Lecture
Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and A New Concept of Nature

Gail Levin (Distinguished Professor of Art History, City University of New York)
Wednesday, March 14th, 5:30 pm
Room 301, Building No. 10, Sophia University, Yotsuya [Access]
Language: English
Free and open to all

This lecture will examine Lee Krasner’s love of Nature and demonstrate how her understanding of Nature was transformed when she met Jackson Pollock. Instead of recording what she observed of Nature, she began to express what she experienced of Nature. Other significant influences on Krasner and Pollock—from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Zen Buddhism—are discussed. This presentation will also explore the impact of Zen on Harold Rosenberg, one of the major critics of abstract expressionist painting, a topic, which has not received sufficient attention.

About the speaker:
Gail Levin has published widely in twentieth-century American art history, Jewish Studies, Women’s Studies, and American Studies. Her recent publications include Lee Krasner: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 2011) and Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist (New York, Harmony Books, February 2007). She was formerly curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and guest curator for many international exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery. She has frequently lectured in Japan. This trip is on the occasion of a conference in Okayama on the artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi, who emigrated to New York from there in 1906 at the age of seventeen.