Jackson Pollock

by Deborah Solomon

  Graham often told Pollock that he considered him “the greatest painter in America.” Whether or not Graham actually believed this—he told the same thing to de Kooning and many others—he offered Pollock essential moral support. He stopped by his studio at least once a week to see how his work was progressing and invariably had something nice to say.

  Pollock looked to Graham for guidance in his work, and the older painter was to have a definite influence on him. But his influence was at most indirect. A few years earlier, in 1937, Graham had written an important article called “Primitive Art and Picasso,” in which, as one might expect, he likened the work of Picasso to tribal art. He may well have given this article to Pollock in the course of their friendship, for Pollock made a number of pictures that are based on the reproductions accompanying the article. One of the reproductions showed an Alaskan Eskimo mask made from wood and feathers (Fig. 11). The mask had two holes in it—one directly above the other—and Graham felt the holes could be interpreted as either two eyes or two nostrils. This deliberate ambiguity reminded Graham of the distorted features one sees in the heads of Picasso, and the mask, he wrote, was reflective of “a master artist’s freedom of speech.” For Pollock, who wanted nothing more than to be a “master artist,” the mask became a symbol of his struggle. He painted the image of the Eskimo mask into several paintings dating to this period, such as Masqued Image, Composition with Masked Forms, and Naked Man, in which a Picasso-like personage possesses, in the place of a head, a mask. But it is in the painting Birth that Pollock exploited the Eskimo mask for his strongest statement to date.

  Birth (Fig. 12) is a painting of violent, enraged creativity. As the title implies, it shows a birth scene, but the image is almost impossible to make out. What we see instead is a series of discs that look like the Eskimo mask, each one interlocking with the next to form a powerful chain of activity. It is easy to discern the influence of Picasso here, for Pollock has managed quite effectively to appropriate the Spaniard’s most daring innovations—his shallow space, flattened forms, and thick “cloisonné” outlines; his total dismantling of illusion. But in spite of the foreign influences, the painting is clearly the work of an American. Pollock has sounded a distinctly native chord in his color scheme—red, white, and blue—a poignant prophecy of his imminent breakthrough (or birth, so to speak) as the first American painter to battle Picasso for a style of his own and to succeed.

  In October 1940, five months after he was laid off from his job, Pollock was rehired onto the Project. But the job brought him no peace of mind. Layoffs were still common, the future of the Project was uncertain at best, and employees were being harassed for their political activities. Less than two weeks after Jackson rejoined the Project, Sande reported to Charles that a number of artists who had signed a petition to have the Communist party put on the ballot had consequently been fired; since Jackson and Sande both had signed the petition, they suspected they were next. “The irony is,” Sande noted, “that the real Party People I know didn’t sign the damn thing and it is suckers like us who are getting it. . . . Needless to say we are rigid with fright.”

  Adding to Pollock’s worries was the possibility of being drafted. As the war in Europe worsened, it was beginning to seem inevitable that the United States would soon be involved. That October, Pollock registered with his local draft board as required by the government. He felt terrified by the prospect of military duty and discussed with his psychotherapist whether or not he was fit to serve, particularly in light of his alcoholism. Pollock was now seeing Violet Staub de Laszlo, a first-generation student of Jung, to whom Dr. Henderson had referred him upon leaving New York. Dr. de Laszlo, who felt that Pollock’s main problem was his “great doubt about himself,” tried to persuade him that joining the service could be a beneficial experience for him; she thought it might enhance his self-esteem. But Pollock was adamant about not wanting to serve.

  On May 6, 1941, Dr. de Laszlo wrote the draft board: “I have found [Pollock] to be a shut-in and inarticulate personality of good intelligence, but with a great deal of emotional instability who finds it difficult to form or maintain any kind of relationship.” The doctor also wrote that while there was no reason to believe Pollock was schizophrenic, “there is a certain schizoid disposition underlying the instability.” She recommended that her patient be given a special psychiatric examination, which Pollock underwent at Beth Israel Hospital on May 22. During the exam he indicated to a doctor that he had been institutionalized at New York Hospital three years earlier. The government requested proof of his hospitalization, which Dr. de Laszlo promptly supplied in writing. To his relief, Pollock was classified 4F.

  So completely self-absorbed was Pollock that besides being unwilling to serve in World War II, he appears to have resented the small sacrifices the war demanded of him. When war broke out, travel restrictions went into effect, making it difficult for him to leave the state. In his sole written reference to the war during the years it was being fought, Pollock complained to one of his brothers that World War II was interfering with his vacation plans: “If it weren’t for this god damned war I’d head west for a while.” As the forties wore on, however, and the death toll grew, Pollock came to realize how fortunate he had been to be allowed to stay home and paint. In 1946 he noted appreciatively: “I have been able to paint all thru the war—and am very grateful for the opportunity and tried to make the most of it.”

  In the summer of 1941 Sande Pollock was laid off from the Project again, and five weeks passed before he managed to get rehired. The layoff came at a bad time, for the rent on his apartment had just been raised from thirty-five to fifty dollars a month, and he and Jackson had had enough trouble paying it even when they both were employed. Compounding their problems, their mother, who was now in her late sixties, was threatening to come to live with them. For the past few years Stella had been living in Tingley, Iowa, with her ailing mother, but with the old woman’s death that July she was eager to leave the dreary farming town and join her children in New York. It seemed only logical to her that she should move in with Jackson and Sande, as she could not afford an apartment of her own.

  Sande thought this was a terrible idea. In a series of letters to Charles, in Michigan, he tried to convince him that their mother would be better off anywhere but in New York. Not the least of his reasons was that her presence would be “extremely trying” for Jackson, who was still struggling with alcoholism. There was also the problem of money. “I hate like hell to write a hard luck letter,” Sande wrote that August, going on to say that the situation on the Project “makes for a helplessness that is almost overwhelming.” Stella ended up moving to Michigan, where she would live with Charles and his family until moving to New York the following year.

  In the three years that had passed since his release from New York Hospital not much had changed in Pollock’s life. He was still on the Project, still struggling to meet his monthly quota, still drinking in spite of psychiatric care. But his obscurity and loneliness were about to end. In November 1941 John Graham mentioned to Pollock that he was organizing a show at McMillen Inc., an antique and fine-furnishings company on East Fifty-fifth Street. He wanted to include one of Pollock’s paintings—how about Birth? Pollock was very pleased to be selected for the show, which promised to be an interesting one. Entitled “American and French Paintings,” the exhibit would pair established Europeans like Picasso and Matisse with young Americans almost no one had heard of. One of them was de Kooning, another Lenore Krasner.

  Those names were unknown not only to the general public but to Pollock as well. Lenore Krasner. Who was she? “A damn good woman painter,” Pollock soon told his brother.

  7

  Enter L.K.

  When Lee Krasner learned in November 1941 that John Graham planned to include her in the show “American and French Paintings,” she was ecstatic that her work would be hanging in the same room as that of her idols Picasso and Matisse. But she was also curious: Who w
as Jackson Pollock and why didn’t she know him? “I prided myself on knowing just about everybody in the New York art world,” she later explained.

  She asked around. She asked her friends in the American Abstract Artists group if they had ever heard of Jackson Pollock. No one had. Then one night she was attending an opening at the Downtown Gallery when she ran into the painter Louis Bunce, a former schoolmate of Pollock’s at the League. Pollock, he told Lee, was a very good painter who lived right around the corner from her, on Eighth Street. Lee was then living in a studio on East Ninth.

  The next day Lee walked over to his apartment. At the top of the stairs she was met by Sande Pollock, who pointed her to his brother’s studio. Jackson must have been surprised by this woman in his doorway, who told him boldly, “I’m Lee Krasner and we’re in the same show.” Lee Krasner was thirty-three years old, four years older than Pollock. She stood five feet five, with strong features and shiny auburn hair cut in a pageboy style.

  Lee took in Jackson’s features and realized she had seen him once before. Five years earlier she had been dancing at a loft party sponsored by the WPA Artists’ Union when Pollock had drunkenly cut in. “He stepped all over my feet,” she once said. “He never did learn to dance.”

  Pollock led her to his studio. Four or five canvases were hanging on the wall. “To say that I flipped my lid would be an understatement,” she said. “I was totally bowled over by what I saw.”

  She invited Pollock to visit her on Ninth Street the following week, and he showed up as scheduled, entering through a narrow hallway that doubled as a kitchen and sitting down in the apartment’s one room. Lee asked him if he wanted some coffee. Yes, he said. She stood up and went to get her coat from the hall closet.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Pollock looked bewildered. “But you offered me coffee,” he protested.

  Lee had never used her gas stove, and she didn’t even know if it worked. When she offered her friends coffee, she meant “Let’s go to the corner drugstore.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone so shocked to death when I told him,” she later said.

  They went out for coffee, once, twice, a dozen times, discovering mutual interests as if discovering the interests anew. He told her he was in Jungian analysis, and she was excited. “I was reading Jung on my own,” she said, “so we had that as a common denominator.” Naturally they also had art. He was Presbyterian and she was Jewish, but they worshiped the same god—Picasso. She told him about the first time she had seen Guernica, about how it had “knocked” her out of the room; she had had to circle the block five times before she could look again. They talked about art constantly but never asked “What does your work mean?” or “Why do you do it?”—questions that would have seemed as absurd as “Why were you born?” They were both born painters, and they accepted each other’s fates, talking about art only in terms of “shop talk,” as Lee called it. She asked Pollock if he knew the other Americans who were going to be in Graham’s show. Did he know de Kooning? No, Pollock said. So she told him about de Kooning. She promised she’d take him to meet de Kooning. She wanted to take him to meet everyone.

  It was a union based on shared passions, yet also on differences of temperament. Even in the way they moved they complemented each other. Pollock moved like a heavy, lumbering bear, his arms hanging at his sides “like tree trunks,” as William Phillips once wrote. Lee was lithe and graceful, a good dancer, able to move swiftly through the situations that made him falter. Pollock spoke in an agonized, halting way, as if the words had been torn from his flesh. Lee spoke aggressively, firing words like bullets. He was withdrawn; she was brazen. He avoided people, but she confronted them. She demanded justice, and since life is unjust, she was often angry. She sized up situations in seconds, usually with contempt. She was controlled and controlling, and because those qualities were so alien to him, he admired the way she took charge of things.

  They complemented each other in their art too. By her own admission, Lee was overly disciplined. At the time she met Pollock she was a first-rate abstract painter who had mastered Cubism and was trying to unlearn her learning, to loosen up, to discover the kind of authenticity and vigor that come from direct feeling. He, to the contrary, was undisciplined. He was independent and original. From his earliest years his art had been distinguished by a quality that was felt rather than learned, and because hers was not, she recognized his genius.

  “I was terribly drawn to Jackson,” she said, “and I fell in love with him—physically, mentally—in every sense of the word. I had a conviction when I met Jackson that he had something important to say. When we began going together, my own work became irrelevant. He was the important thing.”

  A few months after they met, Pollock and Lee were walking along Varick Street one blustery winter afternoon when they ran into Clement Greenberg outside the U.S. Customs Office. He would later become Pollock’s chief champion as well as the leading art critic of his generation, but in 1941 he was working as a customs clerk and writing articles on the side. Greenberg said hello to Lee, then glanced at her new friend, waiting for an introduction. “This is Jackson Pollock,” she announced. “He’s going to be a great painter.”

  “Oh,” Greenberg moaned to himself, “that’s no way to size up a human being.”

  To Lee Krasner it was the only way.

  It is a cliché by now to say that Lee Krasner sacrificed her career for Jackson Pollock. It is also a falsehood. From childhood on she was determined to become a great painter, and she did.

  She was born Lenore Krassner (she later dropped the second “s” in Krassner) on Schenck Avenue, in the East New York section of Brooklyn, on October 27, 1908. Her mother thought birthdays were frivolous holidays, and when Lee later asked about her date of birth, Anna Krassner replied curtly in Yiddish, “You were born on a cold day.”

  It was an immigrant household dominated by practical concerns and the problems of subsistence. Her parents, Anna Weiss and Joseph Krassner, had settled in Brooklyn among thousands of immigrants early in the century after arriving from Shpikov, a forest village near Odessa. Lee was the sixth of their seven children and the first born in the United States. Soon after her birth her parents closed their grocery store and moved to a two-family row house on Jerome Street, in Brooklyn. They rented a stall at the Blake Street Market, where they worked from dawn to late afternoon selling fish—pike, carp, and whitefish—which they hauled from Manhattan to Brooklyn by horse and wagon, keeping it fresh in ice-packed wooden crates. They worked every day except Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The Krassners were Orthodox Jews who required their children to attend Hebrew school and synagogue. At home they spoke Yiddish and Russian.

  Lee quickly established herself as the family rebel. As a little girl, she was resentful that she and her mother had to sit upstairs at synagogue while the men sat downstairs. When she was twelve years old, she stormed into the living room one day to announce to her parents that she was through with Judaism.

  Art became her new religion. She loved to draw and was good at it. She copied pictures of women from fashion advertisements in the newspaper. Her sisters would sit and watch, marveling at her ability to create beautiful women out of nothing. “She used to draw clothed women figures all the time,” said her sister Ruth. “We were all aware of that—how marvelous it was to be able to put her pencil to paper and get a figure.” The Krassner children had never seen art before, with the exception of a dimestore reproduction of Queen Isabella giving jewels to Columbus, which hung over the fireplace in the living room. By the time Lee was fourteen she was commuting daily by subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan to attend the Washington Irving High School for Girls, the only public school in New York that offered a special art program. She couldn’t imagine becoming anything other than an artist.

  Lee’s mother sometimes complained that she was “too independent” for a young girl. Anna Krassner couldn’t understand her defiant daughter, for it was not in Anna’s nature t
o question tradition. One afternoon she was sitting at the kitchen table trying to learn to write her name in English. Her husband walked into the room, looked at her pad, and scolded her for attempting such nonsense. She put down her pencil and never tried again.

  Lee’s mother was a superstitious, fearful woman, and she made her children afraid of everything. Whenever it thundered, she gathered her daughters around her by the wood-burning stove in the kitchen and wouldn’t let them go until the storm subsided. Sometimes, late at night, she would kneel on the bed that Lee shared with her two little sisters and peer out the window at Mrs. MacAvoy, the neighborhood kook, who would emerge from her house at the same time every night to talk to the moon, thinking she was talking to her dead husband. The Krassner girls would clutch each other beneath the bed sheet and scream.

  Lee’s father, by comparison, was stern and distant. But he too instilled in his children a belief in mystical powers. On cold winter nights he would sit by the kitchen stove smoking cigars and telling tales about life in the village of Shpikov. Most of them were about Pesa, his mother, who was known in Shpikov as a woman of magical gifts. Villagers would visit the old woman seeking forgiveness for their sins, which Pesa delivered by swinging a chicken above her head and allowing their sins to pass to the fowl in a ceremony known as kapores. “I’d sit close to him, and he’d tell the stories,” Lee once said. “Oh, I was terribly scared at night, scared of the dark, still am.”