Essay : Cubism and Abstract Expressionism: the work of Sonia Terk-Delaunay and Lee Krasner
Compare and contrast two artistic movements and the work of practitioners associated with those movements.
Cubism and Abstract Expressionism :
the work of Sonia Terk-Delaunay and Lee Krasner
‘We painted out of necessity, to express ourselves,
not giving a damn about money or what people might say’
— Sonia Terk-Delaunay, 1966 (Montfort, 2014)
‘Painting is not separate from life. It is one. It is like asking — do I want to live?
My answer is yes — and I paint’
— Lee Krasner, 1960 (Sotheby’s, 2019)
. . .
Sonia Terk-Delaunay (1885–1979) and Lee Krasner (1908–1984) embodied modernism not only in their work, but in their lives. If one expressed her art through every aspect of her life, the other dedicated every aspect of her life to her art. And both were revolutionary as a result.
While Cubism took an analytical approach to painting, seeking to free itself from literal representation, the artists labelled ‘abstract expressionists’ sought something more spontaneous. They took the next step, from thinking about art and what it made possible, towards making art of thought itself.
These are art movements born in times of unprecedented social, political and cultural change; reflecting the need for art to make a place for itself that went beyond decoration. In a world torn apart by war and economic devastation, abstraction gave a means of examining human purpose; of capturing joy and pain in their purest sense; of trying to understand a world that is in so many ways beyond comprehension.
. . .
Perhaps the greatest catalyst for change and the emerging ‘movements’ in twentieth century Western art comes from the very literal movement of people. The mass migration of Jewish people fleeing oppression in Czarist Russia; combined with the Industrial Revolution and the advent of rail travel made the cities of Europe cosmopolitan melting pots of culture, which were further stirred by war and revolution and the resulting displacement of artists and intellectuals deemed ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and driven to seek sanctuary in America.
Orphism — the offshoot of Cubism which Sonia, together with her husband Robert Delaunay, pioneered in pre-war Paris — could not have happened without this conjoining of cultures. Born to a modest Jewish family in the Ukraine, raised by wealthy relatives in St Petersburg, with whom she enjoyed summers at their house in Finland and trips to Europe, Sonia Terk was already cosmopolitan by any standards before she moved to Germany, age 18, and then to Paris, to seek her artistic education. Marrying art dealer Wilhelm Uhde to avoid her family’s demand that she return to Russia, she nevertheless brought her Russian identity to every aspect of her work.
Meeting and falling in love with Robert Delaunay when their work was shown together at Galerie Norte-Dame-des-Champs, in a group exhibition alongside Braque, Picasso, Derain, Dufy, Metzinger and Pascin, (Tate Publishing, 2014) Robert was inspired by the knowledge and love of colour Sonia brought from her experience of the vibrant colours and fabrics of Russian village crafts.
Where the Cubism of Picasso and Braque sought to capture the world in its purest forms of planes of light and shade, the Delaunays saw those planes in terms of colour. And it is interesting how well the geometric shapes and patterns lent themselves to Sonia Delaunay’s wider interests in needlework. Where Picasso experimented with collage, Terk-Delaunay played in quilting and patchwork, transforming herself into what her husband described as ‘a living sculpture’. (Tate, 2015) This was a time when art and industry were collaborating as never before and Terk-Delaunay took full advantage of the new production techniques which meant her studies in colour could spill out across everything from scarves to swimwear, home furnishings to car design, stage sets to nightclub interiors.
And the Delaunays brought together not only colours with their vision of ‘simultanism’ but also people. Their soirées and salons were the vibrant heart of the Paris art scene at the time. The introduction of electric light brought the city to life at night as never before, and the Delaunays embraced its every opportunity.
“I liked electricity. Public lighting was a novelty. At night, during our walks, we entered the era of light, arm in arm.” — Sonia Delaunay (cited Willette, 2017)
‘Halos’ of light are seen in the arcs of colour that dance through Terk-Delaunay’s work; and her talent for collaboration is epitomised in La Prose du Transibérien at de la petite Jeanne de France (Delaunay, 1913) — a two-metre-long concertina-folded ‘poem-painting’ published in 1913 with avant-garde poet Blaise Cendrars and described by Guillaume Apollinaire as ‘a first attempt at written simultaneity where colour contrasts caused the eye to become accustomed to reading an entire poem at one glance’ (cited Rousseau, 2014). The original held by Tate lacks the vibrancy seen in reproductions, but close study gives the opportunity to appreciate the techniques employed to capture the poet’s memories of travelling the Trans-Siberian express. Panels of colour shudder across the page like a landscape seen from a speeding train window; the journey perhaps begins in darkness and passes through sunrises and sunsets; there is the sensation of tunnels thundered through and of course the Eiffel Tower — iconic to the Delaunays — signalling journey’s end. The choices of colour in the text that runs parallel in places make the words illegible: pale yellows and pinks form impressionistic blocks. This is an experience to be absorbed, rather than a poem to be pondered word by word. ‘Not images, or objects in the traditional sense, but colours, lines, sensations, feelings. Pure inspiration.’ Sonia Delaunay (cited Rousseau, 2014)
. . .
At first sight, the work and life of Lee Krasner could not be more different.
Where the Delaunays formed the heart of Parisian cultural society, on her marriage to Jackson Pollock, Krasner devised a retreat from the Downtown Greenwich art Scene, to Springs Long Island, in an attempt to save her tortured genius of a husband from himself. Far from collaborating — with Pollock working at huge scale on the floor of their barn, Krasner painted to the size dictated by the bedroom table-top that was her studio. And yet by all accounts theirs was a relationship of mutual encouragement and inspiration — and, just like Sonia Delaunay, Lee Krasner was the entrepreneur, who worked out how to make a living from art; and both supported husbands more given to drinking and fast cars than hard work.
There is, perhaps, their shared heritage at play here. Like Terk-Delaunay, Krasner was Ukrainian-Jewish by birth. And while neither practiced their faith, they shared a work ethic with the Jewish social structure in which women traditionally worked to support their scholarly husbands. But neither was traditional. In addition to what Krasner described as ‘holding down the house’ (Archives of American Art, 1964) they were prolific and talented artists who changed the face of art — through their own work, through the generous support they gave to artists around them; and through their indomitable innovations in the ‘business’ of art.
Krasner once said she married Pollock ‘to become an artist’ (Cooke, 2019). In truth, she was born an artist: and, like Terk-Delaunay, she worked hard from childhood to become one. Krasner describes the experience of attending the first MoMa exhibition of European art and seeing the work of Picasso and Matisse first-hand as ‘like a bomb going off’ (Archives of American Art 1964). From trying to conform to the dictates of the American Academy of Art, she was liberated into the tenets of Abstraction. Her second ‘bombshell’ moment came with encountering the work of Jackson Pollock. She had struggled for so long to win the approval of the Art Establishment, and here was a man from Wyoming who dared to reject everything she had been striving towards.
. . .
Both Krasner and Terk-Delaunay talk of the ‘mystery’ of colour, and it is interesting to compare their work against a background of how their use of colour was affected by their environment at the time. The Delaunays shared a fascination with electric light and the colours it revealed. Both Pollock and Krasner were inspired by the natural light of Long Island. Krasner describes Pollock noticing an ‘opening’ in her work of that time; there is a freedom of movement, a boldness of stroke, and a brightness of colour brought to an abrupt end by his sudden death in 1946.
Her mother died in 1949, and suffering from debilitating insomnia, Krasner began painting at night. The series which resulted have been dubbed ‘the umber paintings’ or ‘the night paintings’ — gestural, physical works on a scale larger than any she’d made before. “I worked at night, and I don't like to deal with color in artificial light”. (Archives of American Art, 1968). Where electric light brought rainbow hues to Terk-Delaunay’s palette, it reduced those on Krasner’s to the muted tones of the Cubists.
Where Prose is a poem ‘saturated with light’, Gothic Landscape (1961) was painted in darkness.
The two pieces encapsulate the difference in attitude between the two artists — looking at the body of work each created in her lifetime, it is clear to see Terk-Delaunay’s single-minded focus on the impact to be made with colour; while Krasner’s own evaluation of her career points to clear ‘breaks’ in her work. Terk-Delaunay’s experiments were with media; Krasner’s with the different ways that paint — and oil paint in particular — could be used to express all she wanted to communicate.
. . .
And yet, Krasner’s description of herself as ‘I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent . . .’ (Hessel, 2022) or MoMa’s assessment of her as ‘a force of nature, always pushing abstraction forwards’ (MoMa, 2023) could equally be said of Terk-Delaunay.
If their husbands, through untimely death, have become synonymous with the art movements of their lifetime; Sonia Terk-Delaunay and Lee Krasner are exciting because of the connections they made, the theories they explored, the evolution of their work over time.
Connected with some of the most exciting moments in twentieth century western art history; both were women who understood the business of art, who made their living through art, and made art their life. Modernists rather than feminists, who wanted to embody a world where gender was immaterial, and what mattered above all was art.
___
Bibliography
Archives of American Art, Oral History interviews with Lee Krasner 1964 Nov. 2-1968 Apr. 11
https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_214115
Cooke, R, Guardian (12 May 2019), Reframing Lee Krasner, the artist formerly known as Mrs Pollock
Delaunay, Sonia (1913) La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France [Watercolour and relief print on parchment]. Tate Modern, London
Hessel, K (2022) The Story of Art Without Men, Cornerstone, London
Krasner, Lee (1961) Gothic Landscape [Oil paint on canvas]. Tate Modern, London
Moma (2023) Lee Krasner
Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/3240 (accessed 16.02.23)
Montfort, Anne, ‘Le Vierge,le vivace at le bel aujord’hui’, Sonia Delaunay, Tate Publishing London (2014)
Roussea, P, ‘Voyelles’: Sonia Delaunay and the universal language of colour hearing, Sonia Delaunay, Tate Publishing (2014)
Sotheby’s (2019) Lee Krasner from the Depths of Despair to the Height of Her Career. Available at:
https://www.sothebys.com/en/videos/lee-krasner-from-the-depths-of-despair-to-the-height-of-her-career (accessed: 16.02.23)
Tate (2015) ‘We Will go Right up to the Sun’ Available at:
https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-33-spring-2015/we-will-go-right-sun (accessed: 16.02.23)
Willette, Jeanne (May 12, 2017) The Delaunays, Robert and Sonia, Between the Wars Available at: https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/the-delaunays-robert-and-sonia-between-the-wars/ (Accessed: 16.02.23)
Willette, Jeanne (Aug 16, 2019) Cubism as Applied Design: Sonia Terk-Delaunay Available at: https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/cubism-as-applied-design-sonia-terk-delaunay/ (Accessed: 16.02.23)
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