Commentary: A stolen, horribly damaged De Kooning painting gets the Getty conservation treatment

The ripping sound must have been horrific. When thieves pulled out a sharp blade to slice Willem de Kooning’s painting “Woman-Ochre” from its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson in a daring, daylight heist on the day after Thanksgiving in 1985, they likely expected the canvas to fall out into their waiting arms like a silk scarf slipping off bare shoulders. Getty Museum conservator Laura Rivers removed two layers of yellowed varnish from Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre.” The FBI opened an investigation and, although nothing definitive has yet been decided, it seems pretty certain the Alters were the thieves. Some flakes were analyzed to determine their composition, enhancing extensive GCI research published in Susan F. Lake’s 2010 handbook, “Willem de Kooning: The Artist’s Materials.” The meticulous book, a systematic study of his painting process, was one reason the Getty volunteered its services free of charge to the Tucson museum when the discovery story broke. Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, De Kooning’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers, observantly described the “Woman” series as “no better suggestion in art of a tantrum, no truer rendering of the child who knows only that he wants — and is desolate — as he hurls himself back and forth against an unyielding strength.” Now out from private hibernation behind a bedroom closet door in the desert and back from a public state of ruin, the vivifying struggle recommences for “Woman-Ochre.”