The Brooklyn Rail

In a fondly reconstructed conversation by John Bernard Myers, he recalls Lee Krasner noting:

I also read in this same dictionary two sentences which struck me as relevant to myself. The editors use quotations to illustrate word meanings and one is from a sermon by John Donne. ‘A Christian hath no solstice . . . where he may stand still and go no further.’ I of course, substituted the word ‘artist’ for ‘Christian’ and thought Donne was correct. But then there was another quote, this one from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘There is in every constitution a certain solstice,’ and I thought—that’s also me, I am my own solstice.¹

Kasmin has on view multiple manifestations of the artist’s mid-career solstices poised primarily in poles between Analytical Cubism-influenced tectonics and a more lyrical, Mattisean Baroque.

Hans Hofmann’s early impact on the student Krasner is one she readily acknowledged, an influence particularly evident in the two large paintings here that were exhibited in her pivotal show at Betty Parsons Gallery in the fall of 1951. In the larger, Number 2 (1951), is seen a complex of tectonic shifts between rectilinear forms in hues of dark and light orange, yellow, red, and blue, cast shallowly in a frieze-like canvas modulated by a preponderance of undersaturated light violet. White is liberally infused throughout, further imparting an overall sense of a worn, and yet, timeless fresco wall. Hofmann’s enduring “push-pull” dictum is evident in how the asymmetric, vertical architecture of the painting is punctuated by shallow intervals of primary and secondary hues. The overall effect is that of a Byzantine mosaic resurrected as a reimagined modernist grid.

Hanging next to this is the similarly vertically constructed Number 3 (Untitled) (1951), except the former painting’s rectilinear forms are subsumed and softened into biomorphic lozenges in browns and blues, evoking an overall impression of the tendency toward elongated form, as for instance, in tribal artifacts originating in New Guinea. At the time, some perceived Krasner’s selection of such works for the Parsons show as a retrenchment toward more “classical” form of geometric abstraction relative to her energetically Baroque and curvilinear compositions, including Parsons herself, who seemed to originally have settled on contemporaneous paintings done in the latter style as seen here in two examples, Promenade and Gothic Frieze (both circa 1950). It’s natural to speculate on Krasner’s ultimate decision not to show such works. One is struck by their compositional relation to early Jackson Pollock works such as Peggy Guggenheim’s commissioned Mural (1943) and his similarly titled Gothic (1944). There’s an implication that it may have been a strategic move by Krasner to clearly differentiate her work from her husband’s, at a point in time when his reputation largely eclipsed hers. However, such formal range shows her life-long tendency to restlessly elide the larger issue of style versus the more pressing investigation of painting as an ongoing quest for a substantial presence. As she expressed in a later interview, “Painting … transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.”

A selection of works made prior to these circumstances, in particular the curious (since the trend for her New York School cohort was to present big) “Little Images,” dating to 1948–49, is on display as well. In a clarifying point found in the show catalogue, Adam Weinberg alludes to the common assumption of the artist being “relegated” to a relatively small upstairs room, as opposed to Pollock’s studio in the larger barn, at their home in Springs. Yet he notes that, “While this room was diminutive … it was large enough [that] Pollock was able to produce his relatively large-scale 1946 painting The Key measuring 59 by 82 inches in this room,” and that Krasner’s “decision to paint little paintings was perhaps a choice rather than a limitation.”²

These works bring to mind the scriptive style of her good friend Bradley Walker Tomlin as well as artists associated with Marian Willard Johnson’s groundbreaking gallery, such as Richard Pousette-Dart and Mark Tobey, who had exhibitions there around the same time (respectively 1943 and 1944) that Krasner worked on this series. Krasner mentioned in interviews that the form these works took may also have been influenced by her childhood training copying Hebraic texts. There is an explosive energy in these paintings, as their writhing, cursive brushstrokes are barely held in check by both implicit and explicit overall grids, as in the densely inscribed Untitled, 1949, the largest “Little Painting” on display here. Another, smaller work—also named Untitled (1949)—includes a patchwork of solid primary colors and blacks crowding the calligraphic passages. It recalls not only the influence of Hofmann but also Piet Mondrian, who by that time was living in New York and had previously exhibited with Krasner (in 1941) under the auspices of the American Abstract Artists where they were both members. In these works she eschewed the abstract anthropomorphism of Picasso and Matisse’s paintings (which early dominated the loose association of what came to be known as the New York School) for micro-cryptic flourishes that speak of human presence in an attenuated fashion yet perhaps to a more intimate degree.

In a fascinating grouping of three later works, Krasner can be seen swinging back to her more austere, tectonic pole. From 1950–53, she composed rectilinear forms in stoic contrast to the sinewy personages and curvilinear dynamics that Parsons would have preferred for the artist’s 1951 show. One can imagine how these might have seemed relatively tame and reticent at the time in relation to the gestural calisthenics of her painterly cohort; yet seen in the light of this survey the restraint of their color and classical apportionment feels downright contemporary in their eerie lightness of being. These remain gutsy paintings in their forthright abstract principles, a doubling down of non-objective presence that one imagines was, ironically, practically transparent to her generation of artists that so implicitly held to its tenets.

In her later career, Krasner’s inclination toward the Matissean arc ultimately won out over her rectilinear tropism, a tendency indicated by the painting Blue and Black (1953), the last painting in the catalogue, but one not included in the show. The architecture of its composition is dominated by an abstract decorative “screen” in the right foreground, which gives way to a compelling deeper space where a similar design is reiterated in smaller scale to the left. These elements are subtly silhouetted in a deep blue and black palette, heightening the flatness of the recessional, gestural arabesques. It’s a tour-de-force instantiation of stolidity and evanescence, intimating the seemingly effortless synthesis of Cubist architecture with the swooping lyricism that would come to characterize Krasner’s mature work.

1. “Naming Pictures, Conversations with Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum (23, no. 3): November 1984, https://www.artforum.com/features/naming-pictures-conversations-between-lee-krasner-and-john-bernard-myers-207632/.
2. Weinberg, Adam, “Krasner at the Crossroads,” in Lee Krasner: The Edge of Color, exhibition catalogue (New York: Kasmin Gallery, 2024), 8.