Lee Krasner

by Gail Levin

  This exchange must have taken place in 1963, when Newman first presented his synagogue model in the exhibition “Recent American Synagogue Architecture.” Apparently he drew upon Jewish mysticism and baseball for his design—in the synagogue the men sat together in a dugout. For the traditional raised platform (bimah), Newman substituted a raised pitcher’s mound in the center of the room. “The synagogue is more than just a House of Prayer,” Newman explained. “It is a place, Makom, where each man can be called up to stand before the Torah to read his portion…. Here in this synagogue, each man sits, private and secluded in the dugouts, waiting to be called, not to ascend a stage, but to go up on the mound where…he can experience a total sense of his own personality before the Torah and His Name.”100

  While Krasner might have found the baseball metaphor acceptable, Newman’s focus on the men’s role in the synagogue was just the kind of thinking that had alienated Krasner in the first place. She had enthused instead over Mr. Walrath, her elementary school teacher, who allowed the boys and girls to play baseball together. Krasner always wanted to be “a player.”

  Around this time, Krasner met the art critic Barbara Rose, who recalled that the critic and dealer John Bernard Myers and his partner, the theater director Herbert Machiz, brought Lee over to meet her. Rose, then still in her twenties, remembered how Krasner adored her young daughter Rachel and made paper bag puppets for her. The two women began to meet each other over lunch. Rose recalled that Krasner was then “very isolated,” very “Depression-oriented,” and often served her leftovers.101 The two enjoyed sharing gossip, and an enduring friendship was forged. Rose admired Krasner’s work and had seen her shows at the Howard Wise Gallery. She heard Krasner’s bitter and colorful stories about the men who ran the art world, and before long, she began to write about Krasner, including her in a book, American Art Since 1900, and in such popular publications as Vogue and New York magazine, raising Krasner’s public profile and eventually winning her trust for larger projects.102

  During the summer of 1964, Terence Netter, a handsome Jesuit priest then in his thirties, arrived in East Hampton with his teacher Alex Russo and some younger students to study painting. They were part of a master’s in fine arts program at the Corcoran. The group made studio visits to John Little, Conrad Marca-Relli, and then Lee Krasner. She took them into her house, where The Eye Is the First Circle, nearly sixteen feet wide, was hanging in the large open dining room. Netter recalls that he looked at it and said to her, “That’s your painting. What does it make you feel?” “It scares the shit out of me,” she replied. Netter was enchanted and responded, “I like you. Can we have dinner tonight?” Krasner accepted. It was “friendship at first sight,”103 the beginning of a strong bond that would endure through major changes in his life and until the end of hers.

  Krasner found Netter fascinating. His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic, and he had put away his desires to become an artist at the age of eighteen to join the priesthood. He was sent to study theology in Austria and France, where he became fluent in German and French. Krasner, who had already found Catholicism of interest in her conversations with Alfonso Ossorio, found that Netter understood the spiritual side of creativity. For him, Krasner “had a very fine mind” and was “absolutely authentic.”104 He explained, “Lee was almost like a nun—so single-minded and obsessed with the art world that she really didn’t live in this world…. I’m certain Lee believed in God, but she wasn’t someone who thinks a ‘religious’ painting is one which has religious imagery. Rather, she was interested in the whole notion of art as a sublime statement—Man trying to get beyond this world to reach some transcendental reality.”105

  Photographic Insert II

  Krasner submitted this work from the previous summer to the committee at the National Academy of Design in order to be allowed to work from life models instead of casts. She was promoted in January 1929. CR 3 Self-portrait, 1928, the Jewish Museum, New York.

  In this self-portrait, Krasner depicted herself in half-light, posing in the Brooklyn basement where she lived. Her friend, Eda Mirsky, acquired the painting and later presented it to t he Metropolitan Museum of Art. CR 1 Self-portrait, c. 1929, oil on canvas, 30½ x 32½ in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Eda Mirsky Mann, 1988.

  From 213 West Fourteenth Street, a building that offered access to the roof, Krasner briefly painted in a realist style close to that of Edward Hopper, who, two years earlier, painted City Roofs, depicting a similar view from his own roof. CR 17 Fourteenth Street, 1934, oil on canvas, 24¾ x 21¾ in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Krasner admitted that some of her early paintings had “a slight touch of Surrealism.” Here she has already discovered the work of Joan Miró. CR 24 Gansevoort II, 1935, 25 x 27 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Krasner’s aim is intentionally erotic, signaled by the Cézannesque still life—two ripe oranges in the foreground evoke the nude’s round breasts and the broken pottery, like the broken eggs in Greuze’s still life, the woman’s lost virginity. CR 32 Bathroom Door, 1935, oil on linen, 20 x 22 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Her flat ground, as well as the placement and shapes of the separate objects tilted toward the picture plane, evoke Matisse’s Gourds of 1916, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art the same year she painted this homage. CR 33 Untitled (Still Life), 1935, oil on canvas, 20 x 28 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Krasner borrowed the motif of eyes from examples of fantastic art by Grandville and Redon, both featured in the MoMA exhibition “Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism” that opened in 1936. CR 31 Untitled (Surrealist Composition), c. 1936–38, mixed media on blue paper, 12 x 9 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Working from a still-life setup at the Hofmann school, Krasner allowed the objects to dissolve into the surrounding space, creating an abstract composition animated by vibrations of colored shapes pushing and pulling against one another. CR 39 Untitled (Still Life), 1938, oil on paper, 19 x 25 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Mondrian’s geometric abstractions appealed to Krasner, who sometimes worked in a similar palette limited to the primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—plus black and white. CR 95 Red, White, Blue, Yellow, Black, 1939, oil on paper with collage, 25 x 191/8 in. Thyssen-Bornemìsza Collections.

  With its jazz rhythm, emphasis on primary colors, and use of bits of colored paper to achieve an optical effect that vibrates, this seems unlikely to be related to anything but Mondrian’s work. CR 97 Mosaic Collage, c. 1942, paper collage on paper, 18 x 19½ in. Private collection. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Forms were beginning to emerge from Krasner’s thick gray foundation that had previously threatened to absorb all her imagery as she sought to escape cubism. Pollock, Miró, or cave paintings influenced this primitive figure. CR 202 Image Surfacing, c. 1945, oil on linen, 27 x 21½ in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  The head of a rooster suggests the sexual metaphor of the cock who would attack other roosters where his hens were nesting. Igor had returned, hoping to reclaim Krasner, but with this work, she declared that she had moved on. CR 180 Igor, 1943, 18 x 247/8 in. Private collection.

  Inspired by Pollock, Krasner now worked more from instinct than she had before. She also tried to be more at one with nature and developed her own all-over patterns of strokes with her palette knife and brush handle. CR 208 Untitled, 1946, oil on linen, 27¾ x 30¼ in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  One of Krasner’s “Little Image” paintings, which she said she produced horizontally and represented t
he only instances where she dripped paint. CR 212 Abstract No. 2, 1946–48, oil on canvas, 20½ x 23¼ in. IVAM, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Generalitat, Valencia, Spain.

  Krasner’s originality led her to improvise with shells, pebbles, broken glass, keys, coins, and bits of costume jewelry. For the table’s frames, Krasner used an old iron wagon wheel. CR 218 Mosaic Table, 1947, mosaic and mixed media on wood, 46 in. diameter. Courtesy of Jason McCoy, Inc.

  This is one of her largest “Little Image” series. It features dripped enamel paint, used by Pollock, who was inspired by the workshop of Siqueiros. CR 236 Continuum, 1947–49, oil and enamel on canvas, 53 x 42 in. Private collection.

  This is one of the few surviving works from Krasner’s first solo show, held the same year at Betty Parson’s gallery. The vibrating geometric shapes recall her admiration of Mondrian’s work and her association with American Abstract Artists. CR 252 Number 2, 1951, oil on canvas, 92½ x 132 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  In her show at the Stable Gallery, this and other dynamic collages won Krasner praise. CR 284 Burning Candles, 1955, oil, paper, cloth, and canvas collage on linen, 58 x 39 in. Collection of Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase; gift of Roy R. Neuberger.

  Krasner, Pollock, and others considered this painting “scary.” It remained on her easel when she left for Europe in 1956, and she later acknowledged its figurative content. CR 302 Prophecy, 1956, oil on cotton duck, 58½ x 34 in. Private collection.

  This painting, which recalls Matisse’s Bathers by a River of 1909–1910, may refer to Pollock’s earlier canvas, Two, of 1945. The third figure inserted between the male and female may refer to Ruth Kligman, who had intervened and threatened to split up Pollock and Krasner’s relationship. CR 305 Three in Two, 1956, oil on canvas, 75 x 58 in. Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. MacDonnell. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  The title Birth echoes that of Pollock’s painting, which Krasner admired in the January 1942 show at McMillan Gallery, where she too participated. Her return to this theme could suggest either her rebirth after Pollock’s death or her awareness that he had longed to have a child. CR 304 Birth, 1956, oil on canvas, 82½ x 48 in. Collection of Barbara B. Millhouse.

  Krasner recalled that “tears were literally pouring down” when she painted these bright colors and biomorphic forms. They evoke a figure in a garden, an activity that she shared with Pollock after they first moved to Springs. CR 311 Listen, 1957, oil on cotton duck, 63¼ x 58½ in. Private collection. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  To name her picture, Krasner drew upon the opening lines of Emerson’s “Circles,” which had impressed her years before and appealed to her appreciation of nature and patterns. She had focused on disembodied eyes as early as the 1930s, under the influence of Surrealism. CR 350 The Eye Is the First Circle, 1960, oil on canvas, 92¾ x 1917/8 in. Private collection. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  The Springs pays homage to the hamlet in East Hampton where Krasner and Pollock made their home in 1945. The all-over pattern suggests reference to local flora and to Pollock’s 1946 series, “Sounds in the Grass.” CR 401 The Springs, 1964, oil on canvas, 431/8 x 661/8 in. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay.

  Krasner began to warm up the canvases of her umber series by adding warm reddish tones. These are among her most gestural paintings. CR 357 Double Helix, 1961, oil on canvas, 70½ x 62½ in. Private collection.

  Among the colorful biomorphic shapes repeated across the wide canvas, it is possible to see what could be a bird form, however abstract, on the left side of the painting, which appears to allude to her difficulty in telling right from left. CR 431 Right Bird Left, 1965, oil on canvas, 70 x 135 in. Collection of Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana, gift of David T. Owsley.

  Krasner named this painting Courtship, which was most likely an allusion to David Gibbs, whom one of her friends called “a charming cad.” CR 438 Courtship, 1966, oil on canvas, 51 x 71 in. Private collection.

  This title recalls a myth: primordial Earth gave virgin birth to Sky (Uranos), who promptly cohabited with his mother to produce offspring called Titans. When Sky blocked his mother, Gaea, from giving birth to monsters, she conspired with their son, Kronos, who castrated his father. The painting’s agitated biomorphic forms in bright magenta suggested the violence of the title. CR 440 Gaea, 1966, oil on canvas, 69 x 120 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY and © 2010 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation), Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New York. Kay Sage Tanguy Fund.

  Krasner commented, “I can remember walking across vacant lots on my way to school and my enchantment at seeing and picking clover, buttercups, and dandelions. I’m sure that this memory among other things is in Pollination…” CR 449 Pollination, 1968, oil on canvas, 81¼ x 83 in. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated.

  The title, which refers to embryonic development that reproduces the ancestral features of the species, suggests Krasner’s deep engagement with nature, which remained of utmost importance to her throughout her life. The intense colors and crisp edges recall Matisse’s late work. CR 540 Palingenesis, 1971, oil on canvas, 82 x 134 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  This work contains a number of rejected figurative drawings from her time at the Hofmann School. The title of the series reflects her fascination with time and the verb “to see” here she chose “Were you seeing?” CR 565 Imperfect Indicative, 1976, collage on canvas, 78 x 72 in. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Photograph courtesy of the Robert Miller Gallery.

  Lee Krasner with Bill Lieberman at the 1967 retrospective of Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Visible from left to right are Pollock’s Pasiphae (c. 1943), The She-Wolf (1943), and Guardians of the Secret (1943). Photograph by Steven Paley.

  Mark Patiky is the only person to photograph Krasner while she painted. Patiky watched as she became very focused, standing back some fifteen feet with her arms folded, then running up and making “these slashing strokes,” a very active process, applied to unstretched canvas tacked to the wall. She is painting Portrait in Green (CR434), 1989.

  Here, Krasner in front of her latest painting, which she had made for “Poets and Artists,” an invitational show of forty-two artist-poet collaborations scheduled for Guild Hall that July. Krasner had teamed up with poet Howard Moss, whom she knew well through their mutual friend, Edward Albee. Lee Krasner standing in front of Morning Glory, 1982, oil on canvas, 84 x 60 in. Photograph by Ann Chwatsky.

  SIXTEEN

  Recognition, 1965–69

  Lee Krasner with her sister-in-law, Arloie McCoy; her nephew Jason McCoy; her great-nephew, Christopher Stewart; and his mother, Krasner’s niece Rena Glickman Stewart (later Rusty Kanokogi), 1965, Springs. She invited her visitors into the barn studio to see new work and asked ten-year-old Chris what he would call her latest painting. He burst out, “Combat,” and she accepted the name at once.

  KRASNER MUST HAVE BEEN SURPRISED WHEN BARNETT NEW-MAN took up her cause in September 1965. He objected to a large exhibition called “New York School, First Generation: Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s,” which had been organized for the Los Angeles County Museum by its modern art curator, Maurice Tuchman, whom many came to dislike because of his repeated failure to include women or minority artists in the shows he organized.1 Newman criticized both the use of the term “New York School” and the inclusion of Clyfford Still and Ad Reinhardt in the show. Newman argued that both men were “on record more than once as being anti–New York school…. If this show truly represents the New York school, it is surprising to find them in and to find artists missing such as [James] Brooks, [Theodoros] Stamos, [Giorgio] Cavallon, [Conrad] Marca-Relli, [Jack] Tworkov, [Alfonso]
Ossorio, [Esteban] Vicente, [Fritz] Glarner, [Ludwig] Sander, etc. and the ladies Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Hedda Sterne. All were active in New York during those important years.”2 Of course, Krasner would have taken exception to Newman’s categorization of “the ladies” as a separate group.

  As for “New York school,” Newman declared, “This was never a movement in the conventional sense of a ‘style,’ but a collection of individual voices…. The only common ground we all had is in the creation of a new, free, plastic language.”3 For her part, Krasner insisted on individuality: “My painting is so autobiographical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it.”4 Along the same lines, she penned in 1965 a dismissal of “problems in aesthetic, having only to do with the outer man. But the painting I have in mind, painting in which inner & outer are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.”5