Editors' Statement: Willem de Kooning, on His Eighty-Fifth Birthday

This is the year of Willem de Kooning's eighty-fifth birthday, and we have taken great pleasure, at the instigation of the Editorial Board, in putting together this issue of Art Journal to celebrate the event. Recognizing de Kooning as a ne plus ultra among modern masters of the art of painting, we saw the opportunity to express, along with the other contributors, our own personal homage to his genius. As editors, our hunch was that a great many diverse artists and critics had their de Kooning stories to tell, and that proved to be the case.