Images and quote taken from the article titled Body and Soul by Hilton Als, found in the September 14, 2026, print issue of the New Yorker magazine about a current exhibition of Willem De Kooning’s drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Als wrote that “The artist [De Kooning] said that “Excavation” was inspired by the neorealist Italian film “Bitter Rice” (1949), a depiction of workers in northern Italy which is dominated by the bodies of women.”   The same article is in the New Yorker newsletter of September 11, 2026, with the title Willem De Kooning’s Excavations of Intimacy.  [Click on either image to enlarge.]