Lee Krasner: Artistic Trailblazer

Was Lee Krasner the woman who made modern art?

Last month, we released a new six-part podcast series (plus two bonus episodes!), Death of an Artist (S2): Krasner and Pollock, that centres the life and work of Lee Krasner (1908–1984). Listen now!

Krasner was a trailblazer in every sense of the word. As an artist she was commonly associated with those working in Downtown New York City, known as the Abstract Expressionists, who painted colossal canvases infused with swathes of movement. She was also the mastermind behind the career of her husband, Jackson Pollock, whose work she tirelessly promoted, championed, and, to an extent, helped made possible. She secured his legacy in one of the greatest art-market-moves of the century (episode 6!).

But, as a working class girl from Brooklyn, life wasn’t always easy. Krasner had to defy everything to become one of the greatest painters – and most influential people – in modern American history.

Just as she told Cindy Nemser in 1975, “We broke the ground.”

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We begin the series with Pollock’s death, on 11 August 1956. Krasner was visiting Paris for the first time (she’d spent her 20s marvelling at the French Modernists after the opening of MoMA in 1929). Pollock was near their home in Springs, Long Island, and died in a fatal car crash, along with Edith Metzger, a friend of Ruth Kligman (with whom he was romantically involved). Kligman survived.

Krasner immediately returned to the US to put everything in place. She was tasked with organising the funeral, but they only had $200 in the bank. How was she going to survive?

In this series, we go back to her beginnings; we look at what it meant to be an artist at the onset of the Great Depression and in the aftermath of the Second World War; and how a government scheme for artists, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, became a lifeline for Krasner and her peers. We explore how she and Pollock met, and formed one of the greatest artistic partnerships of the 20th century; and meet characters, such as Peggy Guggenheim and Clement Greenberg, who were some of the most influential dealers, critics and tastemakers of the era. We even delve into the Sullivanian psychotherapy cult that might have been Pollock’s “Kiss of Death” (episode 5).

We look at how Krasner’s world changed after Pollock’s death – and what happened to her art after she moved her studio into his famous drip-painted-filled barn by their home in Springs.

We understand how a phoenix [Krasner] could “rise from the ashes”, and be born again – artistically, emotionally, and psychologically – after a period of intense grief. As beautifully told by Eleanor Nairne, curator of Lee Krasner: Living Colour at the Barbican Art Gallery (2019):

“I was thinking about it just the other day. An artist friend of mine was talking about the idea of what it is to experience rock bottom. And how, in those moments of emotional or psychic collapse or unravelling, we could be feeling a sense of exhilaration. Because they're so often followed by some kind of reawakening or reconfiguring. Often there needs to be some degree of collapse before a phoenix can rise from the ashes…”

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Nairne's exhibition changed my life. I remember arriving a day before opening night, walking into the galleries, through a frenzy of journalists and TV crews, and being stunned by an array of paintings. But I hardly knew anything about this artist. Who was she? Why had I never seen any of her works before?

One of the first paintings to draw my eye was at the start of the show. It wasn’t an abstract, but her self portrait. She had started it when she was just 19. 

It’s of Krasner standing in front of a forest, wearing a paint-stained pinafore over a sky blue shirt, brushes in hand. The canvas she's painting on is off to one side, but facing away from us so we can’t see what’s on it. The main event is Krasner herself, staring right back out at us with a focussed, determined gaze, that stops you in your tracks.

This show inspired me to start The Great Women Artists Podcast. Eleanor is the very first episode speaking on Krasner. Her story made me realise that there would be so many others that needed to be told.

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Krasner was always trailblazing. Declaring she would be an artist from Elementary School, she became one of the most pioneering people in her field. But while she championed others indefatigably, she sadly never lived to see the extent of her own artistic achievements, that were mostly overlooked – until now. 

Listen to the series to hear her incredible story.

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