I feel like you write this same article with this same headline every time there's a retrospective of Krasner's work. Isn't it well past time to simply write an article about her and her work and leave Pollack out of it entirely? (That's a rhetorical question. The answer is yes.)
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Never liked Jackson. Always thought he stole his ideas from Lee. She suffered from anti-women bias much like Joan Mitchell.
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I’ve always liked Krasner’s work. She has undoubtedly suffered in her art career by being overwhelmed by Pollock’s art and mystique. It’s not that unusual, even now, for women artists to be under represented in museums and galleries. Better late than never to learn about one of this country’s brilliant artists.
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Love this coverage of Krasner. She deserves the attention, and the longterm engagement with her work's development over the years. Thank you Mr. Farago for the thoughtful appreciation.
I do have one question though. Why do we still have this tradition in the art world of using "theater" as a pejorative? I'd suggest that it's more than time to reconsider that. Visual art and theater have much more in common than in contrast... They both present aesthetic experiences within a given frame, which may or may not comment, pointedly or obliquely, on the world beyond the frame, to an outside audience. They both can be subtle or brash. So, where's the foul?
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I'd have a Krasner hanging on a wall of my house, as the saying goes, any day of the week. As for Pollock, the tumultuous energy of his drip paintings always struck me as a visual version of the furious polyrhythms of Elvin Jones' drumming.
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Brilliant work, wonderful to see, so much more intensely powerful than the notorious husband's. About time Krasner is getting well-warranted attention. Highly recommend the recent superb Krasner biography by art historian Gail Levin, "Lee Krasner: A Biography."
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Part of the reason she is the "shadow" is the ridiculous need of writers to put that out there - in headlines - as a given. How about something interesting and just move past that?
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Your petty comment that Krasner’s work is able to “survive even the sleepiest hang” drives me crazy! What does this even mean? Should there have been strobe lights, contraptions that spin the paintings to offer different perspectives, ... a D.J.? What’s the better way to display artwork then to hang it on clean walls and allow people, art aficionados and regular old folks, like me, to simply explore and experience the work at hand?
I attended the show at the Barbican and thought it was fantastic ... and found nothing off putting with the “hang.”
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@Joel Brown
You are so right! I saw the show and LOVED that it was chronological (although I still liked the review). I am now reading Ninth Street Women so the show was even more meaningful.
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I much prefer her work to her husband's.
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The "shadow" of Jackson Pollock is quality shade
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That painting looks like it’s not quite level and it’s driving me crazy.
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This is an absolutely must-see exhibit. As a newcomer to her work, I was overwhelmed by the sheer scope and variety on display at the Barbican.
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I attended the exhibit almost two weeks ago, and it has stayed with me. It has a collective momentum that must be seen, with enough supporting data to completely revise the misconceptions. It forced this viewer to consider how sexism pushed her into the shadows. She deserves better, and we will be the better for it. P.S.
5
The real artist is photo artist Tristan Fewings--as her photo looks like the little girl (while the boy holds the paint) is painting the large canvas--and judging by the painting, I'd say she is seven years old--as that DEFINITELY looks like something a child would do--unless that is a painting of the lower colon?
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For those of you who would like a deeper and more nuanced look at Krasner’s work as an Ab-Ex artist and activist, I can highly recommend getting yourself a copy of Mary Gabriel’s book,
“Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art”.
It’ll surely give you a much fuller picture of not only her art, but of her life, with and without Pollock, and the times in which she lived. A must-read for art lovers!
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Boy that constant comparing and rating thing has got to go. Enjoy the art. Period.
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Ms. Krasner’s work is extraordinary but not revolutionary. Pollock’s, DeKooning’s, Rauschenberg’s, Rothko’s works are both revolutionary and iconic. They just take your breath away.
The fact that she is a woman does not increase the artistic value of her work, but it speaks volumes about her fierce determination and passion.
The article places a lot of emphasis on those who inspired her work but there is no mention about who was inspired by Krasner, if any.
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@Ferdinand
She inspired me, and a ton of other male painters I know. It took me a while to remember who her supposedly better husband was. Her work is diverse enough to cover styles as wide as all the painters you mention put together. It's exploratory, emergent and eclectic, like the process most of the truly passionate artists I know.
Pollock was a one-trick pony, even if some works (like "Autumn Rhythm") are fairly triumphant. He wrapped himself and a friend around a tree while drunk not far from my house. Maybe he would have made other, better stuff, but we'll never know.
What we do know is that Krasner's body of work isn't so easily summarized as Pollock's, and that itself is a certain mark of a creative mind. Inspiring, from where I sit. Cheers.
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Thanks for this! Krasner always seemed to have more to her work than most of her contemporaries. So when do we get this show???
20
Some time ago I realized that I liked her paintings more than her husbands's. Great that she's finally getting the appreciation she deserves.
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She will always, like Elaine, be something way less than the husbands. Marriage is not a ticket to fame.
Her art is pollack light.
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@robert blake
Pollock was Pollock Lite. He was an innovator, but only to a certain point, and he didn't develop much after the drip style. The ways in which he did develop resembles Krasner's work, not the other way around.
Krasner had many styles, Pollock was just one of them. They were married, it would be weird if he wasn't one of her influences/overlaps. But she's more than the work that is resembles his, that's reductive nonsense.
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@robert blake
His art is Krasner heavy.
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Her work is interesting enough. Don't really care for her choice in colors however.
For anyone who may wish to dig deeper into the topic of the women abstract expressionists I highly recommend "9th Street Women" by Mary Gabriel. It's a doorstopper and needn't be read all at once but you'll want to.
It is a marvelous survey and analysis of 5 great painters, including Krasner, sexual politics at the time, bohemian NY and NY more generally. What lives the people led: adventure, danger, great accomplishment just marvelous.
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Not bad, but I still prefer her husband's paintings. Although I believe the art world needs to engage in open submissions in a search for excellence, identity politics is another way to prevent opportunity for all.
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@ART
Retrospectives like this are about mitigating the effects of the existing "identity politics" from the art world, the identity politics that say women are 90% of the nudes in an art museum but 5% of the artists (if that in some museums).
Krasner's work has always been influential to the artists she lived with and worked with, but like so many women was denied a chance when her contemporaries weren't.
It isn't always a meritocracy, con't kid yourself. Her work is being shown now because it's good, not because of some quota or something.
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@ART
James, I agree. But art galleries need to engage in open submissions instead of elitism.
1
Ouch! I saw the Barbican show and really loved and appreciated Ms. Nairne's "introductory course". Walked away informed and inspired. Otherwise beautifully written review. Great to see Krasner take her time in the spotlight.
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Very good article, with a brilliant closing paragraph.
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Colorful, maybe even pretty, but not art.
That's true of just about every piece of "art" created in the last 100 years.
Certainly better than dead animals in tanks of embalming fluid, or pieces of broken pottery. An awfully low bar to meet.
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@Jonathan Katz
Perhaps you think art is about representation? About how to copy what we see? We don't need that kind of art since photography was discovered. Moreover, we all see reality in a different way. Art is about expression, an extension of human intelligence.
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Not to be overlooked in the publicity department, we should pay homage to Elaine DeKooning’s seduction of every major art critic of the time.
11
Krasner will always be associated with her overrated husband--that's just history being history. Besides that, her work is some of most coherent and satisfying American Abstract Expressionism ever made. Krasner had the the ability to convey narrative and intellect into her paintings. I look at a Pollack or de Kooning and I get a headache, or worse. When I look at a Krasner I see an artist's effort to achieve clarity. Just sayin'...
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@Akita
I love to look at the art of Pollack and de Kooning and Krasner. Your comment gave me an "or worse."
cheap shot at this curator to call the show "safe" and that it carried no "theoretical challenges" or "feminist critique". maybe just maybe the paintings themselves didn't present these issues?
19
At the time starting in the 1940s, the influence of this ‘new art’ and its artists and their outsized personalities were the most fascinating part of it all. She certainly deserves much credit for hanging tough in that group. It all seems to require perspective though: post war euphoria, artistic freedom, a sense of rebellion that all served to make many abstract artists famous ( now infamous) who otherwise had ‘average’ traditional talent.
For some, they are geniuses, others— charlatans, and still others just plain lucky. That’s abstract art, right?
14
To endlessly compare and contrast Lee Krasner to J. Pollock continues a sexist trope. She endures as an artist in her own right, one I’m sure she would have been regardless of the man or men in her life.
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@Deirdre Devaney
I first saw her work in an exhibition of female artists at the Hammer Museum during the 1990s (or possibly LACMA, those years are now fading a bit) but didn’t realize who Lee Krasner was in relation to Jackson Pollock until I saw the film “Pollock”. It was a passion project of its star, Ed Harris, and a good film. Yet it’s another example of men celebrating men and controlling the narrative of history while overshadowing the women involved in making it. But Marcia Gay Harden as Krasner rose above it all to win an Oscar for her performance. I’m glad we’re in an era when women are finally able to fill in the gaps of history while also becoming more equally involved in writing it.
By the way, I WANT that mosaic table for my patio!
34
an incredibly strong and resilient human being, artist, marriage partner, and woman - and she made some gorgeous art!
35
In my dabbling painter's opinion, Pollock may be a more historically important artist, as his best paintings are arguably Abstract Expressionism's most iconic. Krasner, however, was a better artist. She could draw better than Pollock could; her oeuvre is broader and more complex. As this article emphasizes, her best collages are knockouts, as distinct and evocative as any artist's abstract work. Perhaps most important, she did not destroy herself, thus having time for a long career. (Pollock's ruggedly hip reputation endures...and this article, as most others mentioning his drunken crash on Fireplace Road, neglects Edith Metzger.) It's great to see Lee Krasner's art and her reputation steadily enriching a wider audience. She so deserves it.
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@Joseph Leiper
Ted Dragon, who with Alfonso Ossorio, lured Lee and Jackson to Springs, was a life long friend of Lee. He also felt, like I did, that Lee was by far the superior artist.
I think without Lee's personal support and her Olympian promotion of his art to the critics and museums, he might not have been the legend he is now thought of.
18
I'm not certain that there would have been an Ab-Ex movement to appreciate but for the persistence work and organizing of Krasner. She was pivotal. I highly recommend Mary Gabriel's insightful book "Ninth Street Women." It is an indispensable and enthralling examination of the robust lives of the women who dared to call themselves artists and the men whose privilege and fame marginalized them.
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@janjamm I just finished reading "Ninth Street Women." It should be considered required reading as part of Art History studies. Not to mention the fact that, after Pollock's death, Lee Krasner created the modern art market as we know it.
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@janjamm I love this book!!
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