Not the least among Pollock’s frustrations was that Lee had been painting steadily since 1953, the same year he had begun having trouble. Though he had no reason to resent her work, he did resent the fulfillment she derived from it. In the summer of 1955 Lee was working particularly hard, preparing for a one-woman show at the Stable Gallery. On most days she went upstairs to her studio in the morning and did not emerge again until dinner time. She felt excited about her new work—large-scale, lavishly colored collage paintings that she made by cutting up her early paintings and reassembling the pieces into bold, arresting designs. As if in recognition of her accomplishment, she changed her signature from the self-effacing “L.K.” to her full name. Her surge in confidence owed little to her husband, who, while occasionally supportive, could also be cruelly belittling. Cile Lord recalls her embarrassment one night when Lee walked out of her studio wearing a bathrobe and asked Pollock if he could go to the barn to get her some Sobo glue. Pollock refused. On another occasion Pollock embarrassed his wife in front of Eleanor Ward, the owner of the Stable Gallery, who visited Lee in Springs one day to select the paintings for her show. The threesome went out to dinner that night, and Ward recalls her “shock” when Pollock complained to her, “Can you imagine being married to that face?”
Though Lee was still determined to help her husband, Pollock would not allow it. Ashamed of his condition, he resented her constant efforts to nurse and nurture him into health and took to staging childish protests. One of his favorite games was refusing to eat the food she put down in front of him. “I don’t want food, I want tea,” he told her one afternoon while friends were visiting. After Lee had gotten up from the table to brew him some tea, Pollock said, “I don’t want tea!” and he poured a shot of whiskey into the teacup. He humiliated her often in front of friends, subjecting her to obscene name-calling. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Lee would say sternly as friends cringed in embarrassment. She punished Pollock by ignoring him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of even a disapproving glance. Deprived of her affection, Pollock would become remorseful, apologizing profusely and insisting he could not help himself. In the summer of 1955, in an effort to save their marriage, Lee went into analysis, and Pollock started seeing Ralph Klein, a clinical psychologist who practiced in Manhattan. Every Monday Pollock and Lee went into the city together to see their respective doctors.
Pollock’s Mondays in the city invariably ended at the Cedar Street Tavern, where, unlike at home, he knew he could find an appreciative audience. The bar reverberated with excitement whenever he walked in. “Pollock’s here!” people would say, looking up from their dinners and drinks, watching as he stood by the bar and ordered a whiskey or Scotch. Young artists he may or may not have known would walk up to him to say hello. “Hiya, Jackson,” “Hey, Jackson,” “Hey, pal,” they’d shout, slapping him on the back and punching him on the arm as they offered to buy him drinks. To Pollock the camaraderie meant more than it ever had in the past. At a time when he felt like a failure, he was still a hero at the bar. And though his wife had practically stopped talking to him, there were women who came to the Cedar just to get a glimpse of him. One of them was Ruth Kligman.
Pollock first met Ruth in March 1956 when he spotted the pretty brunette sitting in a booth at the Cedar with a friend. Emboldened by his drinking, Pollock barged into the booth and took her hand in his.
“You have such warm eyes,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, “it’s true.”
After that brief encounter, Ruth, a twenty-five-year-old art student, couldn’t stop thinking about Pollock, who by now was forty-four. The following Monday she called up the Cedar, asked to speak to him, and invited him over to her apartment, on Sixteenth Street. When Pollock arrived a few minutes later he seemed very tense. “I’m married,” he blurted out awkwardly. Then he broke into hysterical sobbing. Moved by this outburst, Ruth vowed to herself that she “would always love him and be there no matter what.” Pollock saw Ruth on Mondays after finishing with the doctor.
As far as Lee was concerned, the less she knew about Pollock’s affair with Ruth the better. She never asked him why he stayed over in the city every Monday night, nor did she say anything about the dozens of long-distance calls between Springs and New York listed on their phone bill. But it eventually became impossible for her to ignore the affair. In June, Ruth moved to Sag Harbor, and Pollock visited her often, taking her out to local restaurants and driving her around town in his Oldsmobile convertible. One July morning Lee stepped out on her back porch and there they were, walking out of the studio, where they had spent the previous night. “Get that woman off my property before I call the police,” Lee shouted. Pollock and Ruth ran off laughing. Lee was furious, but after calming down she assured herself that the affair would never last. It would only be a matter of months, she figured, before Ruth realized that caring for Pollock was no more glamorous than caring for any other drunk. To give things time to cool off, Lee decided she would go to Europe for a month or two. “When I get back,” she told Pollock, “that girl better be gone.”
On July 12 Lee sailed on the Queen Elizabeth to Le Havre, en route to Paris. A few minutes before the boat was scheduled to leave she almost backed out. “I can’t go,” she told her friend Day Schnabel, who had taken her to the dock. “Jackson needs me.” She wanted to talk to him. She called him up in Springs and pretended that she had left her passport at the house. A few minutes into the conversation Lee told him, “Oh, I just found my passport.” They hung up, and she boarded the boat.
Ruth moved into the farmhouse. She couldn’t believe how pretty it was, especially the kitchen: the polished copper pots hanging on wallboards, the fancy canned foods lining the shelves, sunlight pouring in and making everything bright. She and Pollock spent most of their time sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking and ignoring the knocks on the front door. Pollock talked about getting back to work, but both of them knew he never would, and the more he talked about it, the gloomier the house became. One day when they were sitting around doing nothing Pollock said, “You know I’m a painter, don’t you?”
Postcards and letters from his wife arrived regularly. “I miss you and wish you were sharing this with me,” Lee wrote after a week in Paris, during which time she visited all the galleries, went to a flea market with Pollock’s old friend John Graham, and saw the Louvre, describing it as “overwhelming—beyond belief.” She went on to the south of France, where she visited Van Gogh’s “last painting place” and found the country “unbelievably beautiful.” She had planned on continuing to Venice and staying with Peggy Guggenheim in her palazzo on the Grand Canal, but Pollock’s former dealer refused to see her. Peggy Guggenheim felt that Pollock and Lee had “minimized what I had done for him,” never sending her so much as a thank-you note for showing Pollock’s work abroad. So Lee skipped Venice, heading back to Paris at the end of July. Since all the hotels were booked, she stayed with the painter Paul Jenkins and his wife in their apartment on the Rue Decrès, a short walk from the Montparnasse Cemetery. “It would be wonderful to get a note from you,” she reminded her husband.
In Springs Ruth was finding it harder to live with Pollock every day. Sitting around the house got to be boring after a while, especially since he was always feeling sorry for himself. To divert herself from his misery she tried to paint, working in Lee’s studio. But she promptly abandoned her efforts after calling Pollock upstairs one day to look at her work. He studied a painting in silence, then let her have it: “Why the hell do you want to be a painter?” Ruth wished they could go out more often, but Pollock rarely wanted to go anywhere. One night they went into town to see a movie, a grade-B war picture about a man who is discharged from the army and can’t find a job. Halfway through the movie Ruth glanced at Pollock and noticed that he was crying. Soon he was sobbing loudly. Ruth led him out of the theater and asked him what was wrong. “The movie,” Pol
lock said, “the guy in the movie, he was so lost, so disconnected.” Ruth decided she needed to get away. A month after moving in, she concocted a story about having to go to New York to see her psychiatrist, and she left Springs on a Thursday morning, promising she’d be back Saturday.
That Saturday, August 11, dawned hot and humid. In the morning Pollock drove to the East Hampton train station to await the 7:05 from New York. Ruth got off the train with a friend, Edith Metzger, a twenty-five-year-old beautician from the Bronx whom she had invited out for the weekend. On the way back to the house Pollock pulled over at Cavagnaro’s. “Why are we stopping here?” Ruth asked innocently. The two women ordered coffee, and Pollock had a beer.
Back at the house, Ruth and Edith changed into their bathing suits and asked Pollock to take them to the beach. Pollock said he didn’t feel like going to the beach. He helped himself to some gin and spent most of the afternoon crying.
By evening Pollock was feeling a little better. He made his guests a steak dinner and offered to take them to hear pianist Leonid Hambro of the New York Philharmonic, who was performing that night in East Hampton. On the way to the concert Pollock pulled over to the side of the road. Roger Wilcox, a neighbor, recognized the Oldsmobile convertible and walked over to see what was wrong. Pollock was sitting behind the wheel, with Ruth and Edith beside him. “Hey, Jackson, aren’t you going to the concert?” Wilcox asked him. “I feel pretty sick,” Pollock told him. “I’m just going to stay here and think about it.”
Pollock decided he wanted to go home. By the time he reached Fireplace Road, he was speeding. He started driving recklessly, taking the curves much too fast. “Let me out!” Edith screamed, but it was too late. As Pollock was rounding a sharp bend about a quarter of a mile from his house, he lost control of the car. He crashed into two small elms.
The first call came into the police station at 10:15 P.M. Officer Earl Finch was dispatched to Fireplace Road. “Two dead at scene of accident,” he reported. Edith Metzger was found crushed to death beneath the car. Ruth Kligman was thrown clear and was taken to Southampton Hospital with major injuries; she survived. Pollock was killed instantly when his head hit a tree.
Clement Greenberg placed the call to Europe. After trying to locate Lee in Venice, he called Paul Jenkins in Paris to ask him if he knew where Lee might be. Yes, Jenkins said, she’s standing right next to me. “Stay calm,” Greenberg told him, then he relayed the bad news. Lee could tell from the way they were talking that something terrible had happened. Instinctively she sensed what it was. “Jackson is dead,” she screamed, breaking into uncontrollable sobbing.
16
Lee by Herself
Pollock’s death was reported in every major newspaper and magazine. The New York Times ran the story on page one. Newsweek listed it in its “Transition” column, beneath news of Ed Sullivan’s rib injury, Gene Kelly’s separation, and Edward G. Robinson’s divorce. Time magazine called him the “shock trooper of modern painting,” and Life titled its obituary, “Rebel Artist’s Tragic Ending.” His death in a car crash at the age of forty-four helped enhance his public image as a paint-flinging cowboy who came out of nowhere to shock the civilized world with the rawness of his vision.
Lee flew home from Paris on Monday, August 13. She immediately set to work planning the funeral, and friends who visited her to offer their condolences commented on her remarkable self-control and composure. No detail escaped her attention. When the painter James Brooks mentioned that he didn’t have a dark suit to wear as a pallbearer, Lee gave him one of Pollock’s. Friends and neighbors who tried to console Lee found themselves consoled by her. Cile Lord remembers walking into the house to find it crowded with friends. Lee walked up to her and told her, “Don’t say anything,” and then put her arms around her.
Thomas Hart Benton and Rita Benton first heard the news on Sunday afternoon. They were sitting on the porch of their home in Chilmark when Herman Cherry and de Kooning, who were summering in the area, stopped by the house and said they had something to tell them. Benton invited the two men inside and offered them chairs, but no one sat down. Benton took the news hard. De Kooning offered to fly him to the funeral, but Benton just shook his head and said that he “couldn’t take it.” Before the two visitors left, Rita opened up a drawer and showed them a heap of clippings about Pollock that she had saved over the years.
The funeral was held on August 15 at the Springs Chapel, a nondenominational church down the road from Pollock’s house. Lee had asked Greenberg to deliver the eulogy, but he declined, refusing to praise “this guy who got this girl killed.” Greenberg told Lee to get someone else. “Get Tony Smith,” he said, “get Barney Newman!” Lee, as protective of Pollock in death as in life, thought no one else besides Greenberg deserved the honor, so no friends spoke at the funeral. The brief service was conducted by a Presbyterian minister who had never met Pollock, and afterward the two hundred people crowding the small church dispersed to the nearby Green River Cemetery, in Springs. Pollock was buried at the far end of the cemetery, apart from the other graves, on a grassy hill shaded by white oaks. Later a huge, sloping boulder was erected on his grave, a reminder of his early ambition to “mould a mountain of stone . . . to fit my will.” A plaque on the stone bears only his name and dates.
Among the mourners at Pollock’s funeral was his mother. At eighty-one, suffering from phlebitis, Stella managed as always to remain composed. “He is gone and we cant bring him back his work is over and he is at rest but we cant forget him,” she wrote to a cousin, while marveling at the outpouring of sympathy. “I never saw so many lovely flowers at a funeral yard and house full of friends. Cable grams Telegraph letters from all over the world.”
Lee, in the weeks following the funeral, stayed in Springs and tried to make sense of events. She lived in the house on Fireplace Road, surrounded by Pollock’s paintings and memories of their marriage. But being in Springs without him was more than she could bear. When she tried to paint, she found she couldn’t even get started. She decided to rent an apartment in New York City, where she remained for the next two years.
At first she was tormented by the thought that she was somehow responsible for Pollock’s death. The accident would not have happened, she felt, if only she hadn’t gone to Europe. “I had to realize,” she later said, “that things would have happened in the same way even if I had been sitting right here in my living room.”
The period following Pollock’s death turned out to be the most rewarding of Lee’s career. In the first eighteen months alone she produced seventeen new canvases—large, radiant abstractions that mark a decisive break from the frustrated small-scale pictures of her past. Her paintings of the late fifties are distinguished by brilliant bursts of color and bold, swooping lines, as if the tight, coiled gestures in her earlier “Little Images” had suddenly uncoiled and sprung into action. The paintings have titles such as April, Earth Green, and Easter Lilies, metaphors for Krasner’s artistic renewal. When the works were shown at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1958, the critics were admiring.
In 1958, after two years in New York City, Lee decided to return to Springs to see if she could get any work done there. “The second attempt was very beautiful,” she said. “I wasn’t depressed at all. Then, at a point during that time, I took over the barn. There was no point in letting it stand empty.” She had a friend paint the floor, so she wouldn’t have to see the splatters and splotches left behind by Pollock.
Lee naturally was eager to exhibit her new paintings, but her combative personality sometimes worked against her. In 1960 Clement Greenberg, who was then an adviser to French & Company Galleries, offered to give Lee a show. A few weeks later Greenberg paid a visit to Springs and saw the works she planned to exhibit: a series of large turbulent canvases in umber and cream, with such titles as Polar Stampede, Charred Landscape, and White Rage. With characteristic self-righteousness, Greenberg told Lee he was “disappointed” by her latest work. Lee was furious. “As of this
minute,” she told him, “my show is canceled.” She went on working in the same style.
As the years passed, honors accumulated. She was given a major exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1965 and at the Whitney Museum in 1973. Art critics everywhere acknowledged her status as a leading Abstract Expressionist. In 1981 a show called “Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship” was held at New York University to advance the idea that Krasner had had a large influence on Pollock’s work. While many people thought that the idea behind the show was preposterous, no one denied that Krasner was a painter of genuine talent who could certainly hold her own next to Pollock.
Much of Lee’s time continued to be taken up by Pollock’s career. As executor of his estate she served his artistic reputation as faithfully after his death as she had during his lifetime. She set high prices on the paintings and sold them off at a very slow rate, strengthening the market for his work. Some people accused her of having forced up the prices for her husband’s work, while others commended her for her business acumen. Her friend John Little once commented: “The three greatest dealers in the U.S.? Pierre Matisse, Leo Castelli, and Lee Krasner.”
Jackson Pollock Page 27
