit auction label.
Glazed and framed.
81" x 50", framed 82-1/2" x 51-1/2"
I use silkscreen like a brush. It's just something between my hand and the painting. I do the screening myself and it seems like a very mechanical process ... To me, [silkscreen] is one of those kinds of process that you can see, like a dripping in the painting, you can see it, you can feel that it is handmade. You know that it is not completely mechanical, it's printed like a professional printer. I think that gives the audience an entrance into the painting. I think visual art has power, that's the interest to me, and that should communicate to the audience. It's not a specific message.
- Christopher Wool in conversation with Nicolas Trembley for Numéro

Offering both abstract fluency and access to the mechanics of expression, Woman III (2005) exemplifies why Wool's work resists codification so deftly. Born to a molecular biologist and a psychiatrist in 1955, Wool rose to prominence in New York in the 1980s by approaching painting differently from the Pictures Generation artists who repudiated the validity of painting in a post-war setting. It was within these parameters that Wool began his artistic practice of creating distance between himself and his work by using rollers, stamps, and stencils to create readymade compositions of universal words and phrases in black enamel paint on sharply white canvas and aluminum surfaces. By highlighting process and using an objet trouvé approach, Wool was able to evade the notion of painterly expression. Through this approach however, he was also able to maintain a free-hand fluidity by leaving in the uneven textures of rollers, the pooling at the sides of the rubber stamp, and the irregular drippings from the stencils.

Following this early work, Wool began to dabble with silkscreen. This method afforded him more control over the mechanical process of creation, while still allowing for naturally occurring flaws that had become recognizable to his oeuvre. The dense layers applied via silkscreen created new forms and configurations, and Wool's work with abstraction expanded beyond that of his black-and-white paintings through the implication of natural forces in conjunction with mechanics of expression. These automated works broadened Wool's oeuvre as he began to reconsider his embargo on mark making by tracing, and then erasing, layers of gestural lines reminiscent of graffiti.

The hand of the artist came more into focus, and this is evident in Woman III, with its delicate, arabesque loops and the freehand wiping and smearing that break up those loops. Woman III is one of a monumental triptych that pays homage to a series of work by Willem de Kooning from 1964 to 1966, featuring several imposing, behemoth female figures on wooden doors that had been installed in his studio at one time. The resulting works are considered a touchstone in de Kooning's career. Wool's triptych was influenced by these de Kooning's works and is a reflection on the use of medium, especially the importance of silkscreen to Wool's practice. The abstraction in Woman III, borne of a symbiotic cycle of doing and undoing, coalesces into emotive and conceptual cohesion, not unlike de Kooning's abstraction. The synthesis of adding hand-painted lines, their subsequent obfuscation, and the strata of images via automated silkscreen mark a return to those formal qualities that are associated with painting. Like in Wool's most sought-after paintings, Woman III is a tense and arresting investigation of creation and erasure, gesture and mechanics, that renews painting and immortalizes silkscreen as valid post-modern processes.

Reference: Nicolas Trembley, "Meet artist Christopher Wool, the master who creates tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal", Numéro, November 3, 2022.

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