The modern period was characterized by massive social, economical and political upheaval, ideals of the past were denounced and traditions thrown aside in the spirit of embracing artistic experimentation. “Modern artists represented new ways of seeing, bringing forth-new ideas about the functionality of art and the nature of materials” [wiki – modern art]. I will be investigating how the careers of two pioneers of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner’s’ careers diverged in different trajectories and if society had any role to play. Using specific examples of their work I will determine if the mood of the postwar era had an influence on the art they would go on to produce and the way in which they were perceived
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Men had come home from war and assumed their superior role as the breadwinner of the family. Women became oppressed, and found it difficult if not, impossible to realize their full professional potential. Post war, in artistic terms, meant modern art, if it wasn’t new and modern it simply did not count as art. To understand modernism in an artistic context one must first understand what it was that was considered ‘new’ after World War II, in politics and art, this was ‘freedom’. A liberated Western Europe, led to a sense of emancipation from any sort system, meaning that all artists were in charge of their own style. The capitals of Europe were left in ruin, physically, economically and politically; New York was now the centre of culture and art in the new …show more content…
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Krasner embodied all that was modern at the time: liberation. Krasner, herself, represented a physical symbol of modernism; she represented a new type of woman. Unpredictable. Ambitious. Educated. “Was she, as some feminists argue, a put-upon wife who subsumed her career to a selfish virtuoso? Was she -- as she herself contends -- in a rough but rewarding marriage to a visionary who, when sober, supported her art? Or was she a charming but exploitative comer -- snaring first her genius husband, then her artistic recognition?” Krasner was undefinable; she had no interest in children, suburbia, or becoming a fully-fledged housewife. Women with ambition were an unfamiliar concept at a time when patriotism was ripe, as women had certain social obligations to fulfil. Krasner was the only female painter associated with the first generation of the artists out of the New York school, and still she was known predominately as Mrs Jackson Pollock, wife and widow of a more talented painter; an unfair synopsis for a women as equally talented and perhaps even more fascinating than her more famous husband. Lee Krasner provides an answer to the testament that there were simply so few great female artists throughout time, as her story shows, the presence of women was continual but their voices muffled, as the idea of a woman’s role within post-war society
Men had come home from war and assumed their superior role as the breadwinner of the family. Women became oppressed, and found it difficult if not, impossible to realize their full professional potential. Post war, in artistic terms, meant modern art, if it wasn’t new and modern it simply did not count as art. To understand modernism in an artistic context one must first understand what it was that was considered ‘new’ after World War II, in politics and art, this was ‘freedom’. A liberated Western Europe, led to a sense of emancipation from any sort system, meaning that all artists were in charge of their own style. The capitals of Europe were left in ruin, physically, economically and politically; New York was now the centre of culture and art in the new …show more content…
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Krasner embodied all that was modern at the time: liberation. Krasner, herself, represented a physical symbol of modernism; she represented a new type of woman. Unpredictable. Ambitious. Educated. “Was she, as some feminists argue, a put-upon wife who subsumed her career to a selfish virtuoso? Was she -- as she herself contends -- in a rough but rewarding marriage to a visionary who, when sober, supported her art? Or was she a charming but exploitative comer -- snaring first her genius husband, then her artistic recognition?” Krasner was undefinable; she had no interest in children, suburbia, or becoming a fully-fledged housewife. Women with ambition were an unfamiliar concept at a time when patriotism was ripe, as women had certain social obligations to fulfil. Krasner was the only female painter associated with the first generation of the artists out of the New York school, and still she was known predominately as Mrs Jackson Pollock, wife and widow of a more talented painter; an unfair synopsis for a women as equally talented and perhaps even more fascinating than her more famous husband. Lee Krasner provides an answer to the testament that there were simply so few great female artists throughout time, as her story shows, the presence of women was continual but their voices muffled, as the idea of a woman’s role within post-war society