was placed around the rotunda of the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia Airport [Guggenheim.org, 2018]. Due to the Cold War climate, his social realist style was not appreciated at that time and his mural was covered by another work, but eventually it was restored in 1980 [New York Times, 1992]. Between 1942 and 1945 he worked as an art correspondent with the US Army in the Middle East. After returning to New York he joined his colleagues from the Federal Art Project and took over Jackson Pollock’s Eight Studio. As far as his artistic creation is concerned, at that time he moved from figuration into abstract [Guggenheim.org, 2018]. His works were initially characterised with synthetic cubism with tight, compact forms painted with dark and muted colours [Vandorenwaxter.com, 2014]. In the late 1940s, he developed a technique based on gestural brushwork, painting on a cloth or other material glued to the canvas, which created both accidental and deliberate effects. He also diluted oil paint to allow it to stain the raw canvas, and staining became one of his most recognisable techniques [Vandorenwaxter.com, 2014]. His techniques evolved further in the 1960s, with the composition of larger, bolder and simpler forms [Guggenheim.org, 2018]. Brooks is considered one of the most technically advanced and innovative abstract expressionist. He was able to meticulously organise abstract elements, textures and colours in the space of the canvas [New York Times, 1992]. In 1951 Brooks participated in the Ninth Street Exhibition (also known as 9th St. Show or Ninth Street Show), which was organised by lower Manhattan artists. This exhibition was a ground-breaking event as it attracted art dealers, collectors and museum people, and it enabled the stepping out from New York avant-garde for the first time [New York Times, 1992]. Brooks received an award during the Carnegie International Exhibition in 1956, and another from the Art Institute of Chicago a year later. In the late 1960s he had a large exhibition of all his works at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His paintings are currently displayed as part of collections across the USA [New York Times, 1992]. Overall, Brook’s paintings evolved from linear sketches interspersed with colourful bands creating a dynamic and almost three-dimensional image, as pictured on one of Brook’s most famous paintings, Maine Caper (1948), to a purer exploration of colour and form. His late paintings differ in colour selection, with darker and colder hues and larger and less complex shapes and forms, as exampled in his painting Geomundo (1983). James Brooks was diagnosed with dementia in 1985, and his artistic activities basically halted at that time. He died on March 9th, 1992, in East Hampton.
The main question is whether James Brook’s painting style was affected by his neurological condition. However, the fact that he stopped painting at the time of his diagnosis suggests that either his disease stopped his artistic activity, or Brook’s himself withdrew from his activities. Looking at the evolution of Brook’s technique during his career, one could say that his style evolved from social realism through cubism into pure abstraction, stripped of any references to forms or contexts in the final stage of his artistic activities, which may be interpreted as maturation and purification of style rather than a consequence of organic brain disease. A partial answer and explanation is offered by Forsythe et al. [2017], who conducted a fractal analysis of paintings in seven artists – four with a neurodegenerative condition and three “healthy controls.” The authors included artists with Parkinson disease (surrealist Salvodor Dali and Norval Morrisseau, representing a pictographic style) and dementia (James Brooks and Willem de Kooning, both abstract expressionists). Marc Chagall (cubist and surrealist), Pablo Picasso (cubist), and Claude Monet (impressionist) served as the controls. The authors used a method of fractal analysis which involves the assessment of fractal dimension. This is a ratio reflecting a statistical index of complexity comparing how detail in a pattern changes with the scale at which it is measured. Forsythe et al. [2017] studied more than 2,000 large-scale digital images of paintings from the abovementioned artists. They included paintings representative of all artistic production for each artist from their early to late works and they analysed the relation between fractal dimension and aging. The main finding of this study was that there was a highly significant correlation between the age and decline in fractal dimension in artists with dementia (Fig. 2). In addition to this, artists undergoing normal ageing, despite a variation of painting style (e.g., Picasso) had a much smaller range of fractal dimension in comparison to artists with dementia, in whom the heterogeneity was more prominent. When analysing the 139 paintings by James Brooks, Forsythe et al. [2017] found a steady decline in fractal dimension from about the age of 40 years (Fig. 2). These results need to be interpreted with caution as the observed decrease in fractal dimension may potentially reflect the maturation of his artistic style with the simplification of technique and decrease in the level of details and complexity. This would fit into the idea of abstraction and simplification of creative output. In addition to this, there was no comparison to another abstract expressionist without neurological underlying dementia, hence this observation may be considered unilateral and not verified.
Fig. 2. Fractal dimension of work as a function of artist age and neurodegenerative disorder. Forsythe et al. [2017], with permission.
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning is another abstract expressionist whose story may be illustrative for the coexistence of dementia and continuous artistic output. His case is discussed in detail in a separate chapter of this book, so here we will mention only key facts allowing for comparison with James Brooks and Agnes Martin. de Kooning was born in 1904 in the Netherlands and moved to USA in the late 1920s. Similarly to Brooks, de Kooning started his artistic work in New York, contributing to the Works Progress Administration Federal Act Project. He later started painting male figures and eventually explored further areas, concentrating on figurative representations of women. His painting style was very aggressive, even damaging the canvas with the strokes of his brush. He used paper magazines to work on his paintings, stripping them out at later stages to leave patchy reflections of printed text. He also used magazine images of women’s smiles placed in the position of the mouth, which he then painted over. His female figures had a more iconic appearance, rather than being mere portraits of actual individuals. Between the late 1950s and early 1960s, de Kooning focused on the abstraction of landscape with various themes, such as urban, parkway or pastoral. He started using softer dyes and less aggressive painting techniques [dekooning.org, 2018a]. In the late 1960s, de Kooning returned to painting female figures, stimulated by the emerging pop culture. These figures had more erotic features, such as prominent red lips and blond hair [The Art Story, 2018b]. de Kooning used other means of art expression and created clay sculptures, inspired by his trip to Italy, and he also created lithographs, inspired by Japanese ink drawings and calligraphy [dekooning.org, 2018a]. In the late 1970s, de Kooning’s artistic activity slowed down. At that time he started showing cognitive problems, likely related to alcohol addiction, and he withdrew from the art scene [Espinel, 2007]. During this period he experienced panic and anxiety attacks, insomnia, and even personal neglect, requiring hospital admission on a few occasions. He resumed painting in the 1980s and became very productive. During this period, de Kooning was becoming disorientated and had significant short-term memory problems, with difficulty memorising names and facts, etc. de Kooning started new paintings only on the basis of drawings of his previous works, which would suggest that he required a trigger to start. At the later stage of his disease these drawings were projected onto the canvas he worked on, and he added colours and developed the abstractions further. The use of projected images raised a concern regarding the validity of de Kooning’s work and the projections were stopped. However, when facing an empty canvas, de Kooning was only able to draw a few whirling lines and would later add only a few lines from time to time. He would never finish the painting, instead sitting in one place and staring at the unfinished canvas. This was suggestive