Arts & Entertainment

Left: Lee Krasner, 1957, a year after
the death of her husband, artist Jackson Pollock.

On the cover: Artist Lee Krasner, 1982, photographed
.
by Robert Mapplethorpe.

ly misogynist male circle of Abstrkt Expressionists.
Born Lena Krassner on Oct. 27, 1908, the sixth
of seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants
Joseph and Anna Krassner, the artist grew up in
Brooklyn, N.Y., where her parents ran a small fruit,
vegetable and fish stand.
A short-tempered mother and an aloof father set
the stage for an unhappy childhood and early rebel-
lion against the rigors of an Orthodox upbringing.
At age 13, Krasner announced to her parents
that she was through with structured religion. But
as the artist herself said, one is never wholly free of
the past. And in her art she returned to her Jewish
roots more than once.
A key., due to penetrating Krasner's life and art lies
in her relentless search for identity. Nothing makes this
more apparent than Krasner's overt efforts to change
her name: from her birth name Lena to Lenore to
Leah, and, finally, Lee Krasner, in which she dropped
the more Semitic double "ss" of her last name.
Though Krasner admitted she was religious as a
child and did not rebel against going to synagogue,
she found the patriarchal nature of Judaism and its
resulting attitude toward women extremely troubling.
For Krasner, being Jewish, female and Mrs. Jackson
Pollock presented obstacles she had to overcome.

The Search For

Identity

A Lee Krasner
retrospective meshes life and art.

,

FRAN HELLER

Special to the Jewish. News

T

o- many, she Was 'known as Mrs. JackSon
Pollock. But Lee Krasner, the only female
painter Of Abstract Expressionism's first
generation, was an accomplished artist in
her own right. A major traveling exhibition of her
work, the first retrospective since her death in 1984, is
at the Akron Art Museum in Ohio .through Aug. 27.
The exhibit features 60 paintings, collages and
drawings amassed from major private and public
collections worldwide.. The retrospective provides
ample testimony that Krasfier was not only an avatar
of her age but a precursor of postmodern art as well.
Arranged chronologically, this intellectually and aes-

Fran Heller writes about the arts from her home in

Cleveland.

Age

thetically challenging exhibit is a visceral and cerebral
tease. An artist's artist, Krasner's work represents an
ongoing dialogue with other artists whose styles she
incorporated to create something uniquely her own.
Some critics have dismissed her work as an amal-
gam of other voices. But to Barbara Tannenbaum,
chief curator of art and special exhibitions at the
Akron Art Museum, Krasner's methodology is the
very nature of the artistic process.

U

nderstanding Lee Krasner's art demands
some knowledge of her life. In one interview,
Krasner herself challenged her viewers with
the following statement: "My painting_is so autobio-
graphical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it."
The comment is the hallmark of the artist's complex
personality, a reflection of a rebellious and angry nature
rooted in a difficult childhood, and an adulthood as
the lone female artist trying to survive in an aggressive-

T

he Akron exhibit begins with a 1930 self-
portrait the 22-year-old Krasner painted as a
student. Though the artist quickly departed
from such a representational style, the painting, in
which Krasner has positioned herself outdoors sur-
rounded by lush green landscape, illuminates major
themes that would earmark future works.
In this early endeavor, Krasner presents herself as
part of nature. In later, more abstract pieces, the
"artist as self" becomes the embodiment of nature.
During the war years, Krasner found it difficult to
paint. One theory has it that when she formally met
Jackson Pollock in 1942 — they married in 1945
and she was devoted to him and his burgeoning
career — she was so bowled over by his presence and
artistic ability that it stunted her own creative powers.
More recently, art historians have suggested
another reason: What was happening to Jews in
Europe first came to light in 1942, and may have
contributed to her artist's block.
As exhibit curator and noted art historian Robert
Hobbs suggested in an earlier monograph on Krasner,
the identity of the "New York Jew" — the adventur-
ous, liberal intelligentsia of which Krasner was a part
— was severely challenged by the Holocaust.
"These artists had gone to great lengths to avoid
all orthodoxies, religious or political," he wrote.
"Modernism and new ideas and existential freedom
to choose became their religion. The Holocaust
forced them to confront the inherited identity they
zealously sought to avoid."
Image Surfacing, a 1945 oil by Krasner, in which
an abstracted six-pointed Star of David emerges
from the canvas, lends credence to the notion of her
subliminal reaction to the Holocaust.

