Written to tie in with the first major European exhibition of the
artist’s work for fifty years, LEE KRASNER ~ LIVING COLOUR, at the
Barbican Centre Art Gallery in London, from 30 May to 1 September 2019,
this article, in keeping with the ethos of the Collage Research Network,
focuses specifically on Krasner’s collages and the background to how
she came to create them.
LEE Krasner (1908 – 1984) was not the first artist who, stricken by poverty, felt obliged to recycle canvases and other materials. In Krasner’s case it was also because she refused to allow her art to be pigeon-holed or limited in any aesthetic way. Had she been any less self-assured as an artist than she was, not to mention as a woman of Jewish background, she would most likely have been completely invisible on the art scene of mid-twentieth century America. As the wife of the famous, some would say, notorious, Abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956), her struggle to be recognised as a talented artist in her own right was made even harder, overshadowed as she was, by such an iconic figure. In critical circles Krasner seemed destined forever to be known as Mrs. Jackson Pollock.
For Krasner, Pollock was akin to an addiction. He inspired her artistically and personally as much as he frustrated her. His drinking and the irrational behaviour it brought on would come to affect her own health and mental well-being. In spite of these difficulties Krasner felt protective of her husband throughout their marriage, always ensuring he had the space he needed to paint, both in physical and emotional terms. For her, it meant often keeping her own artistic endeavours small-scale, so that she could work in the bedroom of their house in Springs, Long Island, while Pollock had his studio in a large barn outside. (Fig. 1) Her Little Images, a series of small canvases on which she worked between 1946 and 1949, originated out of this need. Following his death in a car crash, in 1956, Krasner devoted herself to preserving Pollock’s legacy by securing contracts with art galleries in the United States as well as in Europe. She was determined that his work should continue to be seen and his reputation to grow even beyond the heights it had already achieved during his lifetime.
Initially inspired by Cubism through her studies with the German-born American painter and teacher, Hans Hofmann (1880 – 1966), Krasner turned away from the form in the 1940s towards Abstract Expressionism. Unwilling to be constrained by one particular style her tendency was to immerse herself deeply into specific themes she wanted to explore before moving on to others. It did not mean that she abandoned them for the rest of her life. Krasner would revisit themes whenever she felt she had something new to say. She was quite prepared to leave herself open to new artistic experiences, even if it meant going back to old subjects. Inspiration often came from nature and its cycles. She liked the way the four seasons brought her ideas organically, by osmosis, and saw their constant renewal as something she could reflect in her art. Krasner named Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944)[1][3], Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)[2][3] and Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)[3] as her main influences.
Additionally, she acknowledged Pollock was of tremendous importance to her artistic development. “How can you live with someone without that happening?”, Krasner said in an interview with Doloris Holmes for the Archives of American Art, Art World in Turmoil, oral history project in 1972, going on to explain: “We’d never sit down and have a big art talk together. He’d come in and say, ‘Want to see what I’ve done?’ And I’d invite him into my studio.”[4]
Extremely self-critical, Krasner would tear up any of her paintings she was dissatisfied with. Instead of completely discarding the pieces, however, she recycled them into new works of art – her collages. In her book, 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (2017), the writer and art historian, Bridget Quinn, writes that Lee Krasner’s collages are the artist’s most autobiographical works. She says, “What is not autobiography if it’s not selecting chunks of the past and artfully reorienting them in the present?”[5] Anne Middleton Wagner, in her study, Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner and O’Keeffe (1998), quotes Krasner as expressing the same thoughts herself about her paintings.[6] Interviewed in 1975 by the art critic, Cindy Nemser, Krasner said: “I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.”[7]
Following Pollock’s death Krasner tore up many of his paintings which she found abandoned or half finished in his studio. By creating collages from his old materials she was keeping him alive as well as developing further an artistic method she had begun experimenting with two decades earlier. Now it was also something cathartic to do as Krasner worked through the grief of losing her husband.
Perhaps the first seeds for creating collages were planted when, as a young art student in 1937, Krasner had to watch Hans Hofmann tear up her sketches in front of her and reassemble them in a different way for better artistic effect. The first deviation from the highly structured forms of Cubism to the more intuitive artistic expression that would later lead to an entire series of collages deriving from old paintings – both hers and Pollock’s – was Krasner’s Mosaic Collage of 1939. Still using a ground of bold squares of colour in reds and browns, but without the Mondrian heavy black lines to frame them, Krasner freely added contrasting swathes of pale blues. Together with a fluid circle in striking yellow and small blocks of colour on patches of white, the painting evokes the impression of an aerial map. As with her collages of the mid-1950s and those she created towards the end of her life from drawings and paintings that had lain forgotten for thirty years, this early piece already has that sense of being ‘organically-derived'[8] which is evident later in Krasner’s nature-themed collages, such as Forest No.2 (1954); Bald Eagle (1955); Milkweed (1955); Desert Moon (1955); Autumnal Red (1980); Vernal Yellow (Spring Yellow) (1980).
Desert Moon is an arresting collage. A striking red background, depicting the visceral heat of the desert, is covered by bold, ragged strips of black paper. Between and over these Krasner brushed circles and patches of mauve which give a sense of the night’s cool air bringing relief from the heat of the day. Autumnal Red is a beautiful portrayal of swirling autumn leaves as one might experience during a walk in the park or along a country road. The sense of the breeze riffling the leaves into kaleidoscopic swirls of reds and orange is so vivid that Krasner, here, created for the viewer an almost palpable sense of movement.
Collage of oil on paper on canvas, and oil on canvas
Overall: 58 x 42 1/2 in. Frame: 65 × 51 × 2 in. (165.1 × 129.54 × 5.08 cm).
Recognition of Krasner as an artist in her own right took a long time to materialise. Both in joint exhibitions with other artists and in solo showings critiques were generally reserved. On the occasions she placed works in shows in which her husband also exhibited his, Krasner would almost inevitably be referred to as Mrs. Jackson Pollock. It was not until 1955, when Krasner exhibited some of her collages at the Stable Gallery in New York, that her own artistic talent was finally acknowledged. In his review, Stuart Preston, the art critic for the New York Times spoke of the ‘majestic and thoughtful construction’ of one of her pieces and said he felt Krasner was now ‘searching for formal and chromatic harmonies rather than a delivery of watertight solutions’ in her work.[9]
The first time British audiences had an opportunity to see Krasner’s work was in September 1965, when Bryan Robertson, art curator and Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London from 1952 until 1969, staged the retrospective, Lee Krasner: Paintings, Drawings and Collages. Positive reviews flooded in and, as Eleanor Nairne says in the Foreword of the Catalogue to the Barbican Centre exhibition, the reception she received was a turning point for Krasner, especially by those who hadn’t realised that she was a woman, nor, indeed, that she was Jackson Pollock’s widow.[10]
Now, half a century later, a period during which attitudes to women have changed drastically and the world is looking for ways to make good the harm man has done to the planet, it is thanks to the Barbican Centre Art Gallery hosting a comprehensive retrospective of Krasner’s work, including many pieces never seen before, that there is an opportunity to look at her collages with fresh eyes. The way she created new work from old feels thoroughly modern. Were the artist with us today she would be lauded as a woman ahead of her time in the art of recycling. There can be no doubt at all that she would be judged on her own artistic merit.
NOTES
[1] Gail Levin, Lee Krasner: A Biography. New York: William Morrow & Company, 2011
[2] Gail Levin: In Krasner’s Untitled (Still Life) of 1935Levin sees a similarity to Matisse in the way the artist places and angles the separate objects (p.121). In an interview with Time magazine in 1958 Krasner said she had been “bowled over” by the paintings of Matisse. (p.167)
Krasner was influenced by Mondrian’s thickly painted canvases, his use of primary colours and bold black lines. (pp. 117, 126, 127, 148, 167, 196)
[3] Eleanor Nairne, Lee Krasner: Living Colour. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2019
In the exhibition catalogue to accompany the Lee Krasner retrospective at the Barbican Centre Art Gallery, London, an interview Gail Levin conducted in New York in December 1970 with Krasner is quoted verbatim in the section titled ‘Reflections’. Asked if she was interested in Matisse and Picasso prior to her studies with Hans Hofmann, Krasner replies: “They were both up-top artists for me – and Mondrian as well, really up-top”. (p.174)
[4] Oral history interview with Lee Krasner in 1972, conducted by Doloris Holmes for the Archives of American Art “Art World in Turmoil” oral history project. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-lee-krasner-12037
(accessed 21 May 2019)
[5] Barbara Quinn, Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order). San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2017 (p.113)
[6] Anne Middleton Wagner, Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse,
Krasner and O’Keeffe. Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 1998 (p.105)
[7] Gail Levin, (p.11)
[8] Gail Levin, (p.401).
Eleanor Nairne: In her contributing essay in the section titled ‘Nothing Outside Nature’ Katy Siegel puts the artist’s use of the term organic for her work into context. (p.22)
[9] Gail Levin, (p.274)
[10] Eleanor Nairne, (p.6)
Acknowledgements
Warmest thanks to Eleanor Nairne, Exhibition Curator at the Barbican Centre Art Gallery, and her media team, for generously supplying the digital images of Krasner’s collages and granting permission for their use on the CRN website.
Additional Author Note
Invited by the Collage Research Network to contribute to their blog this was a thrilling opportunity to write about one of the artists who inspires my own work. Please click on the link below to read the review on the CRN's website.
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Words: © Carola Huttmann, 2019.
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