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Lee Krasner: A Biography Paperback – Illustrated, March 13, 2012
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length546 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow Paperbacks
- Publication dateMarch 13, 2012
- Dimensions9.05 x 6 x 1.03 inches
- ISBN-100061845272
- ISBN-13978-0061845277
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“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.” — Wall Street Journal
“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.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
“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. — Los Angeles 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.” — Chicago Sun-Times
“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.” — Vanity Fair
“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.” — New York Post (Required Reading)
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. — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Thorough.... A biography worth celebrating.” — East Hampton Star
“[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.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“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.” — Jewish Daily Forward
“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.” — Dan's Papers (Hamptons)
“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.” — Booklist (starred review)
“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.” — Kirkus Reviews
“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!” — Erica Jong
“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.” — Helen A. Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Gail Levin is the author of Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Becoming Judy Chicago, and many other books on twentieth-century and contemporary art. She is Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women's Studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 13, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 546 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061845272
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061845277
- Item Weight : 1.23 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.05 x 6 x 1.03 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #810,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,519 in Artist & Architect Biographies
- #4,390 in Art History (Books)
- #8,794 in Women's Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Gail Levin is Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women's Studies at The Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York. Her many books, include a well-known series on Edward Hopper, culminating in 1995 in a four-volume catalogue raisonné and Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, which The Wall Street Journal chose in 2007 as one of the five best portrayals of artists' lives, going back in its selections to 1931. She has also written biographies of Judy Chicago and Lee Krasner, collaborated on films about Edward Hopper, Lee Krasner, and other topics and had a cable television show, Art at Issue. Her most recent project, Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art, includes a book, a website, and a touring exhibition. See http://nml.cuny.edu/theresabernstein/ or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2a4EtwkQQM for a video interview with Gail Levin.
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Lee was always herself, hard working and a great talent in her evolving artistic goals. What a wonderful role model for anyone who aspires in their dedication to their profession!
Further, if it weren't for Lee,Jackson Pollock would have drowned himself into alcoholic oblivion and would not have developed into the genius abstractionist that he became...
the closer look that Levin allows shows that that in most of her sexually active years she was fully committed to a single partner and these were men whom she called "husband', whether or not they were legally married. In this duality (more likely multiplicity)of contrasting roles and impulses which drove her, lies a paradigm of the transition in the set of roles which were open and yet not open to women in her time. The paucity of evidence, the absence of a full panoply of letters from each period of her life and the absence of detailed diaries and personal statements, leads Levin to be suggestive at many points, to offer hypotheses which cannot be tested. That is fine so long as the reader recognizes the difference between a fact statement and a guess statement. The fact that some of the people with whom Krasner shared experiences were still alive to speak to the author is welcome, but as Levin wisely points out, memory is faulty and not always judicious. Biographer and Reader Beware.
On the professional side, Levin acknowledges her membership in the school of feminist revisionists (her term) who are seeking to remedy what they see as the product of sex bias by men both in withholding opportunity for women to achieve in Art and to be acknowledged in their achievements. Having seen little of Krasner's work (outside of the books on her I own) I can make no judgment (although I must admit, I really liked the self-portrait she did as a student in 1930 which was displayed in a recent exhibition of women's work at New York's Jewish Museum...I took a reproduction, framed it and have it hanging as I write),. If I recall correctly, in his most recent summing up of Abstract Expressionism, published within the last few years, Irving Sandler did add a woman to his list (in addition to Jack Tworkov) of most notable abstract expressionists, but I do not think it was Krasner. (I am writing while away from my library, museum going in NYC, where Lyonel Feininger at the Whitney and the German Expressionists at MoMA are the center of my attention). At any rate, given the nature of the process by which reputation is achieved and maintained in the Art World, for men and woman, Levin and her fellow-advocates may well turn the scale of current evaluations on its head.
In sum, I heartily recommend the book for the interest of it's story and the skillful presentation by its author. One might want to accompany the reading with reference to one of the volumes which contain reproductions of her work.
The fifties was the most exhilarating period in American art and Gail Levin has penned a book to match: a fast paced, fascinating, unputtable-downable read!
Gail Levin paints a picture of a time, which was most unfavorable to women playing any role except auxiliary ones in the making of culture. The advent of the Feminist Movement helped Krasner finally begin to receive her due for the originality and merit of her art, and for her influence on the formation of the abstract-expressionist art of her time.
This book presents Krasner the artist as a complex and multi-faceted personality,intelligent,outspoken, and sensual, who participated fully in all aspects of her professional life and the politics of the era. Levin's carefully researched account of the social milieu and overlapping relationships of the artists, and the critical and gallerist community at the time, is a fascinating inside view of the kinds of personal friendships, competitiveness and manipulations, which frame the making of the legend. It makes a great page turning read.
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4 Stars.