Abstract Expressionism in New York: Three Female Pioneers

[00:00:09]In 1942 an art exhibition opened in New York City  pairing emerging talents from America with French   giants of the art world. It was one of  those shows that would change everything, and in the process shift the art world's focus  from Paris to New York. European artists like   Georges Braque and Willem de Kooning were shown  alongside American artists like Lee Krasner   and Jackson Pollock - or as the press called him  "Jack the Dripper", who became an overnight sensation.   The movement that emerged, Abstract  Expressionism was both physically   demanding and visceral, attracting  paint-splattered macho figures.   It was a slower start for their wives, equally  brilliant artists and pioneers. The 1950s was an   era when a woman's place was in the home, and  for them it would be an uphill struggle for   recognition, financial success, and critical acclaim.  In this film we look at Abstract Expressionism,   its origins in New York City and works in  three lesser-known museums by three artists.

[00:01:43]Abstract Expressionism would emerge from a  post-war mood of anxiety and trauma. These   were artists, who like the surrealists before them,  had a profound interest in the unconscious mind.   They produced work that may have been abstract  but was also emotional expressive and universal.

[00:02:01]Despite their differences, the physical act of  painting united them. The work they produced came   straight from the gut. It was an art form that  was monumental in scale and an expression of   the individual. It would run alongside (and be  inspired by) that other great improvisational   American art form - Jazz. Then in 1951 a group of  artists including Jackson Pollock, Willem de   Kooning, and Mark Rothko, organized a group show.  It was a pivotal moment in American art that showed   the cultural landscape had changed forever. 72 artists would show including 11 women.   Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning and Helen Frankenthaler  were among them. In this period female artists were   tolerated at best and dismissed at worst. It  was however a decade of change, and there was   a simmering discontent with traditional gender  roles, and the status quo. Bohemian New York,   a hotbed of creative energy was a place where  female artists had more freedom to thrive.

[00:03:09]An opulent 50-room mansion built for financier  Felix m Warburg, became the Jewish museum in 1947,   the first in the U.S. It now houses work by Marc  Chagall, Alfred Stieglitz and several important   pieces by Lee Krasner, including this early self-portrait and a painting from her "Little Images" series.

[00:03:31]Krasner was already producing critically  acclaimed abstract art in the 1930s,   and was a significant artist long before her future  husband - Jackson Pollock - appeared on the scene.   It was around this time, she started to be aware  of being pigeonholed as a female artist.

[00:03:48]"You know, there's nothing unusual about being a woman and being an artist. It's when the "seat" moves from   Paris and shifts into New York. That's when I'm  first aware of being "a woman".   She knew everyone: Critics, collectors and artists alike.  She went dancing in jazz clubs with Piet Mondrian,   and was totally entrenched in avant-garde New York.  Then she met Jackson Pollock.

[00:04:18]In that landmark show of 1942. Pollock's paintings were shown alongside her own, and Krasner was blown away.   It is said that, without Krasner, there would never have been a Jackson Pollock. She nurtured his career and   was also responsible for introducing him to many  collectors, critics, and artists. In 1945 she married   Pollock and they moved out to Springs., Long Island,  in the hope, the isolation from New York would stop   his heavy drinking and womanizing - unfortunately it  didn't. For a while it was all about painting.  Their devotion to it, only matched by their devotion  to each other. Pollock took over a vast barn   as his studio, blasting out jazz records. Krasner  worked in a tiny bedroom. As his work got bigger   hers got smaller, and she began her breakthrough  "Little Images" series. These were paintings brimming   with energy that she improvised on her table,  or the floor, in an attempt to get away from an   "easel aesthetic". They were intimate paintings  with rich textures, she loosely structured in a grid.

[00:05:25]It is a myth that Krasner gave up her  career for Pollock, but the vast amount of time   she spent promoting Pollock's art, dealing with his  excessive drinking, and his numerous affairs, meant   her artistic output dwindled. Seen as the golden  couple of Abstract Expressionism, behind closed   doors their marriage was disintegrating. Pollock  died at the age of 44 in a drunken car crash.   He was with his lover, Ruth Kligman, who survived.  Krasner was traveling solo in Europe at the time.   After his death, Krasner moved into the barn studio and the scale and energy of her paintings changed  radically.

[00:06:02]No longer restricted to working on  small canvases she now used her whole body to   physically create huge works, that use sweeping  gestures and spontaneous brushwork in a new   free way of thinking. Her huge contribution  to Abstract Expressionism was overshadowed   for years by the work of her husband, but in her  later career she found a language all of her own.  Despite critical success, it would be another ten  years after Pollock's death before Krasner had her   first proper solo show. And in 1984 she finally got  a retrospective at the MoMA in New York.   A show she had hoped for for so many years, but by then she was using a wheelchair and was in a lot of pain.   Six months later she would be dead, but at  least by the time she went, she knew she was   already acknowledged in art history as one  of the founders of Abstract Expressionism.  "In terms of what other people think,  I can't do anything about that" The Grey Art Gallery is part of New York  University, and has a collection of over 5000 works.   As well as Pablo Picasso's monumental public  sculpture, they have pieces by Arshile Gorky (who is seen as the father of Abstract Expressionism), Sonia  Delauney, Helen Frankenthaler and Willem de Kooning.   This work by Elaine de Kooning, is a highlight.

[00:07:31]From an early age, she had seen reproductions by female artists like Rosa Bonheur and Elizabeth Vigée LeBrun, on the walls of her childhood home   In 1938, Elaine met the struggling Dutch artist  Willem de Kooning. He was 34 and she was 20.   It was said to be love at first sight, and  they married five years later. Refusing to   be defined as just "Mrs. de Kooning", she became  a political activist, an esteemed art critic,   a teacher, and a painter known for her abstract  portraits. The de Kooning's were also considered   a "golden couple", but in fact, their marriage was also  falling apart, and they separated in 1957.   A lack of success, a series of affairs on both sides, and an excess of alcohol, meant their marriage was over... for now.   This painting of a bull is on display  at the Grey Gallery. It was done a year after   they separated, following a visit to Mexican bull  fights. It is a subject of machismo we know well   via Picasso and Hemingway. The work bursts with  energy, and it places de Kooning firmly within   the Abstract Expressionist movement. She created  a series of drawings, watercolours, and paintings   of bulls, using gestural brush strokes set against  swathes of bright pastel colour fields.  These works are a great example of her gift for capturing the  essence of movement... of gesture.   VO: "I want gesture, any kind of gesture. Gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic,  the gestures of space soaring, sinking, streaming,   whirling. The gestures of light flowing or spurting through colour".

[00:09:10]Abstract Expressionism got White House "official approva"l in 1962, when she was commissioned to paint President John F Kennedy.   The new modern art form was seen by many to  parallel the energy powering JFK's "new frontier",   into a future that would take men to the moon.

[00:09:29]Her reputation for having "The fastest brush in town" came in handy, as during her sessions Kennedy's aides endlessly came and went.

[00:09:38]VO: "He was extremely restless, he read papers, talked on the phone, jotted down notes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, shifted from one arm of the chair to the other" She would paint male subjects in "provocative" poses.

[00:09:52]VO: "In the past women painted women and men always painted  the opposite sex, and I wanted to paint men as sex objects" Elaine often painted faceless men, and this  portrait she painted of her husband has barely any   face at all, just a smudge on the canvas. Perhaps  her erasure of him is "revenge by paintbrush"?.

[00:10:13]In 1976 - now sober - Elaine reconciled with Willem de  Kooning, after he reached out to her. Despite the   respect the art world had for her, her painting  career hadn't taken off, and he was now a world   famous artist. She would spend the rest of her life  caring for him and organizing his career. Although   not a household name when she died in 1989, Elaine  de Kooning's immense talent as a portraitist   was recognized in 2015, by a major exhibition  at the national portrait gallery in Washington,   and her work continues to receive critical  re-evaluation and find its place in art history.   the Brooklyn Museum was planned to be the largest  art museum in the world, but financial issues stopped that.

[00:11:02]It now houses a superb collection of American art, including Judy Chicago, Edward Hopper,   Norman Rockwell and Georgia O'Keeffe. Frankenthaler  was born to a wealthy Manhattan family and could   afford to study art from a young age. She attended  the prestigious Bennington art college in Vermont.   In 1951 Frankenthaler saw Jackson  Pollock's show at Betty Parsons Gallery.   VO:"When i saw that Pollock show, it was staggering.  I must have felt: This is where I belong"   Inspired, she took Pollock's "drip and pour"  method one step further. Like pollock she   placed the canvas on the floor and worked by  improvisation, but rather than drips and squirts,   she would thin oil paint with turpentine, to create  transparent watercolour-like washes, and make entire   pictures on raw unprimed canvas, by "staining".  Resulting in images that seem to float in space.   Using this technique, she created a work in 1952  so original, it launched a new type of painting   which became known as "Soak Stain" and made  her name. Helen Frankenthaler's breakthrough   painting, "Lorelei" is at the Brooklyn Museum. Its  emphasis on energy over composition was seen as   an innovative break from centuries of Western  painting traditions, and brought her critical   support. Frankenthaler played a crucial role in the  evolution of colour field painting, which emerged   out of the attempts by several artists in the late  1940s to devise a modern "mythic" art that would do   away with any suggestion of illustration. In her  twenties she was already considered the bridge   between the first and second generation Abstract  Expressionists. Her lover, the art critic Clement   Greenberg, introduced her to what became known as  "The New York School": Willem and Elaine de Kooning,   Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman  and Robert Motherwell - her future husband.  Unlike Krasner and de Kooning she was never overshadowed by her famous husband, and was already well   established by the time she married Motherwell  in 1958. In 1960 she had her first museum show   at the Jewish Museum, and in 1966 she represented  the U.S. at the prestigious Venice biennale,   a full 10 years before her husband took part. She  was given a Whitney Museum retrospective in 1969   and a Museum of Modern Art retrospective 20 years later. Frankenthaler is considered one of the  most important artists of our time. She took the language of Abstract Expressionism and expanded it. As an artist she influenced entire generations, and would outlive Motherwell, the de Kooning's, Krasner, and most of their friends.

[00:13:52]VO: "There's a basic vocabulary, and within that a lot of risks, a lot of hurt, a lot of joy, a lot of catharsis, a lot of guilt, and a lot of bad pictures, and a lot of radiant pictures.

[00:14:13]De Kooning, Frankenthaler, and Krasner were three  artists who refused to be pigeonholed as female artists.

[00:14:20]Unlike the male Abstract Expressionists  who took on a masculine and heroic narrative,   the work of these artists, was often described  as "feminine", "lyrical" or "delicate". Words which were   loaded and often used negatively. Krasner  reinvented herself after Pollock's death   and is shown globally, de Kooning reinvigorated  modern portraiture and Fankenthaler invented an   influential new painting technique. Commercially  it would take decades before they were seen on   the same level as their male contemporaries,  and although in their lifetime they avoided   questions about their gender, they certainly paved  the way for the next generation of female artists.   All three artists would eventually be  recognized for their crucial role in   the Abstract Expressionists, a movement that made  New York the centre of the contemporary art world.