Lee Krasner

by Gail Levin

  Earlier that year Bill Rubin had written to Harry Rand about the Krasner retrospective, telling him how excited he was about it and saying he was sure it would be “very beautiful.”2 On May 20, Rand replied, confirming the plans for the Krasner retrospective to open in Washington before going on tour to the MoMA at a time that would fit into the museum’s schedule. Rand said that Joshua Taylor, the director of his museum, would write the catalogue’s preface and that he and Rubin would contribute short essays. Ellen Landau would write a “biography.” The substantial criticism would come from Barbara Rose.3 Rubin replied, telling him that he had long been “a great admirer” of Krasner’s work and that he looked forward to participating in the retrospective.4

  In the summer of 1980, Krasner showed some of her work on paper from 1962 to 1970 at the Tower Gallery in Southampton, New York. Evelyn Bennett, writing for the Southampton Press, reported that Willem de Kooning was also supposed to show but pulled out at the last moment “by doubling the prices of his work (thereby making it impossible for the gallery to insure his paintings).” Krasner thought de Kooning was unprofessional. “You don’t pull out of a show at the last minute, and leave the gallery high and dry.”5 It’s possible that her resentment stemmed from regret at missing the chance to have her work compared to Pollock’s most significant rival instead of being compared to Pollock, as usual.

  On view at the Tower Gallery were pieces from Krasner’s Water series: “This was a series using Douglass Howell [handmade] papers. It took courage to take gouache and bathe it. They were experiments in color, and a tough paper was needed for what I wanted to try. The monotone is something I tend to do a lot. With the water dipping techniques, I could get great varieties—and effects that would hold my interest and that of an observer too. You might say I was pushing, with the fixed points just the gouache and the paper.”6 She also said she had tried acrylics (first commercially available in the 1950s) and had not liked them at all.

  Krasner explained to Bennett that an underlying philosophy of her work for the series related to the totality of life—what she considered “nature.”

  “There are ‘elements of nature’ in my work,” she said, “but not in the sense of birds and trees and water. When I say nature I might mean energy, motion, everything that’s happening in and around me. That’s what I mean by nature.”

  “So you’re really talking about everything living, really?” Bennett rejoined.

  “Yes and death too,” Krasner replied, “things that are dead; everything.”

  When told, “There’s something very religious about that,” Krasner returned, “Of course—art is religious; it has to be. That’s what I think, anyway. These people who do paintings of trivia—it’s a waste of my time.”7 What she meant by paintings of trivia was subject matter found in Pop Art such as soup cans, comics, and other such themes taken from popular culture.

  Despite favorable press attention, Krasner still longed for a retrospective of her work in America and remained anxious about her reputation and her legacy. But a September 10, 1980, letter from Landau to Rubin indicated that the Washington part of the retrospective was set.8

  Krasner met with Landau, still a graduate student when she traveled to New York. She took Krasner to lunch and began to go over a list of questions pertaining to her dissertation. Something rubbed Krasner the wrong way; for, according to Landau, Krasner started to scream at her and two days later telephoned to inform Landau that she was no longer involved with her retrospective. Krasner had decided to cut off Landau and would now entrust her legacy to Barbara Rose, in whom she had much more confidence, based on their years of friendship and Rose’s constant advocacy on her behalf.

  Rose had been talking with Krasner for years about organizing her first American retrospective and now she was in a position to make it happen. Though Rose did not officially become the chief curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston until March 1981, she had already been offered the position by the time that Krasner decided to ditch Landau. Krasner knew Rose’s writing and her high profile in the art world as well as her record organizing major shows for the Museum of Modern Art—one on Claes Oldenburg in 1969 and another on Patrick Henry Bruce in 1979. Over the years, Rose had spoken with Rubin about organizing a retrospective for Krasner and knew he respected her work.9

  On February 19, 1981, just a week before Rose began her new job, Landau wrote to Krasner. She was about to receive her doctorate that June. In her letter, she apologized for the anger she had expressed in their last telephone conversation. Yet there was also a certain bitterness to the letter. She had been annoyed that Krasner seemed to question her expertise, especially after Landau had devoted three years to researching Krasner’s work for her dissertation. She felt she knew much more about Krasner’s early work than just about any other person. Landau wrote that she hoped Krasner would cease “holding up Gail Levin to me.” Landau was responding in part to Krasner’s earlier suggestion that she should consider making me the second reader of her dissertation.10 Landau claimed that my work on Krasner was insignificant. In turn, Krasner sent a copy of Landau’s letter to me on March 15. She enclosed her own letter telling me, “I’d like your reaction to the enclosed letter from Ellen Landau. I find it so arrogant, hostile and disgusting. Please read it and send your response to me.”11 I chose to stay out of their conflict and did not reply.

  In the same letter, Landau also expressed resentment that Krasner preferred Barbara Rose as the curator of her retrospective, objecting that she should have made that preference clear at their first meeting. Landau also protested that Krasner had used her as a “pawn” to obtain the retrospective in New York. Rand claims to have suggested the retrospective to Krasner at the opening of the Pollock show at NCFA, but Landau says she was the one who first proposed Krasner’s retrospective to the Washington museum.12

  What Landau failed to realize was how much Krasner had riding on the first American retrospective of her work. Except for the 1965 London show, this would be her only retrospective in her lifetime. Krasner knew Landau had not spent much time looking at her paintings because (as Landau stated in her letter) she had permitted Landau to look at the ones in storage only once. Gene Thaw, who believes Krasner was a smart woman when it came to analyzing people, recalled that Krasner feared that Landau was really only interested in Pollock.13 Rose shared this same concern with Krasner.14 In fact Landau’s dissertation covered Krasner’s career only up through 1949, and she often compared Krasner’s early work to that of Pollock, even before the two artists met. Krasner saw Landau as lacking both curatorial experience and the familiarity with her later work necessary to organize her retrospective. These perceived faults quickly turned into distrust.

  The questions Landau posed to Krasner that day at lunch may have provoked some kind of alarm. Landau may have been diligent and capable, but to Krasner she was an untested student. Their dispute reflects the reciprocal insecurity of a woman artist who felt unjustly overlooked and an art historian who felt inadequately appreciated.

  Krasner wrote to Professor William I. Homer, Landau’s faculty adviser at the University of Delaware, telling him how she had trusted Landau and had given her “free access” to her files of unpublished material for her dissertation research. Now, to Krasner’s consternation, she complained that Landau refused “to allow me to check her use of this material.” Then in a state of panic over what she termed a “very distressing problem,” she insisted, “She does not have my permission to publish any of the unpublished material without my checking and approving it.”15 Because Krasner had carefully saved many documents about her career with an eye to posterity, it is difficult to know what inaccuracies she feared, but it is clear that she was not about to leave the matter to chance.

  Landau says that during this period, she attempted to call Krasner, but Krasner refused to speak with her. Landau also attempted to resolve the complaint to her faculty adviser by offering to show her dissertation to Krasner just before it was p
ublished.

  Krasner’s frantic letter to Homer was dated the day before “Lee Krasner/Solstice” opened at Pace Gallery in March 1981. The exhibition was a show of her new collages, produced from rejected lithographs and paintings. The reviews were positive and noted that “Krasner has been painting for over a half-century now.”16

  Barbara Cavaliere saw that the “internal movements in Krasner’s art signify the correspondences which link the present with the past and future,” singling out Vernal Yellow (1980) for its “vibrating movement.”17 In the New York Times, John Russell called the show “a heady mixture,” noting “the recurrent and unmistakable rhythm of her images.”18

  Krasner, dressed in a perky felt hat and colorful scarf, was in an upbeat mood when she dropped in at the gallery for an interview with Jerry Tallmer, a critic at the New York Post: “Looks pretty good…. If you want my reaction to it, not bad at all.”19

  There was a big difference between her collages of 1977 and those showing in the Pace Gallery. While the 1977 collages utilized her old charcoal drawings from classes with Hofmann, these were filled with what Tallmer termed a “new flaming burst of color.”

  About the show, she said: “The last time I did high-key color was nineteen seventy-something. So I must go into that from time to time. This time, because of the color, I wanted to call this series The Rites of Spring. Stravinsky, you know…. But then I thought, well, that’s a little heavy, let’s just call it Solstice. Which was also keeping with my picture The Seasons.”

  She had exhibited this piece the previous month in a show titled “Abstract Expressionists and Their Precursors” at the Nassau County Museum. Though she painted The Seasons from 1957 to 1958, it still interested her.

  In his article Tallmer said he told Krasner, “You know…when the record of this era is written 50 years from now, you’re going to stand pretty high in it.”

  “‘You think so?’ She held up two crossed fingers. ‘Maybe. I have to say that when I saw my work beside all those others at Gail Levin’s 1978 Whitney show [“Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years”] I was flabbergasted.’”

  “So were a lot of other people. Knocked out,” Tallmer responded.

  She reflected, “Yeah, but I’m the artist. In a way there’s been this slow recognition of me. At one point I resented it. But now, in hindsight, it was a protection, a coating. I had to go into my studio and keep myself painting my own pictures, because the outside world wasn’t dealing with it anyway.”

  Tallmer reported that “Krasner from Brooklyn crossed herself in the air” before she added, “My concern has been to align myself with my contemporaries and to stay alive. As a painter, I don’t mean just physically, but to have this work stay alive.”

  That same spring John Post Lee, an art history major at Vassar College in his junior year, heard from a friend that Krasner was looking for someone to work for her during the summer. He didn’t want to return home to Philadelphia, so he set about making a quick study of Krasner and her work, memorizing the names and dates of many of her paintings. He met with her in her New York apartment and was able to identify Kufic (1966) as the painting hanging on the wall. The job was his.

  That day Krasner told him to “stick around. Tom Armstrong, the director of the Whitney, is coming over to ask for a loan of a Pollock.”

  The young man from Vassar watched the bow-tied director try to charm Krasner. But when Armstrong bent over to pull the Pollock catalogue raisonné off the shelf, “Krasner made a grotesque body motion toward him that he could not see, making clear that she just didn’t like Tom Armstrong.”20 What the student did not realize was Krasner’s long disdain for the Whitney for defining itself as a museum of “American art,” which she felt embraced nationalism. There were also rumors of Armstrong’s anti-Semitism (though denied by his supporters), which would also have put her off.21 It is not clear if it was because she had qualms about Armstrong, but Krasner only donated one minor ink drawing by Pollock to the Whitney, presumably in appreciation of her “Large Paintings” show. However, she donated many works by Pollock to both the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art.

  Krasner paid John Post Lee fifty dollars a week, plus room and board, with no days off. He served as her driver in his own car, for which she paid for the gas. He recalled her “Gestalt as very Depression-oriented.”22 She had no idea how much a young man could eat, so he would often sneak over to the neighborhood pizzeria. He would mix her favorite drink, a “sunrise,” consisting of cranberry and grapefruit juices with a splash of vodka and Campari. He discovered that when she drank, she became less guarded in her conversation.

  John Post Lee thought Krasner was “very generous” and recalled that they talked “about everything.” Her politics were clearly liberal. Krasner often had him read aloud to her in the sitting room. Often this meant the newspaper. She expressed extreme irritation at President Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers.23 He also thought she was very intelligent and also “street smart.” He accompanied her everywhere that summer—to Terence Netter’s show at Stony Brook, to the homes of Ibram and Ernestine Lassaw, Jimmy and Dallas Ernst, James and Charlotte Brooks, Josephine and John Little, Patsy Southgate, and Edward Albee. He met her nephews Jason McCoy and Ronald Stein. Stein was then living next door and working as a pilot, flying out of East Hampton airport. As John worked with Krasner, he began to notice that she was quite infirm, already suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.

  John Post Lee was with Krasner in August 1981, when the show “Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship,” organized by Barbara Rose, opened at Guild Hall. That fall the show traveled to the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. Interviewed about the prospect of seeing her work next to Pollock’s chronologically, Krasner responded gruffly: “It could be a terrible pitfall for me as an artist. I’m aware of that. I’ve been around. But I couldn’t give two hoots about that. I want to see it with my eye for myself—because I’ve never seen it visually, and until I see it visually, I don’t know what they’re talking about. And because I have an endless curiosity above and beyond the mob, I couldn’t care less about what their reaction is.”24 Krasner was upset that those male colleagues who had been influenced by Pollock were never compared directly to Pollock.

  “Look,” Krasner said. “They don’t take de Kooning and put him up that way. And if de Kooning or Motherwell takes from Pollock, nobody even breathes a word about it. But with Lee Krasner, wow. It’s been a heavy, heavy number. It’s hard for them to separate me from Pollock in that sense.”25

  Despite Krasner’s frustrations, at least one reviewer at Guild Hall understood her plight—the artist William Pellicone sought to reverse the common conception of Krasner’s position being beneath Pollock’s in the pantheon of great artists. “Krasner is identified as Jackson Pollock’s widow, an artist in her [own] right. It should read: Jackson Pollock, husband of Lee Krasner…. The revelation exposed is the fact that Lee Krasner gave Pollock everything because of her superior talent and he eventually destroys her true path with his superior barbaric, macho strength…. The Guild Hall show calls for a completely new evaluation of the Krasner-Pollock link.”26

  Krasner was clear about dealing with Pollock’s reputation so many years after his death: “I may have resented being in the shadow of Jackson Pollock, but the resentment was never so sharp a thing to deal with that it interfered with my work.”27 On the other hand, Krasner admitted, “I stepped on a lot of toes because you know Pollock remains the magic name, and they had to deal with me to get to his works and I can say no very harshly. As a result, people in the art world acted out against me as a painter.”28

  When a journalist described Krasner as “slowed a bit by arthritis, still actively painting” at the age of seventy-three, she was clear about her decision to devote so much energy to Pollock and stated emphatically: “I don’t feel I sacrificed myself And if I had it to do all over again from the very beginning, I’d do the same thing.”29

 
Barbara Rose maintained that had Krasner and Pollock lived during the days of feminism, Krasner might not have “played so wifely a role with Pollock” and might have even “dumped the genius.” Interestingly Krasner disagreed with Rose’s speculation. “I think I would do the same, identical thing all over again in the presence of talent like that, but it takes that kind of talent to move me. Anything else is for the birds.”30

  Nevertheless, in the show’s catalogue, Rose argued that “of the many things Krasner and Pollock did for each other as artists, including criticize and support each other’s works, the greatest thing they did was to free each other from the dogma of their respective teachers.”31 Rose also asserted, “Jackson helped her to be free and spontaneous, and she helped him to be organized and refined.”32

  Krasner seemed to appreciate Rose’s thoughtful advocacy.

  John Post Lee read Rose’s manuscript aloud to Krasner sentence by sentence. He recalled that she would occasionally say, “That’s not true.” He also remembered that she paid particular attention to the mention of Pollock’s drinking, giving it emphasis.33 At another point, Krasner objected: “How come I’m the only one that is held accountable for being influenced by Pollock? Robert Motherwell pretends that he splatters paint because he was looking at a wave splashing on the beach. Oh, come on.”34 She also expressed disdain for de Kooning: “He’s interested in two things—women and real estate, so he buys a house and puts a woman in it.”35