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The New York Times. Sunday, October 21, 1951.

By Stuart Preston

Certain remarks made in a recent broadcast by Betty Parsons give us a canon of judgment by which the works exhibited in her gallery presumably should be judged. It is decreed that, once our "past prejudices and preconceived ideas" have been completely jettisoned, we should approach this work with an eye for its "sensitivity," responding to that quality with our sensibility, such as it is. An impressionistic attitude to works of art is hardly as novel, as is thought, having long ago been canonized by critics, notably by Roger Fry. However, when looking at Lee Krasner's abstracts here, and keeping this warning in mind, we can reach some tentative conclusions. 

By means of their placid rectangular forms, by their discreet, limpid color and their unobtrusive handling, these paintings, large and small, emanate feelings of calm and restraint. Roughly, here is the Mondrian formula worked out with feminine acuteness and a searching for formal and chromatic harmonies rather than a delivery of water-tight solutions. Her designs are occasionally awkward, but they are ever clear and it is to her credit that the more complex they get the better they come off. No. 2, whose majestic and thoughtful construction is carried right through to the four sides of the canvas, can be appreciated even by those blissfully ignorant of the "right" attitude.

In an adjoining room at the same gallery are hung Anne Ryan's collages, abstracts made with bits of colored paper and cloth. Nothing new in the way of praise can be said about these fragments of delicacy that has not appeared in this column before. Their taste is as refined as it is unvarying and she seems to have a power of self-criticism that some of her more flamboyant colleagues lack. Free from ostentation, she stands in relation to them rather as Boudin to the great Impressionists. 


Abstract and Real

If there is such a group as an "All-out School" of painting, title might well be reserved for those who paint in mural-like grandeur the most restrained and pacific of designs, largely confined to geometric spaces and gently colors. Lee Krasner, having an exhibition of her recent work at the Betty Parsons gallery, is such an artist. Several of her designs suggest a purification of Mondrian, whose rigid formalism has been purged of all harshness; others are more independent, acquiring vistas of depth, subtly. This art seems to demand no identification with nature, nor does it command a vital illusion. What touches the observer most are painted surfaces which are beautifully smoothed into quietly innocuous patterns of arresting, sweetly cultivated tonal composition. E.G.