We’ve said before that de Kooning had got all the women out of his system after his “women” series, but apparently after 20 years of lady-less art he was ready to get back to his figures.

De Kooning took a trip to Italy in 1969 during which he hung out in his sculptor-friend Herzl Emmanuel’s studio. When he got back to ‘merica, after some time in Japan, he was feeling inspired by 3-D and created a few figures in clay before jetting off to California (THE BAY AREA TO BE EXACT, NOBODY CARES LOS ANGELES) to make some lithographs of waves (swoon, my kind of art). The lil figures were cast in bronze later in the '70s and here we are, a lady on a bench.

But this woman isn’t like, anatomically or biologically or taxonomically recognizably a woman. A New York Times critic called her an “indecipherable primal scream of splayed legs and gesticulating arms.” Ok, rude.

“Indecipherable primal scream” is probably a good way of describing how Hillary Clinton felt a couple of times during her life in, around, and in reference to the White House. So it is highly appropriate that she brought this sculpture to the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden during Bill’s tenure. Hil and Bill apparently had their first date in a Yale art gallery looking at Rothko’s paintings and Henry Moore’s sculpture, making this a cute, passive aggressive reminder for the then-president, you’re married, I’m here, and I like art, remember? But given his arts-related policy, Bill probably only pretended to like art to woo Hillary, a big old red flag. She kept organizing exhibitions of American sculpture at the White House after the impeachment anyway, doing six in total. Forget Bill yo, Hillary is Art’s first lady.

And then almost two decades later Hillary must’ve felt exactly like Seated Woman on Bench in November of 2016, fully disintegrating in disgust while her earth-conscious tried to rage-quit.