.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
An important later painting from her esteemed body of work, Lee Krasner’s Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first is a testament to her rigorous, self-archiving practice. This oil painting with collaged elements is grand in scale—a product of her move into her own studio. Its palette of pink, yellow, and green is verdant and surreal, like a canvas by Henri Rousseau. Collage paintings occupied the artist at various points between 1938 and 1981, and the present work is among the most arresting. In its title Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first evokes a particular date and time, but it is also a timeless exemplar of Krasner’s keen eye for color and form. It “awakens a personal sense of collage in all its senses, collective and individual, but above all appealing directly to us” (M.A. Caws, “Lee Krasner: Collage Paintings 1938–1981,” Brooklyn Rail, April 2021).
Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first is composed of oil paint with applied paper fragments, partially from Krasner’s series Primary Series: Gold Stone (1969). According to Barbara Rose, the curator of Krasner’s 1983 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the artist used the term “re-enter” to describe this incorporation of past works into her large paintings (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 157). In this period, Krasner often engaged with this retrospective self-archiving, partially a result of her relentless perfectionism. What results is, unsurprisingly, “a work of perfection” emerging from a “constant process of revision and auto-criticism” (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 157). The gold and yellow paper are like dappled sunshine. In concert with the circular, maroon forms, the angular collaged elements lend to the canvas’s dynamism, as if it were in motion. We might see this self-referentiality as postmodern, prefiguring the deconstructive impulse of the Pictures Generation. Returning to Rose, “The late collage paintings are a brilliant tour de force of balancing out antithetical elements to arrive at a believable and consistent whole that is not only more than its parts, but also, because of its internal coherence, is understood as a single, complex image” (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 150, 153). Consequently, Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first has been included in a number of important solo exhibitions, as well as reproduced extensively in the literature on Krasner.
The present work could resonate with Krasner’s Solstice Series of 1979-1981, which often incorporated collage. At the time, she frequently listened to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) as she considered the cycles of change inherent in her work, and indeed in every artist’s work. Embracing these shifts is a moment of radical honesty. Krasner therefore used her collage paintings to deepen her exploration of the medium, emotion, and the self, “I long ago asked myself what collages can do…My collages have to do with time and change, and are for me the appropriate means to express such experiences. I have other things in my head when I paint, or make new prints, or do a mosaic” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). As Krasner suggests, collage is so often a privileged medium of change, from the political art of the Dadaists, to the manipulated photographs of the Surrealists, and even Jackson Pollock’s cutouts. In Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first, Krasner expands this history within her interdisciplinary career.
Since they allowed Krasner to showcase her technical sophistication and fearlessness in the face of change, “collage compositions…were one of her favorite media” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). She considered her collage paintings to be moments of productive uncertainty that “[denote] an action going on, but not completed, and very dependent on other possibilities” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). Krasner’s allowance for her paintings to always remain living and in-process is the root of her unparalleled contribution to postwar art.
Yet there is a certainty in Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first. The powerful marks and cliff-like collaged paper engender reflection, but also play. It could be that Krasner’s desire to archive and remix her own paintings is an invitation to others to always return to their own work, however they define it, with a critical and caring eye. In Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first, time expands and contracts as the past accelerates into the future. For the only way to change is to glance backwards, which Krasner always did with optimism and never fear.
Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first is composed of oil paint with applied paper fragments, partially from Krasner’s series Primary Series: Gold Stone (1969). According to Barbara Rose, the curator of Krasner’s 1983 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the artist used the term “re-enter” to describe this incorporation of past works into her large paintings (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 157). In this period, Krasner often engaged with this retrospective self-archiving, partially a result of her relentless perfectionism. What results is, unsurprisingly, “a work of perfection” emerging from a “constant process of revision and auto-criticism” (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 157). The gold and yellow paper are like dappled sunshine. In concert with the circular, maroon forms, the angular collaged elements lend to the canvas’s dynamism, as if it were in motion. We might see this self-referentiality as postmodern, prefiguring the deconstructive impulse of the Pictures Generation. Returning to Rose, “The late collage paintings are a brilliant tour de force of balancing out antithetical elements to arrive at a believable and consistent whole that is not only more than its parts, but also, because of its internal coherence, is understood as a single, complex image” (B. Rose, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1983, p. 150, 153). Consequently, Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first has been included in a number of important solo exhibitions, as well as reproduced extensively in the literature on Krasner.
The present work could resonate with Krasner’s Solstice Series of 1979-1981, which often incorporated collage. At the time, she frequently listened to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) as she considered the cycles of change inherent in her work, and indeed in every artist’s work. Embracing these shifts is a moment of radical honesty. Krasner therefore used her collage paintings to deepen her exploration of the medium, emotion, and the self, “I long ago asked myself what collages can do…My collages have to do with time and change, and are for me the appropriate means to express such experiences. I have other things in my head when I paint, or make new prints, or do a mosaic” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). As Krasner suggests, collage is so often a privileged medium of change, from the political art of the Dadaists, to the manipulated photographs of the Surrealists, and even Jackson Pollock’s cutouts. In Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first, Krasner expands this history within her interdisciplinary career.
Since they allowed Krasner to showcase her technical sophistication and fearlessness in the face of change, “collage compositions…were one of her favorite media” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). She considered her collage paintings to be moments of productive uncertainty that “[denote] an action going on, but not completed, and very dependent on other possibilities” (J.B. Myers, “Naming Pictures: Conversations Between Lee Krasner and John Bernard Myers,” Artforum, Vol. 23, No. 3, November 1984, p. 73). Krasner’s allowance for her paintings to always remain living and in-process is the root of her unparalleled contribution to postwar art.
Yet there is a certainty in Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first. The powerful marks and cliff-like collaged paper engender reflection, but also play. It could be that Krasner’s desire to archive and remix her own paintings is an invitation to others to always return to their own work, however they define it, with a critical and caring eye. In Twelve Hour Crossing, March Twenty-first, time expands and contracts as the past accelerates into the future. For the only way to change is to glance backwards, which Krasner always did with optimism and never fear.