Standing Woman

"Certain artists and critics attacked me for painting the Women, but I felt that this was their problem, not mine. I don't really feel like a non-objective painter at all. Today, some artists feel they have to go back to the figure, and that the word 'figure' becomes such a ridiculous omen — if you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it, since we have this problem of doing it or not doing it. But then all of a sudden it was even absurd not to do it." — Willem de Kooning