At nearly every stage of her 15-year marriage to the universally recognized Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner was quicker to respond to stylistic innovations in the art world than her husband. Pollock either didn't catch on to the art-world developments that surrounded him or incorporated changes much later than Krasner did. Some critics read Krasner's dynamic painting style as evidence of her superiority as an artist, but others saw her porousness as a problem, and Pollock's comparative insularity as one key to his uniqueness. In Lee Krasner, Robert Hobbs gracefully analyzes the many forces--of personality, education, and cultural and political milieu--that shaped Krasner's 60-year devotion to art; in the process, he elucidates the many reasons her "artistically constructed self remains provisional."

B.H. Friedman, Pollock's first biographer, introduces the book with a gripping series of intimate, you-are-there diary entries from the long years of his friendship with the two artists. Then Hobbs weaves biography and critical interpretation to develop the main text of the book. The reproductions of Krasner's drawings and paintings (97 in color) are excellent, giving a fair picture of her long career, and there are more than a score of black-and-white archival photos of Krasner and the other early abstract expressionists. The book has a few odd omissions though, such as any reference to Mark Tobey, whose "white writing" paintings and others are so closely related stylistically to Krasner's work of the 1940s. Still, this is the respectful but objective book Krasner's vigorous work and forceful personality deserve. It sheds sympathetic light on her lifelong, intellectually rigorous, artistic questing. --Peggy Moorman


From Publishers Weekly
This impressive critical-biographical study confirms Lee Krasner (1908-1984) as one of the major abstract expressionist artists. Though heavily influenced by her husband Jackson Pollock, she challenged and eventually abandoned his style through a series of paintings that Hobbs interprets as a feminist critique of the macho-oriented art of Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and their cronies. An art history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Hobbs follows Krasner, daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, as she transforms herself from well-connected, belligerent young avant-garde painter to supportive, possessive, acquiescent wife and then to an eclectic pioneer who used her art as an intense confrontation with her subconscious. Her swirling biomorphs, jagged collages, radiant lush abstractions, mythic fragments and apocalyptic images of cities are among the works reproduced in 48 color and 67 b & w plates. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Hobbs was drawn to Lee Krasner because of her unique role as the only major woman abstract expressionist to emerge from the early years of the movement. His profile turns out to be a study in polarities. Even her appearance had a push and pull to it. She was blessed with a beautiful body--she often modeled in her youth--but a strong, almost belligerent face. This inherent contrariness contributed to the tension in her marriage to fellow painter Jackson Pollock, whose self-destructive lifestyle epitomized abstract expressionism in its initial eruption. Although better known than he when they met, Krasner sacrificed her own career to nurture his while enduring his binges and infidelities. And still another conflict, the competition between intellect and instinct as a wellspring of art, underlies much of Krasner's emotionally intense and powerfully worked paintings. By examining the strongest canvases and collages that Krasner executed at each stage of her aesthetic journey, Hobbs shows how the "theme of the self" shaped all her compositions, from the incredible complexity of her early work to the more open and flowing creations of her later years. This is a fine and important addition to the Modern Masters series. Donna Seaman


From the Publisher
This is a complete reappraisal of Lee Krasner (1908-1984), who, along with her husband, Jackson Pollock, was among the artists who launched the New York School of painting after World War II. One of the few critically recognized female Abstract Expressionists of her generation, she has emerged as an essential figure in postwar American art. This lavishly illustrated book, the companion to a major traveling exhibition, takes a fresh look at Krasner and highlights the striking originality and complexity of her work. Krasner saw her art as an open-ended exploration and a dialogue with a wide range of artistic, literary, and cultural voices. Complete with never-before-published excerpts from the diary of writer B. H. Friedman, a longtime associate of Krasner's who provides priceless insights into this pivotal period of American history, this book is essential for any art library. This book and the exhibition it accompanies were developed by Independent Curators International (ICI), a non-profit organization that creates innovative, provocative traveling exhibitions of contemporary art that have been presented in museums and university galleries worldwide. 105 illustrations, 80 in full color, 9 x 12" Robert Hobbs is Rhoda Thalhimer Professor of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has curated or co-curated more than 30 exhibitions and is the author of Abrams' Edward Hopper, among other books. B. H. FRIEDMAN is an art historian and writer who associated with the artists of the New York School. Exhibition Schedule Los Angeles County Museum of Art Oct. 10, 1999-Jan. 3, 2000 Des Moines Art Center, Iowa Feb. 26-May 21, 2000 Akron Art Museum, Ohio June 10-Aug. 27, 2000 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Oct. 6, 2000-Jan. 7, 2001

FROM THE PUBLISHER