October 26, 2026, Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Zachary Fine’s “Double Vision,” a review of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous. Fine loves it. He says it’s “probably, canvas for canvas, the best painting show in America this year.” He provides an excellent capsule history of the Krasner-Pollock relationship, including Pollock’s creation of his now famous drip paintings. Fine says of them, 

The frozen velocity of paint whipped across a canvas suggested a new visual metaphor for intensity, aggression, violence, virility, force, energy, music, and ecstasy, a more efficient representation than any previous word or picture had managed.

I love Pollock’s “drips,” particularly One: Number 31, 1950. In November, 2000, I was in Rankin Inlet, a remote Inuit hamlet on the western shore of Hudson Bay, for a meeting. I was staying at the Siniktarvik Hotel. In the lobby, next to the reception desk, there was a post card rack. The rack was empty except for one card. I looked at it. The front of it was very strange - splatters of white, mauve, and pink on a purple background. Printed on the back was a reproduction of Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950 with a caption underneath: “Jackson Pollock, United States, 1912-1956, One: Number 31, 1950. Note card © 1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York.” I was surprised and elated to find this bit of modernism so far from its source. I bought it immediately. It’s one of my favourite possessions. I have it here with me as I type this. 

Reading Fine’s wonderful piece, I was delighted by his description of encountering One: Number 31, 1950 at the Met show. He writes,

Standing just two feet away from “One,” I felt the wonderful disorientation that comes from looking at a Pollock: the disruption of a horizontal image by the memory of its vertical process. The frenzy of black, white, and turquoise fills your gaze with a completely weightless and floating image, just as you notice how every rope and droplet of paint has been pulled down by gravity into the fabric. Your mind’s eye is standing on the wall, but you’re still here, on the ground.

That “frenzy of black, white, and turquoise fills your gaze” is very good. Pollock’s “drips” are not easy to describe. I’m not sure what the front of my postcard has to do with One: Number 31, 1950. The colours don’t match the painting. That’s okay. The back definitely shows One: Number 31, 1950. It’s one of my touchstones. I'm pleased to see Fine mention it.

Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950

However, Fine’s main focus is not Pollock; it’s Krasner, as well it should be. Her paintings are amazing! Her Bald Eagle (1955) is a masterpiece. Fine reports an interesting fact about it: 

The most provocative move is in “Bald Eagle” (1955), with fragments cut right out of a Pollock drip painting and packed into a mosaic—Krasner reclaiming her husband’s free-form mark with a blade. 

My favourite Krasner is The Seasons (1957). Fine says of it,

Filled with magnified pink and green foliate shapes, it’s like pressing your face into a basket of flowers or ripe fruit; the painting doesn’t turn inward to mourn but rather outward to nature. 

Fine concludes his piece beautifully:

At the Met, one gets the impression that Pollock was a fascinating passenger whom Krasner picked up, travelled with for fifteen years, and kept talking to even once he was gone. After all, they were painters in love. They poured themselves into each other, and the show makes it impossible to think of them apart. 

A perfect ending to a perfect review. 

Lee Krasner, The Seasons (1957)