by Gail Levin
After receiving the book, Krasner wrote herself a note: “I want to talk about my self destruction my disgust & stupidity—(waiting—paralysis) waiting—& trapped by…Zen & the mastery of Archery…began to breathe more easily & dove in—point I made about painting—let it come to me.”71 In her desperate search for inner peace in the face of Pollock’s turmoil, Lee had been thinking about Zen concepts.
Krasner’s fear was surely related to the disquieting presence in the painting she was working on in the summer of 1956: “The painting disturbed me enormously and I called Jackson to look at it. He assured me it was a good painting, and said not to think about it, just continue—do another one. Not tie into what my reaction to it was, the way I was doing.”72
Krasner ignored Pollock’s suggestion that she remove the disembodied eye scratched onto the dark upper right corner of the composition. The painting, which she later titled Prophecy, always chilled her: “In that sense the painting becomes an element of the unconscious—as one might bring forth a dream.”73 Even Eleanor Ward, upon seeing the painting before it was ready, commented, “God, that’s scary.”74 Krasner described this canvas as “a break in color as well as imagery” and said, “I think I felt when I did the painting, it was Prophecy, as it was a new theme.”75 Alfonso Ossorio recognized how significant this canvas was and purchased it.
Meanwhile Pollock’s reputation was carrying him along, even though he was no longer productive. In May, the Museum of Modern Art told Pollock that he would be featured in a solo midcareer show of twenty-five works, the first of a series of shows of “Work in Progress.” That June Pollock said in an interview, “I don’t care for ‘abstract expressionism’…and it’s certainly not ‘nonobjective,’ and not ‘nonrepresentational’ either. I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you’re painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. We’re all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I’ve been a Jungian for a long time…. Painting is a state of being…. Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”76 By this time, however, Pollock had serious doubts as to what he was.
Hoping to cheer up Pollock, Krasner invited Charlotte Park and Jim Brooks for dinner on June 18, 1956. Charlotte wrote in her journal, “Went to Pollocks for dinner last night. Had invited them here but Jackson’s going through another bad spell…. Jackson is in bad shape but went to bed about a half-hour and when he got up was much more coherent.”77
Back in New York, at the Cedar Bar, Pollock ran into Audrey Flack, an ambitious young painter then just twenty-five, who recalls seeing him earlier at the Artists Club on Ninth Street. Flack recalls that she went to the Cedar alone, hoping to meet her heroes, including Pollock, de Kooning, and Kline. When Pollock approached her at the bar, however, she describes how he tried “to grab me, physically grab me—pulled my behind—and burped in my face…. He was so sick, the idea of kissing him—it would be like kissing a derelict on the Bowery.”78 She was so appalled that she never again visited the Cedar.
Shortly after her encounter with Pollock, Flack met Ruth Kligman, a stunningly beautiful young woman who had just moved to the city from New Jersey and was working for $25 a week as an assistant at the obscure Collector’s Gallery. When Kligman asked her for the names of important artists she should meet, Flack replied, “Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, or Bill de Kooning.” “She asked which one was the most important,” Flack recalled, “and I said Pollock; that’s why she started with him. She went right to the bar and made a beeline for Pollock. Ruth had a desperation and a need.”79 She was a “star-fucker,” commented Flack, using the word “star” as a noun and object of the verb.80
Accounts have variously described Kligman as endowed with “an Elizabeth Taylor aspect” and as “coquettish” during the time she ensnared Pollock at the Cedar.81 Patsy Southgate said that she and Jackson “talked a lot about Ruth and we talked a lot about Lee; he was very excited about Ruth and terribly afraid of Lee, desperately afraid of Lee…. He viewed the whole thing as an amazing adventure; he wondered if he could pull it off with Lee, keep Ruth going along. Like a little boy, his dream was to have both.”82
Ruth was “an art bobby-soxer,” said Carol Braider, who had showed Krasner’s work at her House of Books and Music. “As for the ‘Lee doesn’t understand me’ line he handed out, most of us would say, ‘Oh fuck off, Jackson!’”83 B. H. Friedman, who met with both Krasner and Kligman during this period, described Lee as “lively, talkative, gregarious” and Kligman as someone who told Pollock in his dissipation that he was “still alive.”84 Ossorio considered Pollock’s relationship with Ruth to be “pathetic…a young girl throwing herself at his feet.”85
Kligman sensationalized and capitalized on her time with Pollock in a 1974 memoir called Love Affair.86 She wrote that she would tell him that he was married and that she had to “make a life” for herself and that Pollock would argue against this by insisting, “My analyst says the opposite. That we’re good for each other. I told him all about you, and he encouraged me.”87 She claimed more than once that Pollock told her of his analyst’s support for their relationship. Kligman also asserted that Jackson questioned her about her grandparents—the kind of stock she came from—telling her that he planned to marry her and suggesting by this interest that he fantasized about having a child with her. Not surprisingly, these reports are consistent with Ralph Klein’s reputation—one that led to his losing his license to practice.
The affair became intolerable for Lee when Jackson got Ruth to spend the night in his studio with Lee not far away in their house. She gave him an ultimatum to stop seeing Ruth and announced that she was going to take the anticipated trip to visit the Jenkinses in Europe in three days and would return in three weeks. Both of them would have time and space to consider their future.
Krasner’s bold actions forced Pollock to reconsider his impetuous affair. According to the Pollocks’ neighbor, the painter Nicolas Carone, “He went through the act of getting rid of Lee to bring in Ruth with the romantic notion of filling in a moment in his life, an interlude and then realized it was shit. Also, he realized that he needed his wife, so he’d staked all on a move that didn’t have any substance. Lee understood the psychotic problems and knew he was miserable. And she knew that the real value of his work was more important to her than it was to him.”88
Pollock’s realization perhaps caused him to then turn against Ruth. A number of friends later noted that Pollock misbehaved with Ruth as he had with Lee. Charlotte Brooks commented that “Jackson was pretty tough with Ruth,” and Cile Downs reflected that she couldn’t “imagine Jackson and Ruth being a couple for long, and he was hostile to her—really rude, mean to her—although I never saw any physical violence.”89
When Krasner left for Europe in July, it was intended to be a trial separation, but it upset them both. “While she was in Paris,” Jenkins recalled, “[Lee and I] saw painters, met old friends like John Graham at the Deux Magots…. Maybe if Jackson had gone to Paris, it might have turned him around.”90
In a Paris café, Krasner chanced upon Charles Gimpel, an art dealer whom she had hoped to see in London. He invited her to visit his home in Provence in the south of France, expanding her plans.91 Gimpel had been hoping to arrange a show of Pollock’s black-and-white work at his London gallery. Lee wrote to Jackson from Paris on July 21:
I’m staying at the Hotel Quai Voltaire, Paris, until Sat the 28 then going to the South of France to visit with the Gimpel’s [sic] and I hope to get to Venice about the early part of August—It all seems like a dream. The Jenkins, Paul & Esther, were very kind, in fact I don’t think I’d have had a chance without them. Thursday nite ended up in a Latin quarter dive, with Betty Parsons, David [Howard], who works at Sidney’s, Helen Frankenthaler, the Jenkins, Sidney Geist & I don’t remember who else, all dancing like mad. Went to the flea market with John Graham yesterday—saw all the left-bank galleries, met Druin and several other dealers (Tapié, St
adler etc.) Am going to do the right-bank galleries next week. I entered the Louvre which is just across the Seine outside my balcony which opens on it. About the Louvre I can say anything. It is overwhelming—beyond belief. I miss you and wish you were sharing this with me. The roses [that he sent to her] were the most beautiful deep red. Kiss Gype [sic] & Ahab [their dogs] for me. It would be wonderful to get a note from you. Love Lee—The painting here is unbelievably bad. (How are you Jackson?)92
Krasner later recalled the impact of seeing Chartres Cathedral and the old masters in the Louvre, which interested her much more than the contemporary art scene in Paris: “three paintings that stopped me dead in my tracks, and that startled me more than anything else because I didn’t expect these would be the paintings that would knock me off my track, so to speak. They were not what I expected them to be.”93 She recalled that the paintings were Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano (c. 1435–40), Andrea Mantegna’s St. Sebastian (c. 1480), and Goya’s La comtesse del Carpio, marquise de La Solana (1794–95).94 She was in awe over the latter. “The Goya is all spirit; you know, it simply leaves the earth.”95 Krasner also told how much she was interested by Ingres, whose style had captivated Browne, Gorky, Graham, and de Kooning during the 1930s.
From the old masters in the Louvre, she traveled to the narrow streets and medieval houses of Ménerbes, a lovely village in the Vaucluse. At the home of Charles and Kay Gimpel, Krasner found the artist Helen Frankenthaler.96 Krasner also visited the art historian Douglas Cooper in Menton on the Côte d’Azur, near the Italian border.
On July 26, Kay Gimpel wrote to Peggy Guggenheim, telling her that Lee was staying with her and that she wanted to go to Venice at the end of July or the beginning of August, before she sailed home on the twenty-third of August. Lee wanted to see Peggy in Venice and she was requesting Peggy’s help in booking a hotel.97
Krasner sent a postcard from Ménerbes back to Paul and Esther Jenkins in Paris: “The house is unbelievably 11th century perched on the top of a hill with views quite out of this world—Taking motor trips out to Arles, Aix, Marseilles, St. Remy etc. We’ll be here until about the 6th and then on to see Peggy—and back to you. Hope your time is moving pleasantly. Love, Lee.”98
When Krasner followed up on Kay’s letter, and called Peggy from the south of France to ask about reserving a hotel room, Peggy replied that she was too busy to see Lee and could not recommend a place for her to stay.99 This confirmed Krasner’s feeling that Peggy disliked women. Krasner thus decided to return to Paris. Her hotel was no longer available, so she decided to stay with Paul and Esther Jenkins at their place on the rue Decrès on the Left Bank.
Just after Lee returned to Paris, on Sunday, August 12, Paul Jenkins received a frantic phone call from Clement Greenberg in New York, who was trying to locate Lee. The news was bad. On August 11, at 10:15 P.M., while speeding north on Fireplace Road toward home, Pollock crashed his car into a clump of trees and flipped over. Of the car’s three occupants Ruth Kligman was injured, but a friend of hers, Edith Metzger, and Pollock were killed. Pollock suffered a compound fracture of the skull, laceration of the brain and both lungs, hemothorax, and shock. He was forty-four years old. Krasner was now, at forty-seven, a widow.
Krasner processed the news for a moment and then “she got up from the couch and screamed, ‘Jackson’s dead!’” recalled Jenkins.100 “We were living on the sixth floor, and she headed toward an open balcony; I reached out and grasped her. I placed her to the wall and didn’t let her go until she calmed down.” Jenkins contacted Darthea Speyer, the U.S. cultural attaché, who arranged for Lee to fly to New York that same night, where she would be met at the airport by the artist Barnett Newman and his wife, Annalee.
Before flight time, Esther Jenkins packed Krasner’s bags, and Paul drove Lee around Paris, even recruiting the assistance of Helen Frankenthaler, who also had come back to Paris.101 They stopped at the Bois de Boulogne and the Luxembourg Gardens to help pass the time.
The front page of the New York Times reported: “Mr. Pollock’s convertible turned over three miles north of East Hampton, according to witnesses. The accident occurred shortly after 10 P.M. on Fireplace Road. A woman riding in the car was killed and another woman, identified by Southampton hospital authorities as Ruth Kligman, was injured. The police were unable to determine the cause of the accident, but said the automobile had smashed into an embankment.”102 This article continued with a discussion of who Pollock was and what he was known for, before explaining, “Mr. Pollock was married to Lee Krasner, an established painter in her own right. Acquaintances here said that she was now in Europe.”103
The funeral took place on Wednesday, August 15, at the Springs Chapel, down the road from their house. Barnett and Annalee Newman paid for Pollock’s funeral, since Krasner had only $200 in the bank at that moment.104 Peter Matthiessen said that Lee asked him to take care of their dogs at the funeral. Pollock was then buried in Green River Cemetery, nearby in Springs. Jackson’s mother and brothers attended the funeral. Lee’s nephew and her sister also came, as did friends such as John Little, Reuben Kadish, Gina Knee, and Jim Brooks.
Krasner asked Clement Greenberg to speak at the funeral, but he refused, because of Pollock’s role in the death of Edith Metzger, though he did go to the funeral. Years later, Greenberg commented about the impact of Pollock’s death on him personally, saying that he thought more of him “as a man at the end and as a friend, even more than as an artist. I minded that girl getting killed with him and I wasn’t going to get up and speak about Jackson. Lee had hysterics over the phone. I wasn’t going to get up there and lie. I thought Jackson went out in a shabby way.”105
Another time, Greenberg said: “Lee was the one who really got to him and she was right. He could talk about art only with her—well, he could with me mostly when Lee was there to join in…. Art was his justification as a human being, because he felt inadequate in other respects. But Lee was his victim in the end, and a better painter than before.”106
A few nights after the funeral, the Sullivanian therapist Saul Newton, who spent summers with his disciples at nearby Barnes Landing, called on Krasner in Springs and recounted that “Lee was carrying on like an old-fashioned mourner. Franz Kline was there and she was blubbering ‘Help, help’ at him. About midnight she had to visit the cemetery, so I took her and Patsy [Southgate] there. It was a dark night and I told Lee she would have just one minute. Then I told her when her time was up, got them back, and left her in Patsy’s hands as a nightwatch. She slept off her grief and in the morning was in okay shape.”107
Lee Krasner with their dog, Gyp, in Jackson Pollock’s studio, two days after his burial, August 1956, photographed by Maurice Berezov. One of Krasner’s first preoccupations as a widow was supporting Pollock’s scheduled exhibition at MoMA, which turned into a memorial retrospective. Having lost him, she was determined not to let his legacy get away from her.
It was an ironic and tragic twist of fate that Greenberg—Pollock’s most important critical supporter—introduced Pollock and Krasner to people like Newton, Klein, and Pearce. Though these practitioners aimed to heal their patients, sometimes, instead of cures for conditions like alcoholism, which they did not understand, they offered misguided therapy, coercive and destructive advice that ended up doing harm. It was Klein, after all, who postponed trying to stop Pollock from drinking and who encouraged his relationship with Kligman. When Judy Collins began therapy with Klein in 1963, she recalls, he told her that he had treated Jackson Pollock. He was angry that Pollock had killed himself in the accident, which he considered a suicide.108
FOURTEEN
Dual Identities: Artist and Widow, 1956–59
Lee Krasner in her studio, August 30, 1956, two weeks after Jackson Pollock’s death. Visible are her Prophecy (CR 302, right) and Cauldron (CR 300, unfinished, behind), photographed by Waintrob-Budd.
YOU FELT THAT IT WAS PART OF HER DESTINY TO BE SUPPORTIVE of this person with a recognizable continuit
y. But then his death gave her freedom to become a creative being,” wrote John Cole, a journalist who knew Jackson and Lee in East Hampton.1 “The marriage couldn’t have been more rough,” Krasner admitted. “Sure it was rough. Big deal. I was in love with Pollock and he was in love with me. He gave an enormous amount, Pollock. Of course, he took too.”2 Stanley William Hayter, who had worked with Pollock in his printmaking studio on Eighth Street, and who, together with his artist wife, Helen Phillips, had partied with Pollock, Krasner, and the Kadishes in East Hampton in the summer of 1945, understood Krasner’s role well: “Most men are dependent on some women to support them, one way or another. This idea of being hairy-chested men and superior to women—bugger! I don’t think we would have had much production out of Jack if it hadn’t been for Lee, or even survival.”3
One of Krasner’s first preoccupations as a widow was supporting Pollock’s projected 1956 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Once planned as the inaugural show in a series on midcareer artists, it was now a memorial retrospective. It opened on December 19, 1956, and closed on February 3, 1957. The show and its reviews kept Krasner focused on her late husband and his legacy. Having lost him, she was determined not to let the legacy get away from her.
Krasner remained in Springs for the autumn after the funeral. In October, Charlotte Park and Jim Brooks were in the process of moving their Montauk house by barge to Springs, and they stayed with a grieving Krasner in the house she had shared with Pollock.4 But after they left, the house was too empty, so Lee spent several months with Fritz and Jeanne Bultman in their town house on East Ninty-fifth Street and several more months living with Bob (B. H.) and Abby Friedman.5 Lee stayed there through New Year’s, shared with Helen Frankenthaler, Betty and Bob Motherwell, and Musa and Philip Guston. “Jackson’s ghost was more real,”6 Bob Friedman wrote in his journal on New Year’s Day 1957. They had all been at a party where two of Krasner’s least favorite people, Motherwell and Frankenthaler, met, evidently for the first time.7 Later that year, Motherwell divorced Betty Little, with whom he had two daughters, and in 1958 married Frankenthaler.