Two Abstract Painters

Joan Mitchell, 1991

Lee Krasner, 1973

I debated what to call this post. Should it be Two Strong Women? Two Women Painters? Two Biographies of Women Artists? Or maybe Two Art Icons? As you can see, I finally decided to avoid gender and focus on genre in the title, but gender plays an important part in their personal histories as well as their places in art history.

Krasner, Milkweed, 1955

What brings these two painters together in this post is that I just finished reading the two recent biographies about them:  Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter by Patricia Albers and Lee Krasner: A Biography by Gail Levin. I strongly recommend both of these books. That's not to say that they are easy going; they demand commitment on the part of the reader because they are filled with detail - people, paintings, problems, successes, failures - all the things that make up full lives of artists. But they do a good job of presenting the personalities of Mitchell and Krasner - both strong and opinionated women, who struggled with relationships with men in their lives as well as trying to continue making their own work and carving out a place for themselves in the patriarchal art world.

Joan Mitchell, City Landscapes, 1955

Lee Krasner was 17 years older than Joan Mitchell (Krasner born 1908, Mitchell born 1925) but they were both part of the Abstract Expressionist painting scene in New York during the 1950s. Krasner, of course, was married to Jackson Pollock and moved out of Manhattan with him to Springs (East Hampton) on Long Island in the mid-1940s. Mitchell moved to France in the mid-1950s to be with her lover, artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, and lived there for the rest of her life.

Mitchell, untitled, 1960

I can't recap their lives except to say that if they had been men, their lives as artists would have been a hell of a lot easier and they would have received the recognition they deserved. As it was, they had to fight so strongly for everything that it gave them both a hard edge and a cynical attitude toward life. Abuse of alcohol played an important part in both of their lives: for Mitchell, it was her own over-consumption, while Krasner spent years of her life coping with and trying to manage Pollock's alcoholism. Once Pollock had perished at age 44 in a drunk driving accident, Krasner was free to pursue her own career, but she was always under Pollock's long shadow, on guard against comparisons of her work to his as well as trying to fend off those who tried to gain control of his work by approaching hers.

Both Mitchell and Krasner died at fairly young ages (Mitchell at 66 and Krasner at 75) and had painful ends. Krasner suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and diverticulitis. Mitchell had cancer of the jaw and lung cancer. I can't help thinking that their struggle to prove themselves and continually battle against those who minimized or failed to recognize their artistic achievements wore them down.

Krasner, The Seasons, 1957

One major note about both these artists is their legacy to artists of the future. They both established foundations to benefit  artists in need. In fact, I was the recipient of a generous grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1995 and that validated my art career to me as nothing else had. It made a very definite improvement in my life. The Joan Mitchell Foundation also awards grants to painters and sculptors annually and funds art education for New York City youth. Not to start a gender battle, but how many male artists established such foundations to benefit artists and make a lasting investment in the future?


New York Gallery representation: Lee Krasner - Robert Miller Gallery, Joan Mitchell - Cheim & Read 

Pollock Krasner House & Study Center (great website)

Chakaia Booker Sculptures at the DeCordova Museum

I was looking forward to seeing the work of Chakaia Booker in the sculpture park at the DeCordova Museum when New England Wax visited there last Saturday. Booker was one of the sculptors whose work and commentary was featured in a book I purchased recently about Leonardo Drew. Her work was compared to his, and vice versa, because their work is related to but more muscular than the work of Louise Nevelson and also composed of recycled elements; the work of both features the color black dramatically and prominently; and they are both African American. The subject of race and identify has influenced the work of both Drew and Booker.

Approaching the two Booker sculptures

"No More Milk and Cookies", 2003, rubber tires, wood, 14 ½' x 28' x 19', Lent by the Artist, Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY. Image courtesy of the DeCordova website.

I had to get the "proper" image of this sculpture from the DeCordova because it seems that my myopic view of the world causes me to look at things very closely - either that or I'm so curious to see how things are made that I want to be right on top of them. At any rate, I also cadged some info from the DeCordova's site about this work. Here is what they say about the inspiration for the work and explanation of the title:

"The undulating shape of No More Milk and Cookies references the emotional arc of a frustrated child or adult, denied the "cookie" they desperately want. Booker developed this work at ground level—where the seed of desire is planted—the first "cookie." Once recognized as something good, desire is heightened, the craving for more increases, and the sculpture grows due to this response. If gone unfulfilled, the craving can turn to desperation, and selfish motivation can turn to manipulation and deceit. Finally, when rejected, the spirit of longing crashes down in a bitter denouement. Charting these ups and downs in her sculpture, Booker seeks to challenge values driven by consumerism."

Booker has been working with found and recycled tires since the early '90s. I don't believe that she does all this work herself because there is so much to it. (Note: this is not a comment on her gender but rather on the extreme amount of detail and the physicality involved.)

Just look at all these cuts in the thick rubber that give the piece its featheriness.

Then see how many scews are driven into the rubber to hold it to the unseen wooden armature.

This is Booker's second piece at the DeCordova, "The Conversationalist," 1997, rubber tires, wood, 20' x 21' x 12', Lent by the Artist, Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY.  This is my photo.

Here's what the DeCordova site says about this work:

"Like an actual conversation, this piece physically represents a gradual building of elements that climax at a point of tension or harmony. The many angles of this sculpture create negative spaces that represent opposing arguments and varying opinions. Beginning with conflict and disagreement at its base, the form labors to break free of emotional constraints as it pushes towards the sky and comes to a realization. While independently complex, the two segments that define the overall layout of the sculpture arrive at a final point of accord at the apex.


"Symbolically, Booker's sculptural "conversation" explores the potential for unity and understanding that would ideally originate from conversations between those of different beliefs and values. Booker believes that "art is a storytelling, but the story is open, fluid, mysterious." The artist seeks to encourage viewers to contribute to the story and challenges them to defend their principles and ideals while maintaining an open mind towards shades of difference."

View from the side with one of Jim Dine's hearts in the background.

This view reminds me of Stonehenge.

One of my extreme closeup shots showing the enormous number of screws and slices of tires it took to build the form.

Looking through "The Conversationalist" toward "No More Milk and Cookies."

I have to say that when I read the statements about these works, it was evident that Booker's undergraduate degree in sociology reflects her ongoing interest in human interactions. Amazing that she uses these cast-off relics of the highway to discourse about concepts instead of physical entities. 

Having used rubber in my own work recently (although very lightweight and malleable rubber), I can appreciate Booker's ability to transform it into another substance. Her forms are graceful and dignified and the positive and negative spaces work well in the landscape.

Making a Memory

Booker makes a practice of  sculpting her own appearance to be dramatically distinct and memorable as Louise Nevelson did. However, where Louise N. was notable for her huge false eyelashes and haute couture costumes, Chakaia B. actually creates sculptural forms that she wears - notably huge headdresses of fabric and yarn. Creating and inventing clothing was an early form of art making for Booker and one on which she continues to elaborate.

Louise Nevelson in one of her distinctive outfits.

Chakaia Booker wearing a headdress and sculpted costume, posing with sculptures.

The DeCordova Museum is presenting a major exhibition of Chakaia Booker's work later this year, installed both inside and outside the Museum. With a working title of Chakaia Booker: Inside and Outside, the show will run from May 15 – August 29, 2010. It is being organized by Nick Capasso, Senior Curator, and will have a full-color catalog. Here is his statement about the show: Chakaia Booker is one of America’s pre-eminent African-American contemporary sculptors. Her work in steel surfaced with cut and re-assembled auto and truck tires reconsiders the tradition of Modernist abstract sculpture in 21st-century contexts of black culture, identity, gender, and ecology. This exhibition will be the first to present a large selection of her work both indoors and outdoors. 

Hedda Sterne - Part Two

This is a continuation of my post about Hedda Sterne, an artist born in 1910, who will celebrate her 100th birthday in August. (Note: Click on any image to enlarge it.)

Hedda, ca. 1963-65, Photographer: Theodore Brauner. (Image from "Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne," a catalog of a retrospective of Sterne's work, published in 2006 by the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, edited by Karen Hewitt, exhibition curated by Sarah L. Eckhardt. The images and quotes in this post are from this catalog.)




Hedda's second husband was Saul Steinberg, the artist probably best known today for his New Yorker magazine covers. Below is a page spread published August 27, 1951 (titled "Self Portrait With Wife") from Life magazine with Steinberg's work on the left and Hedda's on the right. (Note that the famous Irascibles photo was published in Life earlier that same year in January 1951.)

In the Uninterrupted Flux catalog, the exhibition curator, Sarah Eckhardt, divides Hedda's work into 11 categories in order to bring some order to the "consistent inconsistency" that Hedda practiced. Two of Hedda's continuing interests were machines and motion, and she visualized machines as having human characteristics that made them become "anthropographs." She thought that machines were designed as self portraits of their creators and displayed "their needs and insatiable desire for consumption."

Two notable results of Hedda's interest in machines and motion were, first, an exhibition at Betty Parsons' gallery in 1954 where tondo (round) paintings were mounted on central axes and viewers were invited to rotate the canvases as they wished. Secondly, also in 1954, Hedda was included in "Seven Painters and a Machine," where the seven were commissioned by Fortune magazine to produce their responses to a machine called the "Continuous Miner." Hedda's painting was chosen a year later for the cover of World At Work: 25 Years of Art for Fortune. In the early 1960s, Fortune arranged for Hedda to tour several John Deere factories, which provided the impetus for a series of paintings that portrayed tractors. The CEO of John Deere purchased the entire series for the company.

Tractor Seat, 1961, mixed media on heavy paper, 20 x 25 inches framed. Owned by John Deere, Moline, IL


In the 1980s Hedda painted large, architectural paintings such as the two in the page spread below from about 1982. She referred to these works as "Patterns of Thought" and "Architecture of the Mind."

Both untitled. The one on the left is 44 1/2 x 64 inches; the right one is 51 x 78 inches. They are oil and pastel on canvas.


Art as Diary/Diary as Art
It seems to me that the most appropriate way to view Hedda's work is in the context of her long life. "Maybe I am saying something which is a truism," she said, "but I feel that my work all along was like a diary." Her interests were wide ranging, she read continuously and quoted or paraphrased from her reading or conversations with "poets, novelists, philosophers and theologians." In 1976 she made her art a literal diary by      placing sections of unstretched canvas on the floor of her living space. She drew a grid on the canvas and then filled in one square each day with either a quote, her activities or her thoughts and the date. She alternated between all caps and cursive script so that the grid had a checkerboard look.

Diary, June-October 1976. Acrylic and ink markers on unstretched canvas, 103 x 54 inches.

Closeup of Diary, showing variance in handwritiing that made a checkerboard effect.


Last Drawings
In later years, Hedda suffered declines in her health that included macular degeneration. She had to stop painting in 1998 but was able to continue drawing aided by a magnifying glass and motivated by her unswerving determination and devotion to creating art. She drew hundreds of small-scale drawings in pencil, pastel and sometimes thinned Wite-Out. The drawings are untitled but dated with the date of completion.

Left: June 25, 1999, pencil and pastel on paper, 12 1/4 x 9 1/8 inches. Right: August 24, 2000, pencil and pastel on paper, 12 1/4 x 9 1/8 inches.

Untitled, May 30, 2004, pencil and pastel on paper, 12 1/4 x 9 1/8 inches.

"Sometimes I react to immediate visible reality and sometimes I am prompted by ideas, but at all times I have been moved, to paraphrase Seamus Heaney, by the music of the way things are. (One can find secret significance at the depth of the ordinary.) I believe that simplicity is an invention of man. Nature is never simple. And, the habit of careful study of the visual immediate opens our eyes to the presence of mystery in the seemingly obvious. In art the retinal, intellectual, and spiritual necessarily collaborate, alternating in importance. Art is essentially revelatory. The desire for clarity drives us....

"And through all this pervades my feeling that I am only one small speck (hardly an atom) in the uninterrupted flux of the world around me."     Based on a conversation with Sarah Eckhardt, May 30, 2004.

Hedda Sterne, ca. 1977. Photographer probably Lillian Bristol.