The Dutch artist Willem de Kooning first painted human flesh in the form of large and fleshy women; later he painted earth landscapes; and still later he combined the two, recognizing no difference between them. Flesh is flesh. Earth is flesh. All of us creatures on and in the earth, with the earth in us, are flesh. In many ways his contributions to art speak to the twentieth century's gradual rediscovery of the relationship of our flesh to the rest of flesh in nature — and to its glory. "Flesh is the reason why oil painting was invented," de Kooning said.
— Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh