Lee Krasner
Page 60
137. Letter is in the archives at MoMA.
138. On October 13, 1979, I spoke on “Richard Pousette-Dart’s Painting and Sculpture: Form, Poetry, and Significance” at the conference in Charlottesville.
139. Ellen G. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Study of Her Early Career (1926–1949), University of Delaware, June 1981.
140. Ellen Landau to the author, interview of 8-10-06.
141. Krasner quoted in Ruth Latter, “Passionate Art Can Unleash Intense Emotion,” The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Virginia, F2.
142. Ellen Landau to William Rubin, letter of 10-15-1979, MoMA archives.
143. Helene Aylon to the author, 10-22-2007.
144. Helene Aylon to the author, 10-22-2007.
145. Helene Aylon to the author, 10-22-2007.
Chapter 18: Retrospective, 1980–84 (pp. 427–452)
1. Stony Brook Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Higher Education, March 27, 1980.
2. William S. Rubin to Harry Rand, letter of 1-11-1980, MoMA archives.
3. Harry Rand to William S. Rubin, letter of 5-20-1980, MoMA archives.
4. William S. Rubin to Harry Rand, letter of 5-28-1980, MoMA archives.
5. 1980-Bennett.
6. 1980-Braff, 8.
7. 1980-Bennett.
8. Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, Cur Exh # 1385.
9. Barbara Rose to the author, 3-15-2010.
10. Ellen Landau to Lee Krasner, letter 4-3-78, LKP, AAA, reel 3772, frame 1358.
11. LK to Gail Levin, letter of 3-15-1981, and Ellen Landau to LK, letter of 2-19-1981, LKP, AAA, roll 3773, frames 719–721 and 742 (LK to me) and 734 (LK to Barbara Rose).
12. Ellen Landau to LK, letter of 2-19-1981, LKP, AAA.
13. Eugene V. Thaw to the author, 4-1-2010.
14. Barbara Rose to the author, 3-15-2010. Landau soon turned her attention to Pollock, on whom she has written extensively, and eventually declared some recently discovered paintings to be authentic works by Pollock, while many leading experts on Pollock disagreed. Subsequent tests at Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies showed that some of the paint used on the works in question was manufactured long after Pollock’s death. See David Usborne, “Experts Pour Scorn on Pollock Finds after Tests,” The Independent, February 1, 2007. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/experts-pour-scorn-on-pollock-finds-after-tests-434567.html.
15. Lee Krasner to Prof. William I. Homer, letter of 3-19-1981, LKP, AAA, roll 3773, frame 749.
16. 1981-Cavaliere, 34.
17. 1981-Cavaliere, 34.
18. John Russell, “Lee Krasner,” NYT, March 27, 1981, C17.
19. 1981-Tallmer, 17. The following quotations are from this source. Krasner marked the page number by hand and saved this article in her papers, AAA, LKP, roll 3776, frame 1330.
20. John Post Lee to Gail Levin, interview of 5-23-2007. Today John Post Lee is an art dealer in New York City. He got his start through LK’s recommending him to Robert Miller, who introduced him to Tibor de Nagy, where he first worked.
21. See Grace Glueck, “Art World Figures Defend Director of the Whitney,” NYT, February 3, 1990; Kay Larson, “Whose Museum Is It, Anyway? New York Magazine, February 12, 1990, 30–37.
22. John Post Lee to the author, interview of 5-23-2007.
23. John Post Lee to the author, interview of 5-23-2007.
24. 1981-Delatiner.
25. 1981-Delatiner.
26. William Pellicone, “Bombshell of a Sleeper,” Artspeak, AAA, reel 3776, frame 1001, noted that this review was written in early August and was printed in several Suffolk County newspapers.
27. 1981-Delatiner.
28. 1981-Delatiner.
29. 1981-Delatiner.
30. 1981-Wallach, 34.
31. 1981-Rose.
32. 1981-Rose.
33. John Post Lee to the author, interview of 5-23-2007.
34. John Post Lee to the author, interview of 5-23-2007.
35. John Post Lee to the author, interview of 5-23-2007.
36. John Post Lee to the author, says he gave his only copy of his thesis to Robert Hobbs, who, despite my request, was unable to find it.
37. Edward Albee to the author, interview of 12-19-2006.
38. 1981-Glueck-1.
39. 1981-Glueck-1.
40. 1981-Delatiner.
41. Tim Hilton, “Filling the Gaps,” Observer (London), March 14, 1982, 33, inscribed clipping is LKP, AAA, roll 3776, frame 1383.
42. 2006-Miller, n.p.
43. Nathan Kernan to the author and his draft of his unpublished ms., 1994–2010.
44. Grace Glueck, “Lee Krasner: The Late 50’s,” NYT, October 29, 1982, C19.
45. 1983-Rose, 160, note 6.
46. The author once attended a holiday dinner at Edward Albee’s home in Montauk, attended by Krasner, the author as her houseguest, Moss, Albee’s mother, and Joanna Steichen.
47. Ann Chwatsky to the author, interview of 8-7-2007.
48. Ronald Stein quoted in 1985-Potter, 222.
49. Darby Cardonsky to the author, 9-25-2010.
50. “The Artists Lee Krasner and John Little,” East Hampton Star, August 19, 1982, LKP, AAA, reel 3777, frame 8, photograph by Rameshwar Das.
51. Steven W. Naifeh to LK, letter of 6-1-1983, LKP, AAA, reel 3773, frame 1377.
52. Author’s interviews with Deborah Solomon, 2009 and 2010. See 1987-Solomon.
53. Eugene V. Thaw to the author, 4-1-2010.
54. 1985-Potter, 276.
55. Terence Netter to the author, 1-16-2009.
56. 1983-Kernan, L1.
57. 1983-Kernan.
58. Lee Krasner quoted in Patricia C. Johnson, Houston Chronicle, November 3, 1983, section 4, 1.
59. LKCR no. 599, possibly covering a painting from 1950.
60. Israel Shenker, “A Pollock Sold for $2 Million, Record for American Painting,” NYT, September 22, 1973, 25.
61. Lee Krasner quoted in Patricia C. Johnson, Houston Chronicle, November 3, 1983, section 4, 1.
62. Robert Hughes, “Bursting Out of the Shadows,” Time, November 14, 1983, 92.
63. 1983-Hughes, 92.
64. Judy Chicago to the author in conversation; many times during 2007.
65. 1983-Hughes, 92.
66. Susie Kalil, “Lee Krasner: A Life’s Work,” Artweek, December 10, 1983, 1.
67. William Wilson, “Woman behind Jackson Pollock Steps up Front,” Los Angeles Times, AAA, reel 3776, frame 1000-A. For examples of Wilson’s writing about feminist art, see also 2007-Levin, 140–41, 207, 248, 299.
68. Thomas Albright, “Krasner: Energy Rather Than Power,” Review, February 26, 1984, 12–13. Albright would die of lung cancer at the age of forty-eight later that same year.
69. Thomas Albright, “Krasner: Energy Rather Than Power,” Review, February 26, 1984, 12–13.
70. Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom, “Lee Krasner,” Artforum, vol. 22, May 1984, 93.
71. 1984-Vetrocq, 143. She referred to Krasner’s omission in 1970-Sandler and Henry Geldzahler, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1969).
72. Irving Sandler in conversation with the author, 2007, claimed that he had made a mistake to leave Krasner out of his first book on the movement, but he did not say this in his book: 2009-Sandler, 229, note 87. See above, chapter 11. Subsequent conversations with Sandler elicited only comments about the attitudes of the period.
73. 1984-Vetrocq, 143.
74. 1984-Cannell, 88.
75. 1984-Kernan, B9.
76. Jason McCoy and Barbara Rose, separately, to the author, 2010.
77. Draft of Lee Krasner letter to Henry Hopkins, 12-13-1983, LKP, AAA, roll 3774, frame 115.
78. Edward Albee to the author, 12-19-2006.
79. Bernard Gotfryd, The Intimate Eye: Portraits (New York: Riverside Book Co., 2006), 101, and Bernard Gotfryd to the author, 9-25-2010.
80. Mark Stevens, “The American
Masters,” Newsweek, January 2, 1984, 67–68.
81. Amei Wallach, “The Fierce Legacy of Lee Krasner,” Newsday, June 24, 1984, Part II/17.
82. Gretchen Johnson to LK, letter of March 1984, LKP, AAA, roll 3774, frame 167. Diana Burroughs (then married to LK’s nephew Jason McCoy, to the author, 1-21-2010.
83. 1984-Kernan, B9.
84. Eugene V. Thaw interviewed by the author, Tesuque, New Mexico, May 11, 2007. Thaw, born Jewish, converted to Episcopalianism at the age of fifteen while attending St. John’s of Annapolis.
85. 1985-Potter, 279.
86. Michael Brenson, “Lee Krasner Pollock Is Dead; Painter of the New York School,” NYT, June 21, 1984, 25.
87. Ted Dragon to Helen Harrison, interview taped while touring the Pollock-Krasner house in 2000. In fact, at Ronald Stein’s death, he left the house that his aunt had given him to Cooper Union, which sold it, instead of to the PKHSC.
88. 1984-Woodard, 28.
89. 1984-Woodard, 28.
90. 1984-Memorial.
91. 1984-Memorial.
92. 1984-Memorial.
A Note About Sources
1. Conrad, born Earl Cohen in 1912, was by then the author of books about the prison experience of Haywood Patterson, one of the Scottsboro Boys; a biography of the abolitionist Harriet Tubman; a book called Jim Crow America, and other books.
2. Oscar Collier to Lee Krasner, letter of 3-28-1967, on letterhead of Fleet Publishing Corporation, LKP, AAA, roll 3771, frame 1139.
3. 1995-Friedman, xi–xiii.
4. To cite just a few examples of errors of fact, 1996-Wagner, 107, wrote that Krasner “was born Lenore Krassner…. she occasionally adopted…the romantic ‘Lena.’” Yet the opposite is the case; Lee Krasner’s given name was Lena and she adopted Lenore is high school. In a family photograph taken in Shpikov (not located “just north of Odessa,” as is so often stated) before the family came to America, 1989-Naifeh, 368, finds “Lena on her father’s knee,” when in fact, she was not yet born. LKCR, 301, reports “Krasner was skeptical about Ruth’s marrying William Stein [their sister’s widower] because of her age (fourteen), when in fact she was eighteen in 1929 and, 311, an incorrect date for when she began seeing a therapist. 1996-Wagner, 138, gives 1942 as the date Krasner and Pollock met, which is 1941, except for their earlier meeting at a party in the 1930s; she gives the date of their marriage as 1944, when it is 1945.
5. 1989-Naifeh, 371.
6. 1995-Gabor, 69.
7. Frances Patiky Stein to the author, 1-17-2007. Diana Burroughs, who was married to Pollock’s nephew, Jason McCoy, also recalled that Ruth and Lee did not get along (interview with the author, 1-21-2010). Ruth lied about her age and the date of her marriage. Her view of Krasner family dynamics was not shared by others whom I interviewed.
8. 1996-Wagner, 134
9. 1996-Wagner, 134
10. 1989-Naifeh, 857.
11. B. H. Friedman to the author, 4-13-2007 and 4-1-2010. The couple in Friedman’s novel, set in the 1960s, are Jeff MacMaster, a leading photojournalist and his wife, Edys Askin, who was not an artist.
12. 1989-Naifeh, 393, taken from B. H. Friedman, Almost a Life (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), 162.
13. 1989-Naifeh, 395 and 857, source note; 1975-Friedman, 162.
14. 1989-Naifeh, 708. 1995-Gabor, 44.
15. 1989-Naifeh, 708, and repeated by 2004-Stevens, 335. The sources for this account, as acknowledged by Naifeh and Smith, were LK herself and Fritz Bultman, both of whom were dead before their book was published. See also Patti Doten, “A Lurid Picture of Jackson Pollock,” Boston Globe, February 22, 1990, 73, 78.
16. 1995-Gabor, 44. Among others, Gabor interviewed LK and Jeanne Bultman.
17. Author’s interviews with Jeanne Bultman, 4-23-2007 and 7-28-2007.
18. Lee Krasner to the author, 8-29-1977, outtake for Barbara Rose film. See also 1979-Munro, 108.
19. 2004-Stevens, 129–130. Their endnote cites Bultman’s interview of January with Irving Sandler, 1-6-1968, AAA.
20. 1968-Bultman.
21. 1968-McNeil.
22. 1970-Sandler, omitted Krasner except in his acknowledgments as “Lee Krasner Pollock” in a list of persons interviewed and in the credits—as the owner of some art works by Pollock that are reproduced.
23. These books by Sandler include The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (New York: Harper & Row, 1979) and American Art of the 1960’s (New York: HarperCollins, 1989).
24. 2009-Sandler, 229, note 86.
25. 2009-Sandler, 229.
26. 1990-Anfam, 15.
27. 1990-Anfam, 122.
28. 1997-Gibson, ix.
29. 2008-Küster, 72.
30. Ulf Küster to the author, spring 2008.
SEARCHABLE TERMS
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
Abel, Lionel, 65, 76, 77, 87, 110, 116
Adler, Pamela, 399
Albee, Edward, 2, 380, 403, 434, 437, 440, 446, 451
Albers, Anni, 421
Albright, Ivan Le Lorraine, 224
Albright, Thomas, 445
Alfieri, Bruno, 265
American Abstract Artists (AAA), 103, 131–32, 143–46, 148, 150–51, 153–54, 164, 175, 180, 184, 194, 206, 238, 239
American Artists Congress, 104, 106, 111, 135
American Friends of Spanish Democracy, 112
American Watercolor Society, 229
Ames, Elizabeth, 90
Appel, Karel, 322, 328, 404
Appelhof, Ruth, 371, 404–5
Arbus, Diane, 395
Armory Show (1913), 166, 246
Armstrong, Louis, 180
Armstrong, Tom, 433–34
Arp, Jean, 180, 198, 220
art:
abstract, 113, 152, 184, 198, 264, 291, 357
abstract expressionism, 3, 5, 9–10, 12, 131, 226, 244, 265, 318, 351, 355, 362, 390, 399–400, 402, 410–11, 415, 416–17, 418, 419, 421–22, 444, 445–46, 447
action painting, 3, 278–79, 287–88, 354–55, 359, 382, 445
avant-garde, 100–101, 136, 144, 198, 239
color-field painting, 349–50
Conceptualism, 412
cubism, 123, 125, 127, 128, 182, 220, 221, 223, 238, 325, 412
Dada, 196, 325
federal support of, 82, 86–88, 94, 97, 121, 148
“The Irascibles,” 263, 264, 363
modernism, 7, 67, 136, 188, 194, 256, 265, 411
and nationalism, 72–73, 110, 114, 391, 434
Neoplasticism, 180, 181, 182, 186
primitive, 149
Social Realist, 91, 106, 110, 113
Surrealism, 98, 100–101, 102, 124, 139, 167, 168, 196, 198, 199–200, 205, 224, 229, 351, 390, 416
Synchromists, 83
Art for the People, 104
Art Front, 86, 88, 114
Artists Club, 260, 272
Artists Union, 73, 74, 85–86, 88, 94, 97, 103, 106–8, 111, 114, 118, 121, 130–31, 175
Art of This Century, New York, 6, 200, 208, 210, 212, 219, 224–26, 240, 246, 253
Art Students League, 49–50, 83, 103, 166, 172, 206
Ashton, Dore, 275, 407
Avery, Milton, 212
Aylon, Helene, 425
Baker, A. T., 398–99
Bandes, Lucille, 404
Barnet, Will, 330
Baro, Gene, 403
Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 66, 101, 135, 224, 226, 317, 380
Bayer, Herbert, 190
Baziotes, William, 199, 200, 205, 419, 445
Bearden, Romare, 404
Becker, Maurice, 90
Bell, Daniel, 26
Bengelsdorf, Rosalind, 134, 143
Benn, Ben, 194–95
Benner, Dyne, 405–6
Bennett, Evelyn, 428–29
Bennett, Gwendolyn, 35
Bennett, Joan, 158
Bennett, Ward, 213
Bennington College, Vermont, 284, 286
Benton, Rita, 280
Benton, Thomas Hart, 73, 83, 155, 170, 194, 242, 264, 271
Berezov, Maurice, 117, 179, 327
Bernstein, Pearl, 194
Besant, Annie, 170
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York City, 246, 250, 426, 466
Bignou, Étienne, 68
Blaine, Nell, 319
Blake, Peter, 266, 362
Blavatsky, Madame Helena Petrovna, 170
Bliss, Lillie P., 66
Block, Irving, 85
Block, Paul, 112, 118, 120
Bloom, Suzanne, 445
Bluhm, Norman, 353
Bodenheim, Maxwell, 77–78
Bolotowsky, Ilya, 54, 56, 62, 69–70, 93, 131, 148, 149, 150, 184, 290, 396
Bonnard, Pierre, 165, 178
Bontecou, Lee, 357
Bosch, Hieronymus, 224
Bourdon, David, 410–11
Bourgeois, Louise, 392, 393, 421
Bourke-White, Margaret, 145
Bowden, Harry, 249, 250
Brach, Paul, 281–82, 321, 390
Braider, Carol, 293, 307, 441–42
Braider, Donald, 293
Brancusi, Constantin, 151
Brandt, Warren, 385
Braque, Georges, 123, 127, 144, 151, 165, 178, 217, 325
Brauer, Carl F., 254
Breton, André, 139, 198, 199, 225
Bridgman, George Brant, 50, 67
Brodovitch, Alexey, 155, 261
Brook, Alexander, 258, 266, 291
Brooklyn Museum, 4, 408–9
Brookner, Anita, 357
Brooks, Charlotte, 308, 434, 449
Brooks, James, 240, 247, 258, 261, 262, 291, 306, 316, 368, 385, 397, 434, 449
Browder, Earl, 116
Brown, G. Baldwin, 221
Browne, Byron, 54, 56, 132, 134, 138, 143, 148, 149, 203
Browner, Juliet, 88–89
Bruce, Edward, 86
Bruce, Patrick Henry, 430
Bryson, Bernarda, 108
Bultman, Fritz, 81, 103, 129, 134, 135, 141–42, 147, 174–75, 188, 213, 241, 270, 296, 316, 355, 361
Bultman, Jeanne Lawson, 195, 213, 316, 356