(Notes from Ellen Landau, Krasner, Lee, Grove Art Online, < http://0-www.groveart.com.wam.leeds.ac.uk:80/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=770913010&hitnum=1§ion=art.047912 > [Accessed
- American painter
- 1926 she enrolled at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science in
- 1928 she transferred to the National Academy of Design
- Due to the Depression she was forced to work at menial jobs by day and attend art classes at night
- In the early 1930s she experimented with the prevalent style of social realism and the enigmatic imagery of Giorgio De Chirico and Joan Miró,
- Immediately grasping the most radical tenets of Fauvism, Cubism and Hofmann’s own theories, she began to create powerful abstract still-lifes and diagrammatic figure studies.
- Krasner met Jackson Pollock, with whom she had taken part in an exhibition in 1941 organized by John Graham to demonstrate that American art was now equal in stature to European art
- She responded immediately to Pollock’s work, believing that he was ‘a living force’ with whom others would have to contend and introduced him to numerous artists and critics who could help him further his goals.
- Their involvement during the early 1940s in the Surrealist circle of Peggy Guggenheim was fruitful for both of them.
- Unfortunately, however, Krasner’s growing admiration for Pollock’s work and immersion in his career proved initially debilitating for her own art.
- She entered a protracted fallow period during which she produced overworked ‘grey slabs’ as she called them, with no recognizable style or imagery.
- Krasner and Pollock’s marriage in 1945 and moved to the rural
- During the period of 1953–5, despite marital problems centred on Pollock’s alcoholism, Krasner made a significant technical move into the medium of collage.
- Using as a support colour field paintings such as Untitled (1951; New York, MOMA), which she considered unsuccessful, from her first one-woman show at the Betty Parsons Gallery (1951), she pasted large dramatic shapes cut from her own and Pollock’s discarded canvases in works such as Milkweed (1955)
- Untitled, 1951 Milkweed, 1955
- In interviews Krasner consistently maintained that her life and work were inseparable, and it was immediately after Pollock’s violent death in 1956 that she created her most memorable and truly autobiographical paintings, large gestural works generated by whole body movement.
- From 1959 to 1962, working in his barn studio, she poured out her feelings of loss in explosive bursts of
- By the mid-1960s, however, she had worked out her grief and anger and began painting lushly coloured, sharply focused, emblematic floral forms, taking a more lyrical and decorative Fauvist-inspired approach.
- During her last period of activity, the mid- to late 1970s, she returned to collage, this time using the medium to reflect directly upon her past.
- The influence of Pollock was important in the development of Krasner’s mature style, in which her ability to give key modernist concepts a personal inflection finally emerges as the leitmotif of her work. Her will established the Pollock–Krasner Foundation, set up in 1985 to aid artists in need.
Bibliography
Lee Krasner Paintings, Drawings and Collages (exh. cat. by B. H. Friedman, London, Whitechapel A.G., 1965)
E. G. Landau: ‘Lee Krasner’s Early Career, Part One: “Pushing in Different
Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship (exh. cat. by B. Rose, East Hampton, Guild Hall Mus.; New York U., Grey A.G.; 1981)
E. G. Landau and J. D. Grove: Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné (New York, 1995)
A. M. Wagner: Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keefe (
Ellen Landau, Krasner, Lee, Grove Art Online, < http://0-www.groveart.com.wam.leeds.ac.uk:80/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=770913010&hitnum=1§ion=art.047912 > [Accessed 3 May 2008]
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler was born December 12, 1928 in
Mountains and Sea (1952), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Frankenthaler’s career was launched in 1952 after she had produced Mountains and Sea, her most famous painting. Measuring seven feet by ten feet – it was painted in oils yet retained the effect of watercolour painting due to her use of unprepared canvas and heavily turpentine diluted paint, provoking a large amount of absorption, leaving the effect of a halo as the liquid evaporated. Known as ‘stain painting’ the technique was adopted by other artists such as Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, launching the second generation of the Colour Field School of painting; a Greenbergian style characterised by large areas of flat single colours. Eliminating the spiritual aspect of their work, they distinguished themselves from the abstract expressionists who worked at through gesture and painterly practice.
This method would leave the canvas with a halo effect around each area to which the paint was applied.
Gaining more acclaim for how she painted opposed to what she painted, as Hilton Kramer states ‘the reputation it has aquired a sort of ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’ of the Colour field school’ [1]
Frankenhaler was highly influenced by Pollock and Greenberg through his essay Modernist Painting [2] in which he describes the purest form of painting to be flatness of surface, shape and pigment and optical experience revised by tactile association.
Under his guidance she spent the summer of 1950 studying with Hans Hofmann , the catalyst of the Abstract Expressionist movement.
"It was all there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language."
- at first seeing Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950 (1950), Number One (1950), and Lavender Mist
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-laboured efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." [3]
The Bay (1963) established new directions in Frankenthaler’s art, introducing ideas that would dominate her work until the end of the decade. Unlike many of her works it was titled before completion due to its close resemblance to water (through her soaking method). Whilst not intended to represent a particular body of water it suggests the experience of liquid, something that affects the sensibilities.
Small’s
Whilst Frankenthaler’s art predominantly regards landscape associations Small’s
[1] Carmean, E. A. Helen Frankenthaler: a paintings retrospective, E.A. Carmean, Jr.,
[2] Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, from The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, eds. John O’Brian, (Chicago University Press: Chicago, 1993)
[3] Carmean, E. A. Helen Frankenthaler: a paintings retrospective, E.A. Carmean, Jr.,
Bibliography
Carmean, E. A. Helen Frankenthaler: a paintings retrospective, E.A. Carmean, Jr.,
Greenberg Clement, ‘Modernist Painting’, from The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, eds. John O’Brian, (Chicago University Press: Chicago, 1993)
Rowley, Alison Jane, Notes on the case of Mountains and Sea (1952) by Helen Frankenthaler: history, poiesis, memory / Alison Jane Rowley,
Louise Nevelson
.JPG)
.JPG)
- Born Louise Berliawsky,
- 1905, her family had immigrated to the
- In 1920 she married Charles Nevelson who takes her to
- In 1928 Nevelson enrolled at the Art Students League in and studied with Hilla Rebay. During this period, she was introduced to the work of Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso.
- In 1931, while traveling in
- Between 1933 and 1936, Nevelson’s work was included in numerous group exhibitions in
- Nevelson’s first solo show took place in 1941 at the Nierendorf Gallery in
- Nevelson showed in 1953 and 1955 at the Grand Central Moderns Gallery in
- Two years later, Nevelson participated in her first important museum exhibition, Sixteen Americans at the
- She was included in the
- Elected president of National Artists Equity in 1965 and the following year she became vice-president of the International Association of Artists.
- Her first major museum retrospective took place in 1967 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
- Other Nevelson shows took place in 1970 at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in 1973 at the
- Dies 1988,
- Predominantly created black sculptures of assembled wood objects that transcended space and transformed the viewer.
- Whilst her work is unfeminine and appears to contain adherence to mainstream aesthetics, through her flamboyant appearance consisting of large fake eyelashes and enormous earrings she seems to adopt what Linda Nochlin calls ‘Frilly blouse syndrome’ [1]; the rejection of feminine roles in her profession yet the adoption of ultra-feminine items of clothing to insist on proving her ‘prowess as pie baker’ [2]. Consequently it affirms that even today we still have stereotypical values on masculinity and femininity; that the masculine artist is considered to be productive whilst the female plays at home with her hobbies and crafts. Ideally it subverts the inner confidence of stronger women by feeling she has to adhere to a stereotype.
A. B. Glimcher: Louise Nevelson (New York, 1972)
M. Friedman: Nevelson Wood Sculptures (New York, 1973)
Nevelson, Louise, 1899-1988. Nevelson wood sculptures: an exhibition organized by
How can women become great artists when the term ‘woman artist’ implies the profession to be exclusively a male realm?
In her essay, Linda Nichlin asks the question; ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ Searching for an alternative way in which to write art history she suggests that women are not only subordinated by the art world but that this inequality is naturalised by the notion of “artist genius” in order to reduce the questioning of this ideology.
Nochlin suggests that in our society it is probable that there are different levels of greatness for men and women, an explanation that seems plausible due to the different situations that men and women experience. She makes the point that throughout the ages, women artists stray very little in style from their male counterparts, and appear closer to the artists of their time opposed to each other. Whilst the stereotype of the inward looking female artist is still prominent she suggests that they are no more so than Redon or Corot, if this is the case why are these differences maintained in art historical texts? Nochlin identifies that in the Canon of art history there have been no great women artists, only interesting ones who have not been sufficiently referenced. For women and ethnic minorities, greatness occurs in exceptional circumstances and there are no equivalents for the Masters of old. It is the paradigms of art history which are at fault, praising the artist as an individual and the creation of myths and fairytales of the genius. These stories commonly assert the notion of the ‘boy wonder’ [1]; the innate genius who’s drive to create is independent of outside encouragement and permeates the divine, whereas women are generally thought to be lacking this ‘golden nugget’ [2] of genius. Methods straying from these paradigms, such as socio-political analysis are often considered unscholarly and too broad, yet once we do so we find that a romantic and elitist subculture is exposed denying women the adequate institutional education often required for success, only granting them privileges once they were no longer necessary. The notion of genius places education secondary and forces us to believe this ideology to be natural and timeless.
Nochlin acknowledges aspects of social-gendering such as the books of polite society in the nineteenth century encouraging women in the visual arts to an extent, as a ‘suitable accomplishment’ for a lady, to dabble as hobby. They also stress for women not to become over proficient in one activity, favouring an all round ‘generally useful’ [3] woman. Whilst activities such as art maintains cheerfulness, the true career of women is that of marriage and motherhood, inadvertently allowing the construction of a superior/inferior relationship to men, eliminating women competitors.
Nochlin’s final conclusion suggests that women should face up to the reality of the situation and use their position as underdogs in order to expose the failings and inconsistencies the institutions of art history. The notion may be interpreted as a defeatist attitude, choosing the reject one’s goals to aspire to that which is inaccessible and to rebel against it instead; after all it is highly difficult to be appreciated in art even if one is a white middle class male. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the minorities discussed by Nochlin have these difficulties multiplied tenfold, through discrimination opposed to lack of originality. Women and minorities need a voice and whilst it may at times seem futile, the writings of authors such as Nochlin, Parker and Pollock have opened new perspectives to the world we live in today. The message is clear, we need to change the way we look at art for a less subjective and equal approach, for once we expose the institutional biases towards women we find those that affect race and sexuality too.
In Feminist Interventions in Art’s Histories Griselda Pollock’s asks whether adding women to art history is plausible due to the implications of simultaneously producing a feminist art history. Including female artists in art history suggests an obligated addition and suggests practices such as positive discrimination, we cannot simply place them into our intellectual view without just cause. A specific feminist art history on the other hand implies an insular and exclusive system which may lack an all-encompassing study. Whilst the great women, black and homosexual artists must be appreciated, the term suggests their structuring through compromise of the male greats, which is certainly not the aim of feminism.
Pollock goes on to describe that capitalism has greatly effected our perception of art, becoming a commodity opposed to an intellectualised practice. Contextually this provides a useful aid to when undertaking the sublimation of signs and labels all things non-masculine, due to the high marketability of physical and discriminatory art objects.
The goals brought forward by Pollock and Nochlin aim to revolutionise knowledge in order to change the present and alter the way in which we view the past so we may analyse not only women, but ethnic and sexual minorities as first class citizens opposed to objects of masculine desire and fear. We must not simply attempt to recognise these groups and plead their case for equality, but develop a new paradigm in art history in order to reject the elitist superstructures that manufacture a history of white, middle class males.
[1] Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, Art and Sexual Politics, edited by Elizabeth C. Baker and Thomas B. Hess, New York, Collier Books, 1972, pp. 7
[2] Ibid, pp. 8
[3] Ibid, pp. 28
No comments:
Post a Comment