When Lee Krasner Harnessed the Power of the Sun on Canvas

[Music] we once said that if anyone cared to understand her life they should look at her work because it's essentially a diary of what was happening this was a moment when Lee had to reckon with who she was post Pollock in painting this earth green series one imagines that Lee was excited and happy maybe listening to music maybe dancing around the room but in fact she herself was surprised at how they emerged and kinds of light quality that they had because she was so sad so grief-stricken that she really couldn't see through her tears while she painted it it's a true testimonial to Lee's strengths as a painter that she's able to rise above her personal traumas and use that on canvas and the result is something to behold [Music] in ninth street women the story I tell isn't the story of the wives of artists or women's auxilary beside the men who work in the abstract atrocious movement these weren't daughters of the revolution they were soldiers in his particular revolution and they worked with the men as equals I began imagining where I would start this book I thought I would started in 1941 because that's what Lee Krasner met Jackson Pollock and their relationship began but in researching Lee I realized that she was such a significant person before politic ever appeared on the scene one of the unfortunate of narratives about Lee that we've inherited is that she sacrificed her life her art and her career to promote Paula and it's as if she did that as a 1950s 1940s woman would have but Lee did it because she saw in Pollock something that was so alive something so new and she said that's it and so what she was protecting in devoting her life to protecting Jackson wasn't necessarily her husband she was protecting she was protecting the artist Jackson Pollock by 1955 Jackson was floundering in his work he was down to painting one painting a year he was drinking massively Lee was so frustrated with him with her life and to her it felt like a personal failure so by 1956 they were in a very difficult place he'd met a young woman and he started carrying out a blatant affair with her and Lee was absolutely mortified and so she went into New York and talked to Clem Greenberg and said what do you think I should do and he said you out of town go to Paris and so she did she went out dancing with John Graham Helen Frankenthal I was there there was a young group of expat artists there and she really came back to life and she wrote Jackson some really moving letters saying she wish he was there with her so just when she had reconciled how she could go back to that life she got a call the morning of August 12th Clem Greenberg called to say that Jackson had killed himself in a car accident post Pollock she went through a period of several works that were very angstrom as you can imagine it there were three figures on the canvas and they were tortured and they were very dark and kind of monstrous and after that we began a series that would be really it would be easy to think that they were a rebirth kind of post Pollock alley coming out and in some sense they probably were but actually it was a new source of inspiration that Lee had found we moved her studio out to Pollux barn she had been working previously in a very small room on the second floor of their house and she finally had the space she needed to express herself to spread her arms wide to grow her canvases as big as she wanted them to be and so with that kind of freedom we went wild in a series she called earth green what she created I think is so fascinating because she said it herself suddenly the images of women the breasts and vines and sort of fertile imagery appeared on campus something that had never appeared before and so these were the first paintings that's really reflect Lea crass nor the mature artists and it was exuberant and it was huge and it was dancing and it was wild and it was a shock to her as much as anyone else and when Lee was on a roll artistically she would kind of lock herself in her studio and her friends really never knew what she was up to but just that she was working and at the end of this series when she emerged from it and started showing people they were blown away in fact Clem Greenberg offered to give Lee a solo show after seeing this and it was the first time he had made that gesture toward her and the fact that he saw in these works something so tremendous that it warranted his show is a real testimonial to just how far she'd come in earth green Lee did a number of paintings in various sizes all sort of the same motifs Sun woman one is an 8 foot by 6 foot painting and it is as if Lee Krasner and harnessed the power of the Sun out in her studio and Springs she grabbed it and she threw it on canvas and it bounces back at the viewer and the expression there is one of absolute joy it's a contagious kind of feeling that you can feel as your eye travels the canvas you can feel these arms doing that dance you can see her brushstrokes yellow as a background color is very difficult to contain and Lee allows it to come through in a way that as I look at the painting I almost feel like she was feeling the light coming through the cracks of the burn it comes through the brushstrokes of the darker colors like shafts of light and it's a very interactive painting in that way which makes it so exciting it was one of the paintings she did around and in preparation for what's arguably her masterpiece and that was a work Lee did call the seasons and it's a 20-foot painting it's in the Whitney collection it's like a sheet of music where she brings the viewer along on this journey a journey of movement a journey of light a journey of dance a journey of her discovery of her own nature and of her role in nature John Russell the New York Times critic called it one of the most important American paintings of its era build Akoni who had a real competitive streak said that this was when he recognized that leah truly arrived at the time lee did her earth green series she had the show at martha jackson and then that was it people didn't buy and Leah's work people didn't buy women's work especially monumental works I would have to be someone with 20-foot walls so Lee didn't have any takers and so she went back to her studio and spring Sun continued to work and not until 1983 was she given the sort of recognition that she knew she deserved she became the first woman to get a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art it opened in Houston in 83 finally she saw her works beginning to end when the show opened at MoMA later that year the crowds lined up outside to get in Lee wasn't there because she had died that spring she was buried next to Jackson I think what we can learn from Lee is her courage and her vision she started at a time when there was not a way forward for a woman artist there was barely a way forward for a male artist in America at that time and for a woman there wasn't a pass at all especially for a working-class Jewish woman and so they saw something in herself recognized something in herself and went with it went and defied all of society's norms with no safety net whatsoever you know where she found her strength I don't know but it carried her through her [Music] you

Channel: Sotheby's

Views: 19,278

Keywords: sothebystv, sotheby's, art, auction, contemporary art, abstract expressionism, lee krasner, jackson pollock, mary gabriel, de kooning, krasner, earth green series, lee krasner retrospective

Id: w38lzDuasTc

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019