ABSTRACT
The study of gender is meant as part of a social history of art still in the making, a history whose efforts will not best be spent adjudicating influence, or establishing claims of priority and territory vis-a-vis the various technical and symbolic strategies of Abstract Expressionist painting. In Krasner's case that effort first involves attention to a phenomenon that might be called "the myth of L.K." The phrase is meant to invoke not only Krasner's habitual neutered signature of the 1940s and 1950s but also her androgynous nom de guerre, and in even more general terms, her self-consciousness about her name and the stereotypes it might automatically call into play. The essence of Krasner's art, as she worked through the implications of Pollock's break with Cubism, seems to be its refusal to produce a self in painting.
