When Willem de Kooning snuck into the engine room of the Dutch freighter the SS Shelley in 1926 and stowed away for a voyage to America, he was much like thousands of other immigrants — doing what he had to in order to reach the land of his dreams, arriving penniless and unable to speak the language of his new home.

By the time of his death in 1997, de Kooning was rich and famous, an artist who had been honored by presidents and queens, whose work was in the best museums and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

But de Kooning throughout his lifetime remained essentially the young immigrant — stubborn, determined, self-centered, supremely talented and self-destructive.

At least that's one way that the painter's life can be seen after reading "de Kooning: An American Master," the brilliant first major biography of the artist by Marc Stevens, New York magazine art critic, and Annalyn Swan, a former senior arts editor at Newsweek.

The exhaustive 732-page tome is thoroughly researched, detailing de Kooning's life from his boyhood in Holland, where he was born in 1904, through his slip into Alzheimer's-like dementia in the last decade of his life, with a richness and depth not previously available in any of the writings about him that I've encountered.

Just as important, "de Kooning: An American Master" captures as no biography before it the New York art world from the 1930s through the early 1960s, chronicling the rise of American contemporary art through the lens of the man who, after the death of his chief rival Jackson Pollock, came to symbolize the era.

The movement de Kooning is associated with is called abstract expressionism. But it is instructive that at a meeting of artists, critics and other art world insiders, de Kooning threw a wet blanket on efforts to label the so-called New York school. Such designation would be a mistake, he argued — particularly for him, a determinedly independent painter who made the pictures he wanted to make, no matter the fashion.

So, just after his black-and-white abstract paintings of the late 1940s were hailed as masterpieces, he returned to the figure, beginning his then-shocking "Woman" series by working and reworking a single painting. That obsession with perfection and inability to finally resolve a painting was a de Kooning trait throughout his lifetime, perhaps left over from his academic training in the Netherlands, perhaps his greatest gift.

For decades, the inspiration for the sometimes horrifying, sometimes funny, sometimes highly sexualized paintings of women has been the subject of constant speculation. Stevens and Swan don't specifically answer that question.

But de Kooning escaped from his domineering mother as quickly as he could when he was a teenager and remained in fear of her into his 60s. So the odds are pretty good she's one of the inspirations of the figures.

It, however, should be noted that de Kooning's marriage to his wife, Elaine, had deteriorated in the period just before he began the "Woman" series.

De Kooning and Elaine didn't divorce. But he maintained a series of lovers through the years, never sticking with one woman for too long and continually returning to those from his past. The sexual exploits of Elaine and Bill have long been the stuff of art world gossip — and there's a little of that that sneaks into "de Kooning: An American Master." But it would be impossible to tell de Kooning's story without dwelling on his attraction/aversion to the female.

Similarly, Stevens and Swan don't shy away from chronicling de Kooning's descent into alcoholism, a horrific journey that led the painter, at the height of his 1950s success, to be found in the gutter with Bowery bums and resulted in a series of binges and dryouts for the rest of his life.

The drinking often was tied to an ongoing frustration with his work. And it is in addressing life in the studio that "de Kooning: An American Master" goes far beyond standard artist biography to provide insight not only into working methods but the temperament and effort that resulted in the creation of the great works.

Preferring the isolation of his workspace over socializing, de Kooning spent endless hours in his studios, whether in the 10th Street area of New York in the '40s through the '60s or on Long Island in the '70s and '80s. There he would pace and look, paint and scrape away, copy and rearrange in an endlessly repeating, but always varied process.

That process was rooted in his Renaissance-style training, influenced by art history, pushed by Picasso first in cubism, then surrealism. In making his paintings, de Kooning constantly explored the relationship between the figure and background, line and color, weight and lightness.

Although his public image was of an expressionist pouring out his inner feelings on canvas with a bristling immediacy, the reality of his work was something different. Yes, it was expressionist and reflected something of his inner turmoil. But it was also linked to the past, making de Kooning a classic modernist painter.

"de Kooning: An American Master" also provides an instructive view of the vagaries of critics and art world trends. In the course of his career, de Kooning went from unknown, to emerging star, to genius leader of a movement, to has- been to modern master — a series of transitions that had as much to do with the fashion of the moment as with the work.

Today, of course, de Kooning is a fully established member of the canon, one of the key American artists of the 20th century. Getting there wasn't easy. He lived a life of poverty, alcoholism, depression and disappointment. But his unceasing dedication to his work goes far beyond the tortured artist cliches, demonstrating that talent must be fully exercised in order to come to fruition.

All of that comes through this indispensable biography, one of the best books about an artist's life I've read.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.