Lee Krasner Read online

  Gail Levin

  Lee Krasner

  A Biography

  For John

  You are not a woman. You may try—but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out—this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; a woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet…

  GEORGE ELIOT, Daniel Deronda, 1876

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1. Beyond the Pale: A Brooklyn Childhood, 1908–21

  2. Breaking Away: Determined to Be an Artist, 1922–25

  3. Art School: Cooper Union, 1926–28

  4. National Academy and First Love, 1928–32

  5. Enduring the Great Depression, 1932–36

  6. From Politics to Modernism, 1936–39

  7. Solace in Abstraction, 1940–41

  Photographic Insert I

  8. A New Attachment: Life with Pollock, 1942–43

  9. Coping with Peggy Guggenheim, 1943–45

  10. Coming Together: Marriage and Springs, 1945–47

  11. Triumphs and Challenges, 1948–50

  12. First Solo Show, 1951–52

  13. Coming Apart, 1953–56

  14. Dual Identities: Artist and Widow, 1956–59

  15. A New Alliance, 1959–64

  Photographic Insert II

  16. Recognition, 1965–69

  17. The Feminist Decade, 1970–79

  18. Retrospective, 1980–84

  A Note About Sources

  Selected Bibliography: Frequently Used Sources

  Notes

  Searchable Terms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Gail Levin

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  THE NAME LEE KRASNER HAS BECOME EVER MORE WIDELY known since Marcia Gay Harden won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Pollock (2000), directed by Ed Harris, who played the title role. Harden portrayed Krasner’s part as painter-wife to the gifted and troubled Jackson. Inaccuracy about Krasner’s life, already endemic in the film, was aggravated in 2002, when John Updike claimed that Krasner had inspired the main character in his novel Seek My Face. Several other novels have expressly depicted Krasner or referred to her by name, so that her growing recognition owes more to fiction than to fact.

  Who was the real Lee Krasner? To her friend and neighbor, Patsy Southgate, “she was a brilliant verbatim storyteller and raconteuse—dramatic pauses, perfect people imitations…. She could be caustic, abrasive, combative.”1 Krasner’s talent and her charisma made her “just a phenomenon,” recalled Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, who first met her about 1937, when both were students at the Hofmann School of Art; she was “unique.”2

  In the eyes of her nieces and nephews Krasner was inspiring, tender, and generous. Ronald Stein, her sister Ruth’s son, referred to his Aunt Lee as “my alter-mother,” telling how she “always put me to work drawing” and inspired him to become an artist.3 “They couldn’t keep her down,” said niece Rena Glickman, for whom Krasner served as a role model. Glickman reinvented herself as “Rusty Kanokogi,” the renowned judo expert from Brooklyn.4 “Lee was the first person who ever gave me credit for all I had come up through, all I had fought against,” Kanokogi said. “She reinforced me.”5 To her mind, Aunt Lee was “honest, forthright. She would tell it the way it was.”

  Krasner’s “honesty” also struck her close friend, the playwright Edward Albee, who called it “a no-nonsense thing.”6 Her “wit could be acid; she detested stupidity; and she never believed it was unwomanly to be intelligent,” according to another friend, the art dealer and critic John Bernard Myers.7 “Lee was unbelievably intelligent,” said her close friend the art dealer and author Eugene V. Thaw.8 The critic Clement Greenberg even admitted that he feared Krasner because she was so brilliant and had such a strong character.9

  To a questionnaire that asked “What was the greatest sacrifice you have made for your art?” she replied, “I sacrificed nothing.”10

  In 1977 she told interviewer Gaby Rodgers, “I am a strong character.”11 When asked if she would do anything otherwise if she had to do it all again, Krasner replied, “I doubt it. I am awfully stubborn. Somehow I would have made the same choices and decisions.”12

  Outspoken as she was, Krasner liked oral history. She readily gave—over more than three decades—interviews to journalists, critics, and art historians. The talks she gave before student audiences remain among the most important sources about her life. Beyond the oral records, Krasner left few hints about her work’s meaning. She wrote very little—no essays, no regular journals—and her surviving letters are very scant. Other than her art, most of what she left behind consists of photographs, exhibition records, clippings from many publications, and her business and personal correspondence. She did record some notes and fragments of dreams—most probably to share with her therapist. Most of these offer little evidence of her conscious thoughts or activities.

  “I was in on the formation of what all the history books now write about the abstract expressionists. I was in the WPA, part of the New York School, I knew Gorky, Hofmann, de Kooning, Clement Greenberg before Jackson did and in fact I introduced him to them. But there’s never any mention of me in those history books, like I was never there,” protested Krasner in 1973.13 The lack of attention provoked Krasner to aver, “And being dogmatically independent, I stepped on a lot of toes. Human beings being what they are, one way to deal with that is denying me artistic recognition.”14

  Today Krasner’s protest might be even more vehement, since artistic erasure has been compounded by personal misrepresentation and caricature—both inadvertent and willed. Gossip has crowded out the facts that are available, and Krasner’s life has been picked over for tidbits to serve other agendas—from playing second fiddle in Jackson Pollock’s very sensational life to bending aspects of her life to feminist stereotypes that do not fit. In reality, well before she met Pollock, Krasner had established herself as an artist and had won the respect of her peers; then, after scarcely fourteen years with him, she continued for nearly three decades to create and show her art.

  Current interest in abstract expressionism, the New York School, or “action painting” is intense. This is true not only in the United States, but also in Europe, Australia, and Japan. Whereas Krasner would have been overlooked before, she is now routinely featured in major shows focusing on modernism or, more specifically, on “action painting.”

  “No one today could persist in calling hers a peripheral talent,” wrote art critic Robert Hughes, praising her “harsh improvising search for form based on a highly critical grasp of the culture of modernism.” He dubbed Krasner “the Mother Courage of Abstract Expressionism.”15

  Krasner has gained a certain recognition in death that she only dreamed about while living. Recent prices at public auction for her work have made clear that museums and the public consider Krasner a major artist. On November 11, 2003, Celebration, a large painting from 1960 by Krasner, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art for $1,911,500, setting a new auction record. By May 14, 2008, Krasner’s prices had set yet another new record, when her painting Polar Stampede sold at Sotheby’s for $3,177,000. Historically, prices for art by women have failed to match those for work by male artists, yet very few women artists command prices as high as these.

  By now Krasner’s work appears in the most prominent American public collections: the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery, the Art Institute of C
hicago, the Dallas Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum—as well as in many others. Some of her pictures are also in major public collections in Europe, such as the Tate Modern in London, the Kunstmuseum in Bern, the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderna in Valencia, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, as well as in Australia at both the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

  I FIRST MET LEE KRASNER AT THE MARLBOROUGH GALLERY ON FEBRUARY 6, 1971, when I was twenty-two years old.16 As a second-year graduate student at Rutgers I had just completed a seminar on abstract expressionism that featured Jackson Pollock. Having decided to investigate Pollock’s debt to the art and ideas of Wassily Kandinsky, I decided to interview Krasner.

  Although a colleague recently questioned how I could have taken such initiative at such a young age, contacting Krasner did not seem unusual to me at the time. Much less known than she is today, she was sixty-two when I met her, and she reminded me of my grandmother.

  Both Lee and my grandmother had grown up with hardworking, long-suffering, Yiddish-speaking mothers who fled the Russian empire with their impoverished families. They emigrated from small towns in the same region of the Ukraine, and joined their religious husbands, who had preceded them to America. Both Lee and my grandmother grew plump in late middle age.

  I never considered Lee ugly, as several of her contemporaries and some writers have emphasized since her death. Some of their emphasis may stem from anger felt by jealous artists, aggrieved friends, rejected biographers, and those who are unable to comprehend that some people make up in charisma and spirit what they lack in features that fit our stereotypes of classic beauty. Rather than being preoccupied by her looks or lack thereof, I was fascinated by her wit, her humor, and her ability to make history come alive.

  Krasner agreed to see me and arranged for us to meet in New York at the Marlborough Gallery, which then represented both her work and the Pollock estate. I arrived a bit early and was welcomed by the director, Donald McKinney. He led me to a table, handed me a catalogue, and said, “Here, you’d better read this. She’s an artist too.” It was the catalogue for Krasner’s first retrospective ever, organized by Bryan Robertson in 1965 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

  Despite receiving positive critical reception in London, Krasner had not been included in the course I was taking, which was taught by a young male professor. Nor did her work appear in Irving Sandler’s new book on abstract expressionism, which had just been published. Hardly surprising. At the time, I was teaching an introductory survey of art history at Rutgers, using the classic textbook, A History of Art by H. W. Janson, which, like Sandler’s new book, contained no women artists.

  In 1971 Krasner was being ignored by most critics as an early innovator of abstract expressionism, although she was beginning to attract the attention of women art historians, artists, and critics, who, affected by Second Wave feminism, were searching for important women artists and role models. The history of women artists had not yet caught my interest. Such a topic would have been unacceptable to my professors, almost all of whom were male.

  I asked Krasner if Pollock had saved any books or exhibition catalogues related to Kandinsky. I also wanted to know whether there were any catalogues from the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York, where he had briefly worked in 1943. Its director, the Baroness Hilla Rebay, had exhibited many pictures by Kandinsky. Pollock had supposedly worked on the frames.

  Krasner said that she did not recall what was in their library, but I was welcome to come out to visit her on Long Island the next summer to have a look for myself. At no time did Krasner try to inject her own art into my investigation of Pollock. In fact she had considered Kandinsky’s art during the late 1930s and early 1940s, but she gave no indication that her interest in Kandinsky’s work began before she got together with Pollock. I didn’t press her on this at the time but discovered this years later.

  In the intervening time, I went to Venice to interview Peggy Guggenheim, Pollock’s former dealer when she had her New York gallery, Art of This Century. Though I shared my plans with Krasner, who had not gotten along with Guggenheim, she made no protest. When I returned from Europe, I took Krasner up on her offer and called her in East Hampton. I spent several days that August researching the books in the library of her old farmhouse, where she let me stay in her upstairs guest room.

  Though focused on learning more about Pollock, I was very interested in the paintings hanging in Krasner’s house. These included her early self-portraits from the time of her study at the National Academy of Design. I was fascinated to see that she had begun with such traditional figurative work. Her painting of a nude in the bath, reminiscent of Matisse, also recalled the old claw-footed bathtub in her bathroom, near which it hung. I was struck by the quality of her output, and I began to question why she had been left out of art histories from the period. This could have been her motivation in inviting me to visit, since much later I learned that she already had an inventory of the books I went to see.

  By 1976 I was working as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Robert Hobbs on a show that would be called “Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years.” I was eager to see Krasner in the show along with her male colleagues. When we divided up the artists, I chose to write about both Krasner and Pollock (among others) in the catalogue. I called Krasner and arranged for Hobbs and me to interview her and discuss loans for the show we were planning.

  Our visit was supposed to be over two days, August 27 and 28, 1977; but the critic Barbara Rose, who was making a film, Lee Krasner: The Long View, telephoned Krasner, and Rose decided that she and her crew could film us interviewing the artist if we stayed another day. Eventually Rose included many of Krasner’s responses to our (unacknowledged) questions and a brief clip of me interviewing Krasner.

  I encouraged Krasner to let us include in the show some works on paper that she had produced while still at the Hofmann School during the late 1930s. “Why that student work?” she wanted to know. I explained that it would document her interest in abstraction long before she was with Pollock: “Trust me, it’s important.” So she let us select whatever we wanted of both hers and Pollock’s, including works that were still in her own collection. In addition to her abstract Little Image canvases from the second half of the 1940s, I added works on paper that were inspired by still life setups from the Hofmann School. Painted in brightly colored hues with the edges of objects no longer readable as representational, the works looked abstract. They reflected School of Paris modernism and made clear that Krasner’s ability and sophistication as an abstract artist predated her contact with Pollock.

  When our show opened, critics finally began to see that Krasner had been a significant artist before getting together with Pollock. They praised her work and, for the first time, declared that Krasner was indeed a “first-generation abstract expressionist.” Krasner enjoyed the belated recognition and basked in all the praise. The show traveled to a museum in Tokyo, which I visited. I came back with the catalogue, Japanese art journals, and the photographs I had taken of women in kimonos looking at Krasner’s paintings, and this seemed to please her.

  Krasner appreciated my intervention on her behalf, which, I believe, created a bond between us. After the show opened, I visited her in Springs (in East Hampton, New York) on many occasions, sometimes spending up to a week or two at a time. Krasner often cooked for me when I visited. She taught me how to make her pesto sauce (with fresh basil ground together with pignoli and olive oil), which she served slathered over broiled bluefish, an inexpensive fish very commonly caught in local waters.

  I came to consider Krasner both as my mentor in the art world and as an older professional woman who had acquired experience and wisdom. She knew so many people and so much about how things worked in history and in the world at that time. Because I lived just a few blocks away from her apartment on East Seventy-ninth Street, we often got t
ogether for dinner in New York. Sometimes it was at her place, sometimes at mine. Often I invited friends who were artists so that they could meet her, and she seemed to enjoy that.

  Krasner often introduced me to her friends, some of whom just happened to drop by while I was visiting. I recall meeting artists such as Jimmy Ernst or John Little (and his wife Josephine) in the Springs house. In Krasner’s New York apartment, I recall meeting the designer Ray Kaiser “Buddha” Eames, who, like Little, had been a friend of Krasner’s since their time at the Hofmann School. Lee had her studio in what had been the master bedroom of her apartment. She put up her guests in what was once the maid’s room off the kitchen. Lee once introduced me to Bryan Robertson, visiting from London, where he had organized that first retrospective. His essay was in the catalogue that had first introduced me to her art.

  During our talks I made it clear that I was curious about Krasner’s family’s attitude toward her going to art school and becoming an artist. My family had threatened to disown me if I pursued my dream of becoming a painter. She was clear that her family had left her alone and did not care what she did, as long as she never asked anything of them. I admired her independence and her courage.

  I never thought of recording our personal conversations, which often covered subjects that Krasner’s interviewers never touched. For example, because it was often on my mind in those years (my early thirties), we discussed why certain women would or would not have children. Krasner insisted to me that having a baby with Pollock would have been completely out of the question because he was so needy and demanded so much attention. In effect he took the place of a child in her life. Contrary to the reports of others who interviewed her, she also spoke freely of her earlier relationship with Igor Pantuhoff, her lover before Pollock. She referred to their liaison as “a togetherness,” but I understood that having a child during the Depression was out of the question because their own survival often seemed so precarious. She intimated that the anti-Semitism of Pantuhoff’s family obstructed their relationship, and I now conclude that it kept her from marrying him.