I’m always a little (well, more than a little) doubtful when someone is described as “better known as the wife of”, but the fact is that Lee Krasner was married to Jackson Pollock. It’s a sad fact that married female artists tend to be overshadowed by their spouses but, if you’re the other half of a major figure, maybe that’s inevitable. Pollock would probably overshadow anyone.
Having got that off my chest, let’s have a look at Lee Krasner in her own right. This is, the blurb announces, the first full-length account of her colourful life, going on the mention her “extrordinary story”. Let’s now bring that and my first paragraph together: “I was in on the formation of what all the history books now write about the abstract expressionists. I was in the WPA, part of the New York School, I knew Gorky, Hoffmann, de Kooning, Clement Greenberg before Jackson did and in fact I introduced him to them. But there was never any mention of me in the history books, like I was never there”, Krasner remarked rather acidly in 1973. Like I said, men obscure women and the kick-starters behind big figures sometimes get punted into the touchline of history.
So, how does this resurrect a forgotten – ignored, even – figure? Gail Levin is careful to document Krasner’s life in full and also to provide a proper critical appreciation of her work. The fact is she could, and should, have been one of the big names of Abstract Expressionism. It’s not so much that she wasn’t written into history as that she was actively written out of it. No-one puts Pollock in a corner.
Lee Krasner has for a long time been poorly served. She deserved better and she has it here.
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