Art: Bursting Out of the Shadows

Pollock's widow, Lee Krasner, stuns with controlled anger

At 75, Lee Krasner is finally getting her due, and the power of received ideas in American taste is so strong that not too many people sense what the due is. Everyone, of course, has heard of her late husband, Jackson Pollock, the mythic hero (one still reads such inflationary phrases) of abstract expressionism. But Krasner's painting is less well known, the proof being that she is only now getting her first full retrospective. Curated by Art Historian Barbara Rose, it opened late last month at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts: 152 paintings...