Let’s Talk About Lee Krasner (and Jackson Pollock)

Mary Gabriel (0:01)

Before anyone even thought there was an abstract art movement in the United States, before that was even a possibility, she was among a group of maybe 10 people. All of them we know now, de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, those kind of people, Stuart Davis, who were hanging around with each other.

Ben Davis (0:21)

I'm Ben Davis, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

One of the major museum events of the fall is called Krasner and Pollock, Past Continuous, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It brings together 120 artworks by two of the titans of 20th century American painting, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. The two famously were a couple, and this show claims to be the first to look at their artworks specifically together as a dialogue. Jackson Pollock was and is known as the indispensable abstract expressionist. His expansive style of drip painting made by throwing paint across a canvas on the ground, caught the media and the public's imagination in the early 1950s. The sensation around these paintings remade US art.

For many years, Krasner's reputation was in his shadow. Pollock died tragically in a car crash in 1956 Krasner lived on until 1984, and the Met Show illustrates how she continued to experiment. These days, museums are featuring Krasner's inventive and varied paintings as much as Pollock's. A rebalancing, this show seems bound to continue. The title of the show even comes from a collage painting by Krasner from the 1970s. Having just returned from the exhibition, I was inspired to talk specifically about Lee Krasner, who she was, where she came from, and what makes her art unique and lasting. So I reached out to the art historian, Mary Gabriel, author of the very engaging 2018 bestseller, Ninth Street Women, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler, Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art. She joins me today.

Mary Gabriel, thank you for joining me on The Art Angle.

Mary Gabriel (2:09)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here.

Ben Davis (2:13)

Where are you calling me from?

Mary Gabriel (2:14)

I'm in Ireland. I'm on the west coast of Ireland.

Ben Davis (2:17)

Phenomenal. Well, we're crossing time zones for this one.

I have right here my review copy of Ninth Street Women, which begins actually with the story of Lee Krasner. It's the very first part of the story. The first chapter is called Lena Lenore Lee. Actually, why did you begin this book about the women of abstract expressionism with her?

Mary Gabriel (2:46)

Because it all starts with Lee. In fact, one of her friends in Long Island at the end of the life set at the beginning there was Lee. That's really the case. The book is structured so that I'm talking about five artists and Lee was the elder, the elder states person of the art movement.

Born in 1908, right? 1908, right. At the beginning, before anyone even thought there was an abstract art movement in the United States, before that was even a possibility, she was among a group of maybe 10 people, all of them we know now, de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, those kind of people, Stuart Davis, who were hanging around with each other and basically just there as sounding boards to each other, offering moral support in an absolute void because there was no one else paying attention to them, there was no one helping them, there was no one supporting them financially, there was just the desire to do something on a canvas that nobody had done before. So they were talking to each other.

Ben Davis (3:48)

Yeah, it was a pretty rarefied priesthood and she was the one woman in that order, I guess, or that sect.

Mary Gabriel (3:57)

Yeah, there were others, you know, I know that, I mean, that's really the way it's come down and it is true to a great extent, but there were others like Mercedes Matter was right in there too, but you know, kind of in the commitment to art level, Lee was in it heart and soul, you know, as much as these guys were, you know, the big guys of the movement.

Ben Davis (4:20)

And it was pretty marginal thing to be an artist in general, even more marginal to be a woman practicing art. What was Lee Krasner's origin story?

Mary Gabriel (4:30)

That's what's so amazing too, I mean, if, you know, there was an egg and out of it popped, you know, Lee Krasner, and she says herself, I created myself.

There was nothing in her family background that would have indicated, you know, the Krasner line was going to produce a great artist. She had no encouragement. She said she didn't even know when she was a kid what the word art meant, but by the time she was 13, she was already committed to it. I mean, her first, I guess in those days, people had to say when they went to high school, I want to follow a certain path. And her path was this thing called art. And from the age of 13 until she died in 1983 or 1984, that was her life. And so yeah, she had absolutely no training, no incentive beyond this bizarre desire to create.