1 Minute 1 Work: Abstract No. 2
Eleanor Nairne
Abstract No. 2, 1947, is a deceptively intricate painting from Lee Krasner’s ‘Little Image’ series. In this HENI Talk, Barbican Curator Eleanor Nairne unpacks the ‘rhythms’ of this small but lively painting.
These are really jewel-like things to look at.
She’s often making them with the canvas placed directly on a table working in oil predominantly, a little bit of enamel, thinning down the paint with turpentine, creating these pulsing ‘Little Images’.
Abstract No. 2 is my favourite within this series. At first we’re struck by the darkness, by the depth of the black. Then the eye understands that there’s blue beneath. It has this very fine tracery with accents of red and yellow. It has a rhythm to it in terms of the build-up of mark making.
Krasner was very interested in jazz, and in bebop and boogie woogie, and we know that she went to the Café Society Uptown, and she’d go dancing with Mondrian. She’d sometimes speak about this in relation to her work. In Abstract No. 2, you really feel the mark making being like aleatory notes.
With thanks to
Barbican Centre
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York
Filmed on the occasion of Lee Krasner: Living Colour
Barbican Art Gallery, 30 May – 1 September 2019
Archive
Getty Images
Music
Audio Network
Credits
Abstract No. 2 (detail)
Lee Krasner, 1947
IVAM Centre, Spain
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Stop and Go
Lee Krasner, 1949-1950
Private Collection
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Shattered Colour
Lee Krasner, 1947
Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Composition
Lee Krasner, 1949
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Gift of the Aaron E. Norman Fund Inc., 1959, 1959-31-1
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Untitled (Little Image)
Lee Krasner, 1950
Collection of halley k harrisburg and Michael Rosenfield, New York
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Untitled
Lee Krasner, 1946
Collection of Bobbi and Walter Zifkin
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Untitled
Lee Krasner, 1947
Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Untitled
Lee Krasner, 1948-1949
Private collection
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Black and White Squares, No. 1
Lee Krasner, 1948
Private collection
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Squeezing Black Oil Paint from a Tube on to an Art Palette
Hoptocopter / Getty Images
Adding Black
www.filmsbyben.com / Getty Images
Paint can
South_agency / Getty Images
1966 Jazz musicians in Times Square club
Anthony Garetti / Getty Images
Art Tatum playing piano, 1943
The March of Time / Getty Images
Crowds waiting outside of the Café Society Uptown
Sam Shere / Getty Images
A crowd of people is held back on the sidewalk under an awning in front of the Cafe Society Uptown nightclub
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) / International Center of Photography
People dance to rock and roll music in a dance hall
BBC Motion Gallery Editorial / Getty Images
The Harlem Hep Cats dance the jive and the jitterbug at the Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden, 1941
BBC Editorial / Getty Images
Jazz musicians playing, 1946
The March of Time / Getty Images
‘Lee Krasner: Living Colour’, Barbican Art Gallery, 30 May – 1 September 2019
Robert G. Edelman, ‘Krasner’s “Little Image” paintings’, Artnet
‘Lee Krasner, Untitled, 1949’, MoMA
Molly Tresadern, ‘The Women Artists Obscured by their Husbands’, Art UK, 14 November 2017
Recently Watched
Watch Next Video
Brian Clarke: The Art of Light
Brian Clarke: The Art of Light 13:02 mins
A portrait of pioneering architectural artist Brian Clarke.
Gerhard Richter: Doubt
Gerhard Richter: Doubt 12:00 mins
‘He disturbed my sense of what art should be.’ — Robert Storr on Gerhard Richter
Cézanne: ‘The Father of Modern Art’
Cézanne: ‘The Father of Modern Art’ 14:15 mins
Jacky Klein discusses how a recluse from the French countryside became the first Modern painter.