Lee Krasner’s Pioneering Talent Shines in a Joint Show with Jackson Pollock at The Met
The 120-piece two-person show takes the artist just as seriously as her husband, but is careful not to pit the pair against each other
Something as simple as a single museum exhibition can go on view and then proceed to rewire our brains in an hour or two. The art does not need to be brand new, and the curation does not need to be heavy-handed—the pictures can simply tell a mind-blowing story on their own.
That’s the case with “Krasner Pollock: Past Continuous,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 31.
The 120-work, two-person show of perhaps art history’s most famous married couple, who were both accomplished painters—Lee Krasner (1908–1984) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)—resets the table by taking Krasner just as seriously as her husband and producing the receipts in the form of glorious canvases. Putting her name first in the exhibition title is only the start.
Pollock’s myth, the Abstract Expressionist genius who died too early in a car crash, is part of our collective consciousness. But Krasner was a talented artist before their tempestuous and symbiotic relationship began, certainly during it, and then for nearly 30 years after his death. She did not stop evolving and getting better in his absence.
The show may even have you wondering aloud whether Krasner was not the better artist. (And if more evidence of her brilliance is needed, collectors who are in Paris next week for Art Basel can visit the Gagosian gallery outpost there for a show of Krasner’s works from the 1960s, presented with Olney Gleason Gallery and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.)
“We conceived of the thing because we had these two incredible artworks in the collection: Autumn Rhythm by Pollock and Rising Green by Krasner, and we had them in two separate rooms,” David Breslin, the Met’s chief curator of modern and contemporary art, tells me. “We asked, ‘How do we bring these two together in a dialogue, but make it even richer, so that they could be seen as kind of the partners and equals they were?’”
Breslin and his co-organizer, Met associate curator Brinda Kumar, first tried to figure out if such a show had been done before at scale. “The answer was no, which was surprising to us,” says Breslin. Getting the idea approved internally was not a challenge. “Max said, ‘Pursue this aggressively,’” Breslin adds, referring to the Met’s director, Max Hollein.
The challenge was “getting the balance right,” Breslin says. But Krasner’s career was twice as long, and that meant, to demonstrate her skill truthfully, there would have to be more pictures by her hand. “We wanted to give a sense of the fullness of the arc of their careers without necessarily just boiling it down to a pure numbers game,” Kumar tells me.
Pollock is known for his drip technique, which is in the running for the single most famous artistic innovation of the 20th century, and his sublime splatters are on ample display in this show, in works like Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950.
Nothing in “Past Continuous” makes him seem any less of a genius—his reputation is actually burnished by Krasner’s glow. “I was surprised by the number of people who wanted a winner,” says Breslin, who did not want to pit the artists against each other.
Breslin and Kumar settled on the idea of collage as one of the primary lenses for analyzing Krasner’s work—both true collages made of materials other than just paint, and paintings that employ a pieced-together pictorial strategy.
To see her mastery of this idea, the room of 1955 canvases that were originally presented at New York’s Stable Gallery tells the tale. In works like Shooting Gold, Milkweed and Bird Talk, all made with pieces of canvas and paper along with paint, she seems to have pulled apart the individual parts of an image and then reassembled the color, shape and line into a whole that vibrates with energy. The way she emphasizes the seams among these elements, and a generous use of black, gives the overall composition an impression of raw strength.
“They’re bold, and as far away from tentative as you can be,” says Kumar, and they represent a huge change from the way the painter started her career. “Krasner was really unafraid to destroy what she had done or make a radical move.” The collage works “enable her to break fresh ground,” Kumar adds.
The forcefulness of Krasner’s works also upends our gendered way of talking about art. “This idea that his paintings are the macho ones, and she has this delicate touch, well, the opposite is really the case,” says Breslin. “He has an almost prissy sense of color at times, and hers is muscular, explosive, bold.”
One of the show’s major themes is how Krasner and Pollock artistically fed each other—with each absorbing the lesson of the other’s work, trading ideas and approaches—and as you exit the show, there is no doubt they were better artists for having been together.
Through it all, they had an almost mystical connection and appreciation of each other’s artistry. As Kumar puts it, “That really stayed, even when the personal relationship faltered.”
“Krasner Pollock: Past Continuous,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 31.