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when convention and the males ordained dark [[strikethrough]] tones [[/strikethrough]] had[[strikethrough]] gotten  [[/strikethrough]] led Mary Cassatt and Georgia O'Keeffe [[strikethrough]] both in[[/strikethrough]] into trouble—a minor example of the relevance of psychology to esthetics. Beyond [[strikethrough]] that [[/strikethrough]]issues of esthetics however, it was clear that, as Eugene Speicher informed Georgia O'Keeffe, males held the prerogatives in the art world. A student who wanted to paint a still-life with fish at the Academy, for example, had to work in the basement; [[strikethrough]] but  [[/strikethrough]] no women were allowed below stairs.
 
That was the first time I had experienced real separation as an artist and it infuriated me. Your not being allowed to paint a .....fish because you're a woman. It reminded me of being in the Synagogue and being told to go up not downstairs. That kind of thing still riles me, and it still comes up.
  
Well, you don't just have a few feminist meetings and resolve the issue. It takes slow patient years. It's not a political revolution fought once and then it's over. I think it will take a long time for woman to find her proper place. 
  
In '32 with the Depression underway Krasner left school and went to work. [[strikethrough]] These [[/strikethrough]] Ahead were the bitter years of bank failures, [[strikethrough]] of the beginning New Deal [[/strikethrough]]and of forebodings from abroad. Krasner took a job as waitress in a Greenwich Village nightclub where artists and and intellectuals gathered, among them Harold Rosenberg, who would survive the years along with Krasner and remain a life-long friend. There was a lot of sitting around and talking [[strikethrough]] radical [[/strikethrough]]politics and art in these coffee-drinking Depression days. [[strikethrough]] only later would come the alcohol days of the 50s and the drug days of the 60s.[[/strikethrough]] It was in 1933 [[strikethrough]] that [[/strikethrough]] when Krasner painted another of the self-portraits she keeps on her wall today. This time she is facing [[strikethrough]] right [[/strikethrough]] left looking into the mirror. Her left eye, heavy-lidded, [[strikethrough]] looking sullen, nearly disembodied [[/strikethrough]]looks out from just above [[strikethrough]]over[[/strikethrough]] the center of the canvas. Beneath [[strikethrough]] the deep [[/strikethrough]] reddish-gold bangs it gazes [[strikethrough]] on [[/strikethrough]]with a [[strikethrough]] question and [[/strikethrough]]certain irony. Later on, that same "eye,"[[strikethrough]]??? [[/strikethrough]] reduced only to be a pair of intersecting arcs [[strikethrough]] like a rudimentary fish but still staring[[/strikethrough]] would become a disturbing motif in many of her abstract