Lee Krasner

Born 1908 in Brookly (NY) and she died in 1984 in New York. Lee Krasner (born Lena but preferred to be called Lenore and later Lee) is known as the wife of Action Painter Jackson Pollock. This marriage has stood in the way of a true study of her work, always being associated with the ouvre that is Pollock. What is interesting is that when a retrospective study of Pollock is being made Lee Krasner only appears as 'His wife'. As in the pictures of Hans Numuth, she is seen as the mystery woman, just being there for her husband. She could be anybody, she is depersonalized to being a mere wife to the Pollock legend.

What is important in making a true study of her work is to consider the work of both of them. Since his death in 1956, Krasner and her painting has been deleted from the biography of Pollock. She contributes to the legend only confirming that he was married.

She studied at the Womens Art School at the Cooper Union, in New York. She studied under the eye of Hans Hoffman, who taught the principle of Cubism, this had a last effect on Krasner directing her work through Neo-Cubism. Her working method of cutting up her own drawings and paintings to make collages has resulted in few works surviving. Her critical eye was key to the development of Pollocks own work.

Like a lot of female artists working in this era, Krasner's work has been dubbed as being based on her femininity, and iconographically of the female genitals. Although this is possible, and the images can be interpreted in this way, it is a new reading, and possibly subconciously this comes across it is not the driving element in her work.

She enjoys mark making and colour, and althoug these are iconographically female in their execution, her training with Hans Hoffman and the association with the Abstract Expressionists, suggests that her primary concern was with painting and its technicalities. This does not mean that we cannot read into her work, but we have to be objective.

In their gravestone monuments, Jackson Pollock gets the big stone, and Lee Krasner gets the small stone, sybolic of their lives, and current debate, only through acurate study of the two simultaneously can this error be corrected.

We will never know wether the legend of Pollock, established before his death, would have strengthened had he not died, and how this would have affected Krasners work.