Free Lee Krasner by Gail Levin Page A

teacher in composition, and a few friends that I made, I surely would have gone out of my mind in that completely sterile atmosphere of permanently congealed mediocrity.” 12
    Slobodkina was an immigrant on a student visa, so she had to sign in at the academy but was so disgusted with the school that she did little more than that. “When Mr. Hinton came to give me his ‘criticism,’” she recalled, “I patiently waited for him to slick up a few spots on my far-from-inspired work while mumbling something about light and shade, and flowing line. The poor, old, doddering cherub knew no more what the real art of drawing was about than the school janitor. Yet he was there for years and years, ruining countless young, fresh, promising talents.” 13
    Slobodkina was from Siberia, where her father managed a Rothschild-owned oil enterprise. Before arriving at the academy, she had trained in art and become familiar with modernism in Russia. Though she later won an Honorable Mention for Composition in 1932, Slobodkina quickly became disillusioned with the school’s conservatism, as would some of the other more adventuresome students including Krasner, Herbert Ferber, Giorgio Cavallon, Byron Browne, and Ilya Bolotowsky—all destined to make names for themselves.
    When Krasner was finally able to present her self-portrait to the appointed committee, they judged it so fine that they didn’t believe it was done outdoors. “When you paint a picture inside, don’t pretend it’s done outside,” they admonished her. 14 The committee chair, Raymond Perry Rodgers Neilson, a well-knownportrait artist, then forty-two, scolded, “That’s a dirty trick you played.” 15
    Nevertheless Krasner preferred him over Hinton. “It was no use my protesting, but he passed me anyway—on probation! At this time I had not seen any French painting; I had simply tried to paint what I saw. His reaction was very shocking to me. But now I suppose I must have seemed to him like some smart-aleck kid trying to imitate the French and show them all up. And I assume now they were all worried by the French.” 16 In interviews years later, Krasner made much of being admitted on probation. But the catalogue stated: “All new students are admitted on probation” with advancement only by producing appropriate work.
    Academy records document that Krasner was promoted to “Life in Full” for a one-month “trial” as of January 26, 1929. 17 “Life in Full” referred to leaving plaster casts behind to draw full-time from a live model. A related Self-Portrait survives in pencil and sepia watercolor on paper. To create the work, she glanced back over her shoulder into a mirror; her short haircut suggests that she created this work around the time of her outdoor oil self-portrait. Krasner explained that she had done a series of self-portraits, “not because I was fascinated with my image but because I was the one subject that would stand still at my convenience.” 18 After her promotion, her record card for that first year reveals that someone drew a line through Hinton’s name, as she dropped out of his dreaded class. Instead the name “Neilson,” who taught the desired “Life Drawing and Painting” on Tuesday and Friday mornings, was written in. 19
    Krasner’s outspokenness would keep getting her into trouble. A note on her record card states, “This student is always a bother—locker key paid—but no record of it on record—insists upon having own way despite School Rules.” Krasner was very much a product of her Jewish immigrant culture. Growing up in a large impoverished family and having to fend for herself had made her into a fierce defender of her rights—as she saw them.Furthermore, it had been necessary for her to look out for herself in the poverty-stricken immigrant communities in Brooklyn, where anti-Semitic