Barbican, London
Dynamic paintings that fizz and fascinate rescue the endlessly surprising artist from her husband Jackson Pollock’s shadow in this thrilling major retrospective
The bodies bulking their way out of the confines of the painting are either too big for the work, or we are too close. Buttocks, breasts, big feet. Something pendulous, like a testicle, a black smear of pubic hair, maybe an eye. It is hard to tell. Lee Krasner’s 1956 Prophesy was painted the year her relationship to Jackson Pollock was breaking down, and she said that it disturbed her. Pollock encouraged her to keep going. She left the painting on her easel when she took a trip to France, alone. While she was away Pollock wrapped the car he was driving around a tree, killing both himself and one of his two female passengers.
Does it always have to be about Pollock? That he overshadowed Krasner, both in life and death, is inescapable. When Krasner met Pollock in 1941, she was already developing a significant career as a painter. Piet Mondrian praised her rhythm – and they went dancing together. As a drawing student of Hans Hofmann, he had said her work was “so good you would not know it was done by a woman”. The times were against Krasner and other female artists.
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