In this talk Christa Noel Robbins discusses how gender is figured in Willem de Kooning’s paintings and drawings—many of which are featured in the exhibition Willem de Kooning Drawing.
Focusing on de Kooning’s unorthodox process, she shows that gender is destabilized in these works, appearing as a deeply ambivalent expression that can be likened to one’s own conflicted experience of inhabiting gender. Robbins will also explore similarly ambivalent expressions of identity in the works of other key New York School painters.
Image: Woman I, 1950–52, Willem de Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase, 478.1953. © 2026 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.