Semester Two | Week Six : Essay Writing

This week I wrote an essay on Cubism/Orphism, Abstract Expressionism and the work of Sonia Delaunay and Lee Krasner.

The greatest challenge was deciding what to leave out . . . I found excellent primary sources that gave me fascinating insight into the lives, philosophy and practice of the two women. Although I wasn’t able to track down a copy of Sonia Delaunay’s autobiography, I found a site with extensive extracts and had access to a wealth of research from Tate Publishing’s Exhibition catalogue. There are mesmerising interviews with Lee Krasner available to watch online and the transcript from her conversations with Dorothy Seckler, reviewing the body of her work for the Archive of American Art, are packed with insights.

In my first draft I covered the history of the two art movements, at the expense of exploring the impact made by the work of the artists themselves . . . Like Lee Krasner cutting up her old work to make something new, I started from scratch, revisited my gallery notes, made a new mindmap, and rewrote the essay in a more fluid style to try and capture their inspiring careers ― as Lee Krasner says ‘we broke the ground’.

I chose the paintings I wrote about because they were the works I could experience in person. But I wonder if it would have been more powerful to look at these self portraits, both painted as young women before their lives as artists had really begun; and explore what they foreshadow of that future. For instance, Lee Krasner apparently named ‘Gothic Landscape’ (some years after painting it) for the trees in the background of this self portrait, which she painted to apply for her place at art school (they didn’t believe that she had been outdoors . . .) So many good stories!