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In 2002 I began to explore the formal and expressive links between Picasso after 1930 and de Kooning before 1960. In a reflection of my increasing conviction that these formal/expressive properties had long since ceased to carry the impact of their original modernist identities, but had passed instead into the cozy spaces of art history, most of my responses made reference to academicism through strict maintenance of the Dutch palette, fat-over-lean impasto principles and, above all, the transparent use of umbers:
