The Eye is the First Circle was one of the first paintings I ever saw by Lee Krasner. The title and concept has resonated with me ever since so I was curious to learn more about her in this exhibition at the Barbican.
Her huge abstract expressionist canvases have room to breathe in the downstairs galleries while her earlier figurative work, including her life drawing, was upstairs, showing the traditional charcoals,
moving through the influence of cubism
to more expressionistic canvases
The range of work was encouraging: she liked to disrupt styles and media to renew her energy as an artist,
destroying previous work on more than one occasion to create something new. This process can often happen for an artist but isn’t always shown as bodies of work can be very different according to their concerns at any particular time.
Look out for the crackling on some of her oil paintings – a byproduct of age but I love the delicacy of them.
The film of interview extracts at the end is fascinating: when asked what her husband, Jackson Pollock was doing at a particular time her response was “I have no idea; I had my own problems”.
