My in depth research about Lee Krasner began when I saw that there was an exhibit of her work at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. I must admit, even as an Art Historian I firstly connect her name to her husband Jackson Pollock. And for a feminist art historian such as myself this is very wrong. But it was also formed and sealed into my mind from my days at university where her name was always briefly introduced in connection to Jackson Pollock. When I realized my own biased mind, I wanted to immediately correct my self and research more into her life as an artists in order to properly form her into my visual mind maps of artists. But then I remembered that there must be plenty of women artists in the shadow of their famous husbands and how the history of art does not properly introduce them to its students. I realised that even though they expressed their artistic voices through their art, they still were not recognized as individuals with critical and individual voices. This propelled to me as my MA thesis was exploring the formation and voices of women text based artists.
‘I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent’. Lee Krasner
She was independent and let many things influence her style. She did not settle on one specific style but moved though her own inspirations and what felt right and just.
My favorite moment is her destruction of her previous work and rearrangement of the same pieces.
The story goes like this:
“Frustrated by her lukewarm reception and with Pollock’s aggressive drinking, in 1953, she grabbed the drawings that hung from the walls and ceiling of her studio—and started ripping them to shreds. “Walked in one day, hated it all, took it down, tore everything and threw it on the floor, and when I went back … it was seemingly a very destructive act. I don’t know why I did it, except I certainly did it.” After cannibalizing her creations, she started reassembling them into a series of collages made up of old drawings, rough shards of paintings and bits of old burlap sack. When these trophies of iconoclasm went on display at the Stable Gallery in 1955, the same reviewer who had bashed her “Little Images,” Stuart Preston, said “The eye is fenced in by the myriad scraps of paper, burlap and canvas swobbed [sic] with color that she pastes up so energetically. She is a good noisy colorist.” The destruction was the catalyst she needed to make her Frankensteinian pieces.”
These torn up and newly assembled collages I find very moving and as a triumph over all of her previous hard work, as a culmination of her own self and individuality where she finally sees it and acknowledges her self. As if there is a new voice forming there. In these collages you can sense the dynamic, force and strength. I feel them as very moving images because now I associate them with her voice.
“In an interview, Munro asked the artist about her revisionist tendencies. Krasner said: I believe in listening to cycles.”
This quote confirms to me that she was in tune with her self and her creativity. She understood that there are certain periods of life that are characterized by different things and they form us, as people and creative practitioners. Maybe these pieces can be seen as her culmination of all things influencing her creative life, including her influential partnership with Pollock.
I find it strange that even though she was a fascinating and terrific artist, and she tried to get her own voice and message across, she was still overshadowed by the great accomplishments of Pollock.
She is now gaining more recognition in the #MeeToo era, as she should be. Her artistic voice should be celebrated for its fluidity and energy which is seen across her body of work.