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she incorporated the most advanced ideas in art of that period; tapping into the unconscious, she came up with an over all structuring of space which simultaneously melded spontaneity with control.  With these "Little Image" paintings, Krasner arrived at a totally new pictoral vision at the same time that Pollock was breaking fresh visual ground in his larger formats.

When queried as to why she did not fight to have her achievement of this time acknowledged along with Pollock's, the artist put it bluntly, "I couldn't run out and do a one-woman job on the sexist aspects of the art world, continue my painting and stay in the role I was in as Mrs. Pollock.  I just couldn't do that much.  What I considered important was that I was able to work and other things would have to take their turn.  Now rightly or wrongly, I made my decisions."

Krasner's painfully forthright statement illuminates the terrible dilemma shared, until recently, by most women artists whose husbands are also artists.  in our society, the man is considered the head of the household and the breadwinner.  The furtherance of his career is the main goal of the family and, of course, it is considered much more traumatic for a man to fail in his life's work than for a woman.  For a male artist, career failure is even more debilitating than for a man in another profession.  Artists in our technological, scientifically oriented age, be they male or female, are considered by the other men to be the women of our culture——even if they succeed, their virility is suspect——but if they fail, they are positively condemned as effeminate, queer, outcasts, losers.

Most women who are married to male artists have sought to protect them from this stigmatization, even if it meant they had to put their husband's careers before their own.  After all, in our society, self sacrifice for the male is drilled into women at an early age.

Krasner, independent as she was before meeting Pollock, turned out to be as vulnerable as most other women in this area.  She love him deeply and she believed unequivocably [[unequivocally]] in his genius.  According to those who knew her during the 40's and early 50's, when she and Pollock lived at Springs, Krasner turned into a tigress if anyone questioned the greatness of his work, but to him she was always supportive and protective.  Artist Linda Lindeberg, who died last summer, remembered that "she was like his left hand and though she lived with an alcoholic, never, never did I hear her say anything against Jackson."  Painter Grace Hartigan also noted that Pollock was very competitive with Krasner and really felt threatened by her being an artist but others who knew the pair  then claim that the relationship was more symbiotic and that Lee voluntarily kept her art in the background.  Indeed, Donald Braider, a close friend of the couple at the time, who later in 1954 gave Krasner a solo exhibition at his bookstore, reported that "it wasn't until after six months of visiting the Pollocks did I discover that Krasner was an artist."  Nevertheless, her paintings were up on the wall in the kitchen and in the dining room and could be seen in the small upstairs bedroom she used as a studio.  She was also included in several group shows that took place in the Hamptons, at Guild Hall.

It is clear, however, that Krasner did not push her own career as much as she pushed Pollock's.  She could and has been faulted for being remiss in that area and has been accused by the powerful critic Clement Greenberg of lacking independence of spirit.  Yet Greenberg, who has stated that there are no women artists of the first rank, with the exception of Helen Frankenthaler, misses the essence of the Pollocks' relationship; it was not her dependence on Pollock

[[image]] Three in Two, oil on canvas, 1956.  Photo: Adolph Studly.

THE FEMINIST ART JOURNAL

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