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Overview
Lee Krasner is best known as the artist-wife of Jackson Pollock, the renowned abstract expressionist painter. Yet in this riveting biography, the first full-length account of her life, distinguished art historian Gail Levin shows that Lee Krasner was a significant artist who deserves her place in the twentieth century's cultural lexicon and artistic pantheon.
During the Great Depression, Krasner supported herself painting murals for the WPA, was called a Trotskyite for speaking out at the Artists Union, and got arrested for demonstrating on behalf of workers' rights. Her life changed in 1945 when she began her troubled marriage with Jackson Pollock. In Lee Krasner, Levin examines how this strong woman struggled to meet the challenges of Pollock's alcoholism and infidelity, all while encouraging his art.
Lee Krasner is a dynamic, compelling, and moving portrait of a brilliant woman artist whose dramatic life is part of the cultural fabric of America.
Synopsis
Lee Krasner is best known as the artist-wife of Jackson Pollock, the renowned abstract expressionist painter. Yet in this riveting biography, the first full-length account of her colorful life, Krasner emerges as a significant artist who deserves her place in the twentieth century's cultural lexicon.
In this captivating book, art historian Gail Levin probes Krasner's relationship with Pollock, examining how this strong woman struggled to meet the challenges of their poverty, as well as her husband's alcoholism and extramarital affair, all the while encouraging his art. Drawing on new sources and numerous personal interviews—including with Krasner herself—Levin has written a dynamic and moving portrait of a brilliant woman, a most welcome work that recovers Krasner's voice and allows us to understand how her life intersected with and informed her art.
Editorials
New York Post (Required Reading)
“Art historian Levin befriended Krasner, starting when she was a grad student who interviewed the artist, and she gives Krasner a well-deserved full-fledged bio.”Booklist (starred review)
“Levin...is now the first to tell Krasner’s captivating story, writing with equal insight into her teperament, experiences, and art....A consummate scholar, marvelously lucid writer, and gracefully responsible biographer, Levin redresses glaring omissions in the history of abstract art in this imperative portrait of a formidable artist.”Jed Perl
Krasner struck up a friendship with Levin when the author was still a student, and one feels that Levin liked her and still likes her, which is not always true by the time somebody has finished writing a biography.—The New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
For far too long, the artist Lee Krasner's reputation has been overshadowed by that of her renowned husband, artist Jackson Pollock. This lively, well-researched biography by Levin (Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography) finally corrects this injustice. Writing with a novelist's flair for characterization and scene-setting, the author traces Krasner's life through the miseries of the Great Depression to the world of art and leftist politics of New York in the ‘30s and ‘40s. While Krasner's artistic genius was temporarily blunted by her marriage, Levin proves she was a phenomenal artist in her own right who was exhausted by having to manage Pollock's personal and artistic life. An artist with a deeply prophetic and eerie style, Krasner's final years with Pollock were awful; mercifully, her "instinct for self-preservation emerged out of the chaos of self-destructive binges," and Krasner set up a separate artistic studio and focused her energies on her own work. This biography crackles with juicy behind-the-scenes stories of America's rarefied mid-century art world, showcasing the genius of the preternaturally gifted Krasner. (Mar.)Erica Jong
"Gail Levin’s biography of Lee Krasner beautifully evokes a period in American art that laid the groundwork for the women artists of today. Lee... contributed wonderful work but also encouraged a whole new generation of artists. She grew into true generativity. Bless her and her biographer!"Helen A. Harrison
"Rigorous research, deep knowledge of art and cultural history, penetrating analysis and a flair for storytelling bring to life a fully formed Lee Krasner. Those who never knew her will wish they had, and those who did will be amazed."The Oprah Magazine O
“Art historian Gail Levin’s Lee Krasner is a quintuple whammy of a biography—the story of a major artist; a description of a notorious marriage; an education in 20th-century art; a gossipy immersion into Bohemian New York; and a settling of scores against those who practiced gender bias.”East Hampton Star
"Thorough.... A biography worth celebrating."Jewish Daily Forward
"Written with unassuming grace. This rigorously researched, straightforward account attempts to set the record straight about Krasner....the artist could not have found a more gifted biographer to retell her story and argue her case.... [a] fascinating and absorbing biography."Cleveland Plain Dealer
"[B]iographer Gail Levin sets the record straight: Krasner was a fierce, fascinating and gifted artist... Lee Krasner adds more luster, meticulously tracing the artist’s life."Minneapolis Star Tribune
Gail Levin’s stunning new biography finally proves Krasner’s relationship with Jackson Pollock was only a sliver of an enormously colorful life.... Levin’s biography ensures that Lee Krasner will never again be known merely as "Mrs. Jackson Pollock.Chicago Sun-Times
"It’s about time someone set the record straight about artist Lee Krasner.... Absorbing.... Succinct... Invaluable.... A compelling biography that is as important an addition to the library of American art as any book on Pollock."Vanity Fair
"For the love of art....Art historian Gail Levin frames the extremely colorful life of Lee Krasner, major ass-kicking Abstract Expressionist and formidable genius in her own right, better known for boosting the career of her splashier-than-life husband, Jackson Pollock."Los Angeles Times
"Compelling. Art historian Gail Levin has drawn on her close association with Lee Krasner and extensive research to produce a biography that rings fair and true.Wall Street Journal
"Ms. Levin’s perceptive, judicious book reveals Krasner as a fine, important painter....This is an insightful, sharply drawn portrait of 20th-century America from the vantage point of a creative woman swept up in a realm of remarkable artistic productivity."Dan's Papers (Hamptons)
"Meticulous Lee Krasner celebrates Krasner’s accomplishments as an artist, distinct from her famous husband. The book...gives voice to the indomitable but not invulnerable force of nature that was Lee Krasner . . . .Energetic, stubborn, seductive...Krasner comes memorably alive."New York Post
"Art historian Levin befriended Krasner, starting when she was a grad student who interviewed the artist, and she gives Krasner a well-deserved full-fledged bio."Booklist
"Levin...is now the first to tell Krasner’s captivating story, writing with equal insight into her teperament, experiences, and art....A consummate scholar, marvelously lucid writer, and gracefully responsible biographer, Levin redresses glaring omissions in the history of abstract art in this imperative portrait of a formidable artist."Library Journal
Artist Lee Krasner has long been dismissed as the feisty, codependent Mrs. Jackson Pollock. Levin, author of the essential Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, challenges past assumptions in this full-length treatment of the talented and tenacious painter. The child of impoverished Jewish immigrant parents, the Brooklyn-born Lena Krassner studied at New York's Cooper Union and National Academy of Design. Immersed in the prewar, left-leaning art scene, she worked as a WPA artist, studied with the influential émigré abstractionist Hans Hofmann, and showed with the groundbreaking American Abstract Artists group. After her 1945 marriage to Pollock, she moved them out to then rural eastern Long Island to separate "Jack the Dripper" from his destructive relationships with booze and broads and to keep him focused and painting. Following Pollock's 1956 death in an alcohol-related crash, Krasner assertively managed his art estate while continuing to work and exhibit until her death in 1984. VERDICT Levin piles up adequate evidence to assure Krasner's place in the American abstract expressionist pantheon. Detailed and meticulously researched, this is essential reading for those who want to know more about protofeminist artist Krasner, New York-based action/abstract expressionist painting, and the postwar NYC art scene.—Barbara A. Genco, Library JournalKirkus Reviews
First biography of Lee Krasner (1908–1984), Jackson Pollock's wife but also a significant artist in her own right.
Levin (Art History/Baruch Coll.; Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, 2007, etc.) links Krasner's motivations and underlying themes to her Russian Jewish background, though Krasner rejected not only religion, but also nationalism and feminism. The author considered herself part of the Paris School, influenced by Matisse and Picasso, and she was a strong influence on the birth of Abstract Expressionism—even though historians often ignore her impact. Politics played a large role in her life, but she kept them separate from her art. Krasner worked for the WPA Federal Art Project through the 1930s until 1943, and though she called herself a leftist, she never became a communist, saving her from the butchery of the HUAC hearings during the '50s. When Krasner met Pollock, she was the first to recognize his genius and made sure that he lived up to her expectation that he would make art history. Her art took a back seat to his career, but she never stopped painting. Though she essentially became known just as Pollock's wife, she still promoted him, protected him, drove him and cosseted him. Krasner and Pollock were among the first to move to Long Island, where both writers and artists came together to form a colony that flourished for years. Living with Pollock was a full-time job, and it took many years before Krasner could finally throw off the comparisons of her work to his. The woman's movement finally brought recognition, but she only wanted to be known as an artist.
Levin deftly connects Krasner's biography to the social and political upheaval of the time. Her long experience in the art world gives insight into the landscape of 20th-century artists, art dealers and museums.