Читать книгу Pollock - Donald Wigal - Страница 30

In several references, the birth year of Lee Krasner is given as 1912, the same as Pollock’s. However, it is given as 1908 in Gabor and other authoritative sources. At the least, oral biographies sometimes mention she was older than Pollock. Krasner’s parents were Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn. She was the fifth of six children, and apparently her talent was overlooked in her youth. However, she later became a favourite student of the noted artist and mentor, Hans Hofmann, from 1937 to 1940. She lived with an artist, Igor Pantuhoff, in the early 1930s. She led her relatives to think they were married[45]. He was in so many ways the opposite of Lee; in his appearance, background, and philosophy[46]. Yet, they shared an apartment in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, with Harold Rosenberg and Harold’s wife, May Tabak. Rosenberg had Pollock’s evolving technique in mind when he later coined the phrase, action painting. Pantuhoff’s profile portrait of Krasner seems to be a caricature, yet it is oddly flattering. It is one of the many details carefully incorporated into the Harris movie. Pantuhoff said, “How much you get paid (for a portrait of a society lady) depends on how well you sleep with her.”[47] He was an admirer of de Kooning.

Pollock’s biographers suggest Pollock and Pantuhoff “were drawn to Krasner not so much by lust as by their alcoholism, eccentricity, and a latent homosexual’s attraction to a maternal figure.”[48] After Pollock’s death, Pantuhoff inexplicably wanted to resume their love affair (23).

Even brief biographies of Pollock need to profile Krasner. Critics and art historians acknowledge her importance in the history of American art. Even just socially, she always had an important male artist in her life. However, each of those men had a love/hate relationship with her.

One of her biographers observes, “To these men, an incisive mind, a sharp wit, luxuriant hair, a stunning figure, and beautiful hands couldn’t militate against a face that evoked cubism in the flesh.”[49] Pollock derisively referred to Lee in public and in her presence as ‘that face’. One neighbour described her as ‘shrewishly unattractive.’[50]

A classmate of Krasner’s said, “She was not a handsome woman… My impression was that most men, like me, were rather repelled by her.”[51].

Hofmann did at least two portraits of Krasner, probably between 1935 and 1940. Each seems to seek both her strength and grace while acknowledging her prominent physical features and his apparent interest in her shapely lips. The portrait, with the odd double-lined outline of the nose, is the property of the Jason McCoy Gallery, from the collection of a former Hofmann student, Lillian Kiesler. It is oil on board, 25 × 21 1/4 inches (63.5 × 54 cm). Hofmann expert, Tina Dickey, believes, “(Hofmann) may have been using two brushes at once in those double strokes.” About the theory that Hofmann was showing the process of his work, Dickey adds, “It seems unlikely that he would, or could, draw a line so closely parallel to the line of an earlier stage.”[52] (Note Jason McCoy is Sande McCoy’s son, a nephew of Pollock).

Number 32, 1950, 1950. Enamel on canvas, 269 × 457.5 cm, Kunstammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

“Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways of expressing the world about him.”[53]

Age 38

Pollock’s portraits of Krasner were also unflattering, in contrast to her self-portraits in which she showed herself as young and even glamorous. Her biographer, Gabor, describes how the young girl, Lena Krassner (sic), hung a mirror from a tree in her backyard and then painted her own portrait: “Those who knew Krasner would easily recognise the pose of defiance… scepticism and intensity.”[54]

Krasner was not alone in being the artist-wife of a more famous husband, and thus put her career on hold during his artistically productive years. De Kooning’s wife, Elaine, was another. Ann Rower makes a fascinating comparison between the two artist wives (97). Other outstanding women who often stood behind their famous men are studied in Andrea Gabor’s, Einstein’s Wife (28).

Concerning Krasner’s politics, Gabor comments, “She believed in the new aesthetic and in a divine, Platonic ideal of the artist that she found embodied by Pollock.”[55]

Even after years of life in the shadows of Pollock, Krasner would become, as biographer Gabor expresses it “the most powerful wife and widow in the artistic firmament.”[56] Another woman would be essential to the process – Peggy Guggenheim.

The art education of Krasner was exceptional. Robert Hughes notes,

“No American could have had a better one in the ‘30s. First, there was rigorous academic grounding under the atelier system at the Art Students League in New York. Then the large-scale practical experience on the WPA murals in the ‘30s; finally, three years (1937–1940) under the great émigré teacher, Hans Hofmann, who knew… Matisse, Kandinsky, Mondrian… and could share their ideas with students.”[57]

Most critics today would probably agree with Hughes, who said in 1983, the art of Krasner was, “…nearly the equal of de Kooning and better than Rothko or Still” (53).

Guggenheim once asked Krasner to exhibit in a show for women artists, but Lee declined, probably rejecting the notion women artists should be singled out so categorically. The two women never got along. Lee thought the wealthy patron wanted to have sex with her husband. It was common knowledge Guggenheim had had affairs with other artists, including Tanguy and one of her future partners, Max Ernst. In 1943, Ernst left Guggenheim for Dorothea Tanning, a young American Surrealist painter.

It wasn’t unreasonable for Lee to think Guggenheim was trying to seduce her very masculine husband (10). In the film Pollock, Harris, as Jackson, and his real-life wife, actress Amy Madigan as Peggy, act out an unsuccessful sexual effort alleged to have taken place between the two. Guggenheim’s biographer makes a convincing case to show it is unlikely that Jackson and Peggy ever had sex, in spite of the rumours[58].

Krasner finally received overdue recognition in a celebrated 1983 retrospective. The exhibition then toured several rounds of U. S. museums. In his long review in Time Magazine, Robert Hughes points out the fiction of the scenario which tries to explain Krasner’s comparatively small and unnoticed production of works during her life with Pollock. That myth depicts her as the vulnerable female who was overcome by the famous male. Hughes points out if Pollock had married someone “with a less acerbic and combative temper than Krasner’s, his demands, his egotism and his fondness for the bottle might have done her in” (53). Particularly because of his behaviour in his final year, unfaithfulness could have been added to the judgment list.

Concerning a specific work of hers, Krasner insisted she had painted over one of Pollock’s discarded canvases. However, Gabor reports recent tests have revealed she actually painted over one of her own canvases. Of course, there might be more than one painting involved in the apparent contradiction[59].

Early in her relationship with Pollock, Krasner took control of his art. She later discovered Sidney Janis, Pollock’s dealer for years, had sold several Pollock paintings to members of his family at very low prices[60].

After Pollock’s death, Krasner displayed dozens of her own works on her walls, but no Pollock paintings. Karen Wilkins observes, “Krasner’s marriage to Pollock, while unquestionably of crucial importance to his own short professional life and his evolution as an artist, occupied only fifteen years of Krasner’s nearly fifty years in her career as a painter…” (121) The final sentence before the closing credits of Ed Harris’ movie states: “Lee Krasner lived for another twenty-eight years (after the death of Pollock), during which she managed the Pollock estate and produced the biggest, boldest, most brilliantly coloured works of her career, many of them painted in Jackson’s studio.” (45) She died alone in a hospital room at age seventy-six in June 1984.

According to Gabor, Lee left an estate worth about $10 million (28). However, Solomon says it was $20 million[61]. There is agreement on the fact she left no burial instructions, but gave specific directions to preserve the house in Springs on Long Island as a museum and study centre, now known as Pollock/Krasner House and Study Center[62].

Just as there was a retrospective of Pollock’s works at MoMA after his death, there was also one of Krasner’s works six months after her death. Additionally, in 2000, the Brooklyn Museum of Art had an Exhibit of Krasner (6 October, 2000 to 7 January, 2001), which was one of several international exhibits of her work.

In 2005, Christie’s auction house expects an untitled 1961 Krasner oil and enamel on canvas (162.5 × 147.9 cm) to sell for half a million dollars[63].

Gothic, 1944. Oil on canvas, 215.5 × 142.1 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Number 14, 1951, 1951. Enamel on canvas, 146.4 × 269.2 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Yellow Islands, 1952. Oil on canvas, 143.5 × 185.4 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Number 17A, 1948. Oil on canvas, 86.5 × 112 cm, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.