The Met puts a modern artist front and center (and there's some Jackson Pollock, too)
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Past Continuous features two artists: Jackson Pollock, with many of his instantly recognizable "drip" paintings, and Lee Krasner, an artist often overshadowed by Pollock, who was her husband.
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who → feature → Pollock
But in this major exhibition, Krasner is finally getting her due — and on her own terms.
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This gargantuan show is replete with Pollock's greatest hits, the giant, frozen dances of paint splashed on canvas that have become iconic.
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But this exhibition of more than 120 works (74 from Krasner, and 48 from Pollock) reveals Krasner as an Abstract Expressionist titan, too.
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One of the first works that catches your eye is a 1955 Krasner collage.
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"Collage was very catalytic for her at these crucial moments in her life," said Brinda Kumar, one of the two Met curators who put together this exhibition.
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"She was literally sometimes tearing up older bodies of work to create a new chapter."
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And right in the middle is a cutout whose shape evokes the head of a bald eagle — and that's the name that Krasner gave to this collage.
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Pollock's rejects were the source material for Bald Eagle, according to Kumar.
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"Krasner has very intentionally and deliberately cut up discarded Pollock works from this era in the 1950s, where you can see his distinctive drip still evident," she said.
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When you put Krasner's collages next to Pollock's drip paintings, we see something new in the juxtaposition, said another Met curator, David Breslin.
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"But that doesn't mean that the individual parts forgo their histories or their pasts," Breslin said.
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"We see that almost as a metaphor for couples in relationships as well.
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You form a unit, yet you also have all the things in your head, in your mind, in your heart that are your own, that don't change.
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And sure enough, just past these collages, a visitor will see one of Pollock's classic drip paintings — 1952's Convergence, with neon orange and electric yellow so bright and bold that they foreshadow 1980s subway graffiti.
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The curators have put Convergence on a freestanding wall near windows, with daylight shining through — evoking the energy of a contemporary gallery.
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The unspoken challenge of this show is to invite comparisons between wife-and-husband artists.
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In popular imagination, Pollock is often the troubled genius and hero, and Krasner is sidelined as a helpmate.
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She knew what people thought — but she didn't care.
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In a 1978 interview on a television program called Inside New York's Art World, the interviewer asked Krasner what she was doing while Pollock was becoming so famous.
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"I was working all the time," Krasner replied.
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"I doubt our relationship could have existed at all if I weren't working.
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In terms of what other people think, I can't do anything about that.
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You know, that's not my preoccupation anyway.
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As long as I was able to work, I went about my business.
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"
That's true, but Krasner was also very savvy about her market value as a female artist, said curator Brinda Kumar.
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To that end, she made certain calculations.
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They made their home in Springs, N.Y., a small fishing community on the far side of Long Island — a location Krasner chose specifically to get Pollock away from the business and booze of Manhattan.
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Pollock used a barn on the property to work on his enormous canvases, while Krasner painted first in the kitchen and then in a small, upstairs bedroom.
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Charting her own course
Lee Krasner was all about reinvention — both artistic and personal.
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Born Lena Krassner in Brooklyn, she was the child of Orthodox Jewish parents who came from a shtetl in what is now Ukraine.
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Nobody in her family knew anything about art.
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She gave herself a series of new names: first Lenore, then Lee Krasner.
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She sculpted a new life as a young, bold artist.
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And she became a quintessential networker who knew everybody in New York's art scene.
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Journalist Mary Gabriel has written extensively about Krasner, including in her 2018 book Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art.
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Gabriel says that unlike her husband, Krasner kept reinventing her style.
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"Krasner was so fascinating because she changed, not even by the decade.
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Every few years, she tries something new," Gabriel said.
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…and 14 more, not listed.
The Aporia
