“With the twenty-four works collectively described as The Umber Paintings (1959-62), Lee Krasner’s art came decisively into its own…in the Umbers, various forces coalesced. They exemplified Krasner’s most outstanding achievement to date, a crucial nexus, and overall high-point of her career.”
A masterwork of explosive gesture and potent emotional intent, Vigil declares Lee Krasner’s supremacy among the celebrated icons of Abstract Expressionism in twentieth century art. At once unruly and lyrical, combative and delicate, utterly expansive and intensely intimate, Krasner’s gestural ferocity within the present work is bridled only by the specificity of her virtuosic painterly touch. Painted in 1960, the present work is amongst the finest exemplars of the artist’s Umber paintings, the highly lauded series of twenty-four works that, in recent years, have risen to acclaim as the creative pinnacle of her celebrated oeuvre. Created in the years following the sudden and tragic death of her husband, Jackson Pollock, the Umbers are defined by a gestural intensity and ambition of scale unprecedented in Krasner’s earlier output; serving both as testament to and catharsis of the intensive emotional turmoil which fueled her practice at this crucial nexus, these extraordinary paintings remain the most compelling and psychologically evocative compositions of Krasner’s career.
Umber Paintings in Notable Collections
In its unavoidable psychic urgency, Vigil speaks to the pivotal juncture at which Krasner found herself at the end of 1950s; still reeling in the wake of Pollock’s fatal car crash in 1956, followed closely by her mother’s passing in 1959 and the cancellation of a planned exhibition at French & Co. that same year, Krasner plunged into a new series of paintings, her emotional turmoil serving as crucial catalyst for the Umbers. The present work was painted in Springs, East Hampton, where Krasner had moved her practice into Pollock’s former studio in the barn, the larger space enabling her to experiment on canvases significantly more ambitious than any she had used before. Reflecting upon the immediacy and enveloping potency of the Umbers, scholar Barbara Rose describes: “One is ‘in’ them, as one is ‘in’ Claude Monet’s huge pools of Water Lilies, paintings both Krasner and Pollock admired… The painting has become a place rather than an object.” (Exh. Cat. Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, 1983, p. 125) Upon the soaring canvas of the present work, Krasner’s psychic angst is translated in arcs of pigment which writhe, splatter, and dip across the canvas with a sense of untempered motion and force. As Richard Howard notes: “It seems to me that the fact that the pictures were so big suggests a willingness to project movement and even agony in its literal sense, the sense of struggle, on a very considerable scale; that you were aware that the content required such an… to which the artist supplied the term: ‘Arena.’” (Exh. Cat., New York, Robert Miller Gallery, Lee Krasner: Umber Paintings, 1959—1962, 1993, n.p.)
Krasner’s emotional turmoil at the time was such that, many nights, she found herself unable to sleep. The artist reflects: “I was going deep down into something which wasn’t easy or pleasant. In fact I painted a great many of them because I couldn’t sleep nights. I got tired of fighting insomnia and tried to paint instead.” (The artist cited in Robert Hobbs, Lee Krasner, New York, 1993, p. 151) Without daylight to illuminate her canvas as she worked, Krasner began to eliminate color from her palette, working instead within the nuanced range of amber, cream, and umber tones used in the present work; in the years since their creation, Krasner came to refer to the resulting Umber paintings as the Night Journeys. The title of the present work, Vigil, is particularly evocative of this experience, suggesting a period of watchful or contemplative wakefulness during hours typically spent asleep. Describing the impetus behind the title of the present work, Krasner reflects:
“Much—much takes place before I take my night journey. That’s why there are titles like Vigil, which has to do with being on guard at the very moment while one is descending.”
Within the seemingly frenzied melee of Vigil, essential forms and gestures appear repeatedly to create a coherent and compelling pictorial structure; from within Krasner’s layered frenzy of brushstrokes emerge the silhouettes of eyes, avian beaks, and perhaps even the suggestion of a face. Despite their raw intensity, each gestural spray of pigment within these nuanced forms is balanced and counter-balanced by its echo, testifying to the deliberateness and fierce intention with which Krasner built her triumphant masterpiece. Executed with virtuosic certainty and vigor, this painting declares the painterly confidence and technical sophistication of Krasner at the singular peak of her powers. Scholar David Anfam describes: “With the twenty-four works collectively described as The Umber Paintings (1959-62), Lee Krasner’s art came decisively into its own… in the Umbers, various forces coalesced. They exemplified Krasner’s most outstanding achievement to date, a crucial nexus, and overall high-point of her career.” (David Anfam, “Mood Umber,” in Exh. Cat., New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Lee Krasner: The Umber Paintings, 1959-1962, 2018, p. 9) Amongst the most formative forces behind the Umbers was, without question, Krasner’s confrontation of Pollock’s legacy as figurehead of the action painters and larger New York school. In its explosive physicality, Vigil invokes the full-bodied abstraction of such works as Pollock’s One: Number 31 and Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)—paintings created in the same studio in which Krasner now worked. Here, however, the spontaneity and combative force of Pollock’s signature mode is refined within the exacting terms of Krasner’s own, distinctive style; Anfam describes: “this is not Pollock’s ventriloquism as it were… but sovereign Lee Krasner at last speaking loud, clear, and often with anger.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Lee Krasner: The Umber Paintings, 1959—1962, 2018, p. 10)
Within Krasner’s refined painterly vocabulary, every bold action and delicate touch is tempered by a fluid grace that unifies the dynamism of the overall composition. Her powerful gesture advances with rhythmic certainty across the surface of Vigil, Krasner’s powerful arcs of umber pigment interwoven with sprays of cream and earth-toned pigment to create a singular, captivating image. Describing the confident authority with which Krasner approached Vigil, alongside the other large-scale masterworks of the Umber series, critic Hilton Kramer described: “This is Abstract Expressionist painting of the ‘classic’ type—all energy and struggle and outsize gesture—finally resolved in a pattern of hard-won coherence.” (Hilton Kramer cited in Exh. Cat. Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Lee Krasner: A Retrospective, 1983, p. 130)
