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P1. 1. Lee Krasner, Imperative P1.1. Lee Krasner, Imperative (1976), oil, charcoal, and paper on canvas, 50" x 50". National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw in Honor of the 5 0 th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. PI, 2. Lee Krasner, Crisis Moment (c. 1972-80), oil and paper collage on canvas, 69" x 54 1/4". Private collection. Photo courtesy Robert Miller Gallery. All Lee Krasner images © 2007 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pl. 3. Lee Krasner, Between Two Appearances (1981), oil and paper collage on canvas, 47" x 57 1/4". Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Photo courtesy Robert Miller Gallery. Pl. 4. Lee Krasner, Night Life (1947) oil on linen, 20 1/2" x 24". Private collection. Photo courtesy Robert Miller Gallery. BEYOND THE PALE Lee Krasner and Jewish Culture By Gail Levin n 1978, while planning the show "Abstract Expressionism: It was into a world teeming with impoverished and often The Formative Years" with Robert Hobbs, I insisted on radicalized Jewish immigrants in the Brownsville section of giving prominence to Lee Krasner along with her male Brooklyn that Lena was born. Joseph, an orthodox Jew, contemporaries. She was persuaded to show work she had pursued a disciplined study of religious texts and was said to produced while still studying with Hans Hofmann-work be sensitive and introspective.6 "I adored him," Krasner said, proving that she was a fully formed abstractionist before "But he was very remote."7 His religious books fascinated Lena, meeting her future husband, Jackson Pollock. My strategy with their elaborate decorations and Hebrew script. He also worked, convincing critics of her status as a first-wave Abstract liked to tell the children stories, which she loved: "Marvelous Expressionist. tales! About forests. Beautiful, beautiful stories, always like Given my friendship with Krasner-I first interviewed her Grimm. Scary things .... A foreign world to me."" in 1970-time has been required to gain the critical distance Lena's eldest sister, Edith, cooked for the family and took necessary to write her biography. Among my first steps, here I charge of the younger siblings.' The Krassners shared their explore her links with Jewish culture from childhood on, based modest quarters with Anna's younger, unmarried brother, on our frequent discussions of Jewish ethnicity. I argue that William, who worked in a clothing factory. Dominating the despite later estrangement from religious practice, she traditional household, Anna, who experienced culture shock as remained identified as a Jew, even though, at his insistence, she she encountered modernity and secularism, enforced the agreed to marry Jackson Pollock in New York's Marble observance of Jewish ritual. She never learned to read and Collegiate Church on October 25, 1945. Krasner, then 37, had write in English and remained fearful and superstitious."' lived with him since 1942, and later recalled that her father's In Eastern Europe, the most prestigious life for a Jewish recent death (November 17, 1944) had motivated her to marry.' male was to be a religious scholar. Scholarly circles excluded Lena Krassner was born October 27, 1908, in Brooklyn, New women, who, in the absence of family wealth, were expected to York, just nine months and two weeks after her mother, Chane provide support to make possible their husbands' devotion to (Anna), age 33, arrived from Shpikov in Russia, not far north of study." Their roles as breadwinners gave wives more power in Odessa in the Pale of Settlement, the area where the Russian practice, but little respect or prestige. By the nineteenth century, Imperial government permitted Jews to live. 2 Her father, however, some Jews in Eastern Europe had rejected Orthodox Joseph, age 38, had been in America for four years. In their restrictions, believing that reconciling Judaism with modem shtetl (village), where some 530 of the nearly 3000 residents Western ideas and customs would bring them emancipation were Jews,3 Joseph and Chane had earned their living helping a and equality.'2 Instead of discouraging girls from obtaining all rabbi manage ritual observances. Krasner considered her but the most basic literacy, they stressed secular education for mother's family more orthodox than her father's.' both sexes. The most observant Jews, however, faced with A family photograph taken in Shpikov showing a modern, growing anti-Semitism, held tight to their traditional attitudes, well-dressed family group suggests motives other than poverty transporting them to the new world. for their emigration. The massive Jewish flight from Eastern In effect, Jewish men "displaced their own anxieties upon Europe around the tum of the century stemmed also from anti- women," according to historian Paula Hyman, who argues that Semitism, oppressive taxation, and enforced conscription of the men "constructed a modem Jewish identity that devalued sons. Pogroms, violent attacks directed at Jews and other women, making them the Other within the Jewish minorities, increased pressure to flee.' As conditions deteriorated community."'3 The men, who were experiencing emancipation in Russia, many Jews sought asylum in America, bringing with and economic success, responded to anti-Semitism "by creating them their belief in social justice and political reform. Faced once negative representations of Jewish women." This "coincidence again with harsh working conditions, a vocal and visible fraction of antisemitism and misogyny" reflects the efforts of both Jews became strike leaders and union organizers. Jewish militancy no and women to challenge their place in society and to assert doubt reflected disillusionment with the stories of a better life in their claims to equality. Ironically, Jewish women became what America that had fueled emigration. has been called the "oppressed of the oppressed."14 0 WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL Brownsville's population grew after the extension of the Fulton Street El in 1889 enabled easy access to Manhattan for those, like Lena's uncle, who worked in the garment industry. Yiddish was the language most often heard in the shops and the open-air markets. Cheders, schools where young Jewish boys learned orthodox traditions and rituals, were plentiful. Girls, including Lena, attended a separate Hebrew school, where they learned basic reading and writing skills, primarily in order to pray." Later she remarked: I think it was in my show at the Whitney that Marcia Tucker pointed something out to me I had been totally unaware of, and that is that I started my painting at the upper right hand at all times and swung across the other way, which she related to my early training in Hebrew writing. I had never made the connection. She pointed that out to me. I was doing it for many, many years without being conscious of it in any sense. And so at all times I was preoccupied with a kind of writing which I nor anyone else could read, and I wanted it that way. I don't know why.' Krasner appears to have accepted Tucker's suggestion that her early study of Hebrew writing Fig. 1. Lee Krasner, Painting No. 19(1947-48), oil and enamel on masonite, 32 1/4" x 32 1/4". influenced her series of abstractions known as Private collection. "Little Images" (Fig. 1).11 Krasner told Eleanor Munro that she was conscientious and observant as a girl: "I went to services at the had to be dealt with," Krasner said later, adding that her synagogue, partly because it was expected of me. But there must parents demanded obedience and respect.2 have been something beyond, because I wasn't forced to go, and At her school, P.S. 72, there were more girls than boys 1 my younger sister did not."" That "something" might have been among its 1500 students, presumably because many her strong identification with her adored father; still, she disliked neighborhood boys attended private yeshivas (religious the segregation of the sexes in the synagogue, and remained schools). Here Lena was introduced to the idea of art, though resentful that orthodox Judaism did not allow women equality she later said that she did not yet draw.2 3 Her sister Ruth with men. "The beginnings were there in the synagogue, and I recalled, however, that Lena copied fashion advertisements am told to go upstairs, I have never swallowed it to date," she from the newspaper: "She used to draw clothed women figures 9 insisted late in life."" all the time. We were all aware of that-how marvelous it was As a child she recited the daily morning prayer in Hebrew to be able to put her pencil to paper and get a figure.""2 (It was from memory. Later, after finally reading a translation, she one of the few nice things that Ruth ever recollected about her referred to this prayer as "my own shattering experience." She sister.) The only other art that Lena saw was in library books, explained that it "is indeed a beautiful prayer in every sense including the illustrated fairy tales she loved." except for the closing of it.. .if you are a male you say, 'Thank You, Brownsville during these years welcomed radical social move- 0 Lord, for creating me in Your image'; and if you are a woman ments and philosophies including anarchism, Socialism, and 2 you say, 'Thank You, 0 Lord, for creating me as You saw fit."' 0 Communism. Women's activism, too, was acceptable among seg- By the time she entered elementary school, Lena's family ments of the Jewish inunigrant community.2" Women led protest had moved about two miles to East New York, to a two-family movements and rent strikes, and Jewish women worked hard to clapboard row house on Jerome Street.
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