Pollock & Krasner: Two Worlds Colliding

The complicated, pivotal, tumultuous love story

    26 
    Click to Favorite
    Click to Share
Published

Oct 26, 2018

Featured artists

Jackson Pollock

Frida Kahlo

Diego Rivera

Lee Krasner

(To see some of Pollock and Krasner’s work juxtaposed, explore our playlist.)

The story has been told before—in different places, at different times, starring different people. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Willem and Elaine de Kooning (née Fried). Josef and Anni Albers (née Fleischmann). Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Artist marries artist. The man’s legacy continues, often with the help of the woman; the woman’s legacy becomes an appendage, often due to helping the man. (Historical revision is never too late, as seen by the recent Frida Kahlo revival.) But it’s never as easy as the narrative suggests. These are artists after all, their lives complicated, complex, contradictory.

UntitledLee Krasner
  • Click to Add to playlist
  • Click to Favorite

Born in Brooklyn in 1908, Lee Krasner was always meant to be an artist. With prodigious talent and limitless passion, she studied at the Woman’s Art School of Cooper Union, and then the prestigious National Academy of Design. (As the story goes, the jury didn’t believe at first that someone as young as she was, 21, could have produced the work she submitted with her application—a self portrait done en plein air). She started to study and love the nascent modern art movement. (The Museum of Modern Art had just opened in 1929, a revolutionary experiment that captured the hearts of Krasner and her cohorts.) In 1935, to support herself, she joined the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. It wasn’t her bag—the public wasn’t ready for the sort of abstraction she sought, and she mostly worked as an assistant to other artists—but it paid the bills. She then studied under Hans Hofmann, using his knowledge of technique and theory to explore neo-cubism, still lifes, and fauvism. She joined the American Abstract Artists, an avant-garde group with the mission of making abstract art publicly acknowledged and appreciated. Through this group she met many of the day’s luminaries, each with their own idea of what abstract art could be: Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Arshile Gorky among them. But her appreciation of the their angular geometric work would eventually fade—when she met Jackson Pollock.

Number 28Jackson Pollock
  • Click to Add to playlist
  • Click to Favorite

The two first came into contact in 1942, when they were both featured in a group show at the McMillen Gallery. He was the only name on the list of featured artists she didn’t know, and, being Lee Krasner, this bothered her greatly. He was handsome, riveting, and talented—and there was undeniable magnetism between the two. Born in Wyoming in 1912, the youngest of five sons, Pollock would move around a bit, living in Arizona and California before he moved to New York City with his brother Charles (also an artist), in 1930. It was here that Pollock studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Arts Students League. As admired as Benton was, his regionalist subject matter wasn’t right for Pollock. His education would prove useful, but Pollock needed to be taken in a new direction, one which he had no clue of yet.

The result of Pollock and Krasner meeting, however consequential it became for his career, immediately affected hers. She could no longer continue with cubism or anything of the sort. For years she couldn’t work, couldn’t reconcile the vision Pollock imbued on her with the foundations of her education. What she did produce she usually destroyed.

UntitledLee Krasner
  • Click to Add to playlist
  • Click to Favorite

Pollock, in turn, learned from Krasner’s art school training and knowledge of avant-garde styles and theories. He also benefited from her social skills and networking ability. Though they met at a relatively stable time for him, Pollock was a severe alcoholic; drink was a crutch he often used to get through social situations. In 1945, when he eventually fell down the well again—which was, it seemed, inevitable—she was there to fix things. Krasner convinced him to move out to East Hampton, far away from downtown bars and everything else. They purchased a farmhouse with money loaned from Peggy Guggenheim and set up their studios. (A connection Pollock likely wouldn’t have forged on his own, without the prudence of Krasner.) It was here that Pollock developed his infamous “drip” style. There was no looking back.

Approaching the middle of the century, America became ready to embrace abstraction, especially Pollock and Krasner’s form of it, Abstract Expressionism. In a 1949 issue of Life magazine, he was featured with the headline, “Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” In fact, Pollock felt queasy about the article, and how it might corrupt his principles. If it weren’t for Krasner, he might not have accepted it. Maybe he knew what was coming. He couldn’t handle success, the isolation it brought, the jealousy, the criticism. Pollock struggled to maintain confidence in his painting. During this time he leaned even more heavily on Krasner for affirmation and emotional stability. Even with her endless support he seemed to be destructing from within. Suddenly, he abandoned his drip style.

Number 34Jackson Pollock
  • Click to Add to playlist
  • Click to Favorite

It wasn’t long before the story played out in the expected ways—the alcoholism worsened, infidelity began, he endured a long winding spiral down that ended only in death, on August 11, 1956, a single-car crash. One of the other passengers, Edith Metzger, died with him. Ruth Kligman, his mistress, survived.

Krasner dedicated the rest of her life to continuing Pollock’s legacy, overseeing his estate (much as she did while he was alive). But she was always an artist, and heartbreak wouldn’t stop her from working. In fact, her art became even more complex, and, eventually, acknowledged. Her “Earth Green Series,” though started before Pollock’s death, reflects the complex emotions that followed it. As the years went by she would continue to evolve, passing through her “Umber Series” and “Primary Series,” along with a few false starts. Finally, in the second half of the 1960s, as the world became more attuned to feminism, critics finally started to pay her mind.

Self-PortraitLee Krasner
  • Click to Add to playlist
  • Click to Favorite

It’s impossible to see the work of either artist without keeping the other in mind. They had separate studios, and wanted their careers to be considered distinct. But in their art—a collection full of refined spontaneity—the (perhaps too easy) story percolates: There was an artist who led too wild of a life. There was another who had been too refined. What we’re left with today is the result of those two worlds colliding.

For further reading, look no further than the comprehensive Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel, which covers Krasner and four other leading women artists during one of the most influential periods in modern art.

Featured Playlist

Pollock & Krasner: Two Worlds Colliding

57 
Click to Favorite
Send to Meural