Lee Krasner has long been eclipsed by the shadow of her husband, Jackson Pollock. Now, a landmark show in New York City rewrites the story of the artists whose work and legacies were – aesthetically and personally – bound together.
The old farmhouse in the hamlet of Springs, N.Y., is easy to miss, if not for the sign for the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. Here, on the east end of Long Island, is where Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner moved in the winter of 1945. And it was here where the Abstract Expressionists would send a seismic tremor through the art world.
It was their home and workplace. The married couple moved into a house with no plumbing or heating. "It was really a choice that they made to come out here, to go into isolation almost to really focus on the work," said the Center's director Matthew K. Ward.
Now an historical site run by Stony Brook University, the Pollock-Krasner House looks much as it did when Krasner died in 1984.
Ward showed us the custom-made speaker system that Pollack himself wired through a crawlspace. It has paint all over it. "Yeah, a lot of stuff here has paint all over it!" Ward laughed.
Krasner worked in an upstairs bedroom – small, but with a view of Accabonac Creek. Pollock painted in the barn out back, but without an easel. "No – that's kind of Jackson's thing," Ward said.
Pollack stretched his canvases out on the floor, and would pour, drip, and splatter paint from above down onto the canvas. The floor is a work of art in itself. Ward said, "The way Pollock worked was so physical. I think we feel him through the floor."
The entire art world changed right here. In fact, Ward said, "The most modern work anybody had ever seen was made in this rustic space."
In 1949, Life magazine famously asked of Pollack, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?"
And yet, many people who might show up at the Pollack-Krasner House may ask, "Who's Lee Krasner?" After a new show at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, no more.
In "Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous," for the first time the two artists' careers are considered together. "We hopefully prime you for this idea of creative adjacency, two careers in parallel," said co-curator Brinda Kumar.
Early in the exhibition, you see Krasner's work on the left wall, and Pollock's through a portal. "You automatically understand, hopefully, how this dialogue is happening across the studio, across the lawn," Kumar said.
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. Krasner was the child of Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. So, why did they hit it off?
"A very good question!" said co-curator David Breslin. "I think for Pollock to meet someone who had that degree of sheer intelligence, bravado, I think her connections weren't a bad thing."
As to what attracted Krasner to Pollock, Breslin said, "I don't know if she needed him. She was drawn to his work. Who the man was who could have made that work almost became a riddle that she wanted to solve."
That riddle proved confounding. Pollock drank heavily, and had affairs. "She has this great line that says something along the lines of, 'Unfortunately, I have the fortune of being married to Jackson Pollock,'" said Breslin.
But in the mid-1950s, Krasner left for Paris. Jackson moved his girlfriend, Ruth Kligman, into the house and, said Breslin, "things kind of went to hell."
In 1956, Pollock died in a car crash. Kligman, also in the car, survived, but a friend did not.
Krasner went back to the house in Springs. She would aggressively promote Pollock's legacy as a painter, but she now took over his studio.
According to Breslin, "He dies; she's unleashed."
Kumar said, "Moving into the barn after Pollock's death allowed her to work on an unprecedented scale as well."
In the Sixties, she'd paint "Through Blue," "Right Bird Left," and "Combat."
"These are painted directly on the wall," Kumar said. "There's a kind of ferocity. And today if you go to Springs, you'll see the kind of ghostly outlines [from the canvases]."
Krasner lived and worked here for another 28 years after Pollock's death. Ward said, "This home is filled with ephemera that belonged to both of them. Lee wanted Jackson's legacy to live on just as her own, and she wanted them to live on together."
In effect, the exhibition "Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous" tries to rewrite history and change the mythology about these artists. Breslin said, "Our exhibition really has been an effort to say she's an equal."
Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: Carol Ross.