Jackson Pollock (26 page)

Figure 23.
Cathedral
, 1947. (Dallas Museum of Art; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. Reis)

Figure 24.
White Cockatoo
, 1948. (Private collection)

Figure 25. Pollock pretends to paint
Number 32, 1950
for photographer Rudy Burckhardt.

Figure 26.
Number 24, 1951
, 1951. (Private collection)

In August 1945 Pollock and Lee took the train to East Hampton to spend a few weeks
with their friends Reuben and Barbara Kadish. The Kadishes were renting a two-room
fishing shack in Amagansett, a tiny village near the eastern tip of Long Island. While
the house was not very comfortable—it was small and cramped, with a leaky roof and
no piped water or electricity—any inconveniences were more than compensated for by
the splendor of the surroundings. Pollock took immediately to the area, with its pristine
beaches and flat, tranquil land, and his vacation was a happy time for him. “I just
remember this lovely person and what a nice time we all had,” Barbara Kadish once
commented. To her husband Pollock was an endearing friend. One day the two men went
fishing, and Pollock hooked a blowfish. As he reeled it out of the water the fish
puffed up. “Jack was jumping up and down,” Kadish recalled. “He was so excited.”

The Kadishes had rented the summer house with hopes of purchasing their own house
in the area, and though Pollock had
no such intention, one day he and Lee accompanied their hosts on a house-hunting outing.
A real estate agent showed them a farmhouse on Fireplace Road, in the hamlet of The
Springs. As Lee was looking around the house she started thinking that maybe she and
Pollock should move to the country. Certainly it would help him overcome his drinking,
she thought, as he seemed so relaxed in the country. But when she suggested that they
sublet their Eighth Street apartment and rent a house in Springs, Pollock looked astounded.
“Leave New York?” he said. “Are you crazy?” Lee admitted it was a preposterous idea.
“I don’t even know why I said it.”

But moving to Springs no longer seemed crazy after Pollock returned to his hot fifth-floor
walk-up on Eighth Street. The moments of well-being he had enjoyed in the country
vanished upon his return, and he began to think seriously about moving to Long Island.
Several people he knew were already living out there. The critic Harold Rosenberg
had a summer place in Springs, and Robert Motherwell had recently bought some property
in East Hampton, where he was building a house.

Within a week Pollock had made up his mind: he and Lee were buying a house in the
country. Lee was surprised by his decision. “Jackson,” she reminded him, “we have
no money to buy a house. Have you gone out of your mind?” The next morning they were
on the train.

They returned to Fireplace Road, in Springs. The house they had seen the previous
week had been sold but another had become available. The Victorian farmhouse, built
in 1893 by Henry Hale Parsons, stood two and a half stories, with pale-brown shingles
and a wide-eaved roof. In back, wetland meadows stretched for nearly a mile before
sloping off into the waters of Accabonac Creek. To Pollock and Krasner it was a perfect
country house, complete with five grassy acres and a small barn that could be converted
into a studio. The house had neither heating nor plumbing, but these were minor details
to the excited young couple. No obstacle seemed insurmountable at the moment, not
even the $5000 price. After making a few inquiries, they found a local bank willing
to give them a mortgage of $3000 if they could
produce $2000. Pollock and Lee had forty dollars between them.

Back in New York, Lee paid a visit to Peggy Guggenheim, who was sick in bed with the
flu. Lee told her all about the dream house in Springs, then mused wistfully, “If
only I had two thousand dollars.” Peggy Guggenheim reminded Lee that she ran a gallery,
not a bank.

Lee returned the next day. She told Peggy Guggenheim she felt sure that Pollock would
stop drinking if he moved to the country. “Why don’t you get a job?” Peggy Guggenheim
suggested. Lee said she couldn’t get a job because she had to paint. “Why don’t you
go ask Sam Kootz for the money?” Peggy asked sarcastically, referring to an art dealer
who had opened up a gallery down the street earlier that year and to whom several
of her artists had already defected. So Lee went to talk to Sam Kootz. Sure, Kootz
said, he’d be happy to lend Lee the money—providing, of course, that Pollock switched
to his gallery. Lee brought the news back to Peggy Guggenheim. She exploded. “How
could you do such a thing? And with Kootz of all people! Over my dead body you’ll
go to Kootz!”

Peggy Guggenheim eventually agreed to lend them the $2000, for the simple reason that
“it was the only way to get rid of Lee.” She worked out a new two-year contract with
Pollock effective March 1946. Pollock’s monthly stipend was raised from $150 to $300,
with Peggy Guggenheim subtracting $50 a month until the loan was paid off. In exchange
she acquired ownership of his entire output save for one painting a year, which Pollock
was allowed to keep for himself. (This contract became the basis of a well-publicized
lawsuit in 1961, when Peggy Guggenheim charged that Pollock had defrauded her by failing
to turn over fifteen paintings created during the two-year period. She sued Lee for
$122,000. The suit dragged on for four years before Peggy Guggenheim decided to drop
the charges and accept in settlement two Pollock paintings then worth $400.)

That October, a few weeks before their move, Pollock and Lee decided that they wanted
to get married. As one who could be thoroughly conventional in matters of social conduct,
Pollock felt it would be wrong to live together without the sanction of
marriage in the conservative community of Springs; the neighbors might take offense.
Lee agreed, and one day she asked him when they’d be going to City Hall to apply for
a marriage license. “City Hall?” Pollock said. “That’s a place to get a dog license.
This has got to be a church wedding or else no wedding at all.”

Lee, who had been raised as an Orthodox Jew, was adamantly opposed to marrying in
a church. Pollock was sympathetic and offered to get married in a synagogue. Lee set
about searching for a rabbi willing to marry them, but she couldn’t find one, and
arguments erupted. She felt exasperated by Pollock’s insistence that they be married
by a representative of organized religion—any religion. It seemed irrational to her,
for as far as she knew, Pollock’s parents not only failed to observe their faith but
were “anti-religious—that’s a fact.” In later life she once commented that Pollock
wanted to marry in a church to compensate for the lack of churchgoing in his childhood.

As to the question of whom they should ask to serve as the two witnesses to the ceremony,
Pollock entrusted the matter to Lee. She eventually decided on May Rosenberg, a close
friend of hers, and Peggy Guggenheim, who she felt should be included for business
reasons. One never knew with Peggy, Lee reasoned; she might be insulted if they didn’t
ask her to participate, and surely they didn’t want to alienate Pollock’s patron.
Besides, Lee thought, if Peggy served as a witness, maybe she would offer to give
them a reception. It would be good for Pollock’s reputation.

Bubbling with excitement, Lee walked over to Tenth Street to see May Rosenberg. “Jackson
wants to get married,” she told her, “and he wants you to be a witness.”

“Harold and I would love to be witnesses,” May Rosenberg told her.

“No,” Lee said, “not Harold, just you.”

Next Lee went up to Fifty-seventh Street to talk to Peggy Guggenheim, who said she’d
be happy to be the second witness. But then a week later she realized that she had
previously agreed to meet a collector for lunch on the day of the wedding. She told
Lee she couldn’t be a witness. “Besides,” she said, “you’re married enough.”

When Lee told Pollock that Peggy Guggenheim had backed
out, Pollock said he was backing out too. If the wedding was going to be this complicated,
the wedding was off. Lee ignored him, and she and May Rosenberg took care of the details.
“I got out the phone book,” May Rosenberg recollected, “and called every church listed.
When they heard that an Orthodox Jew was marrying a Presbyterian, they weren’t interested.
Finally I tried the Dutch Reformed Church. They agreed to do it. I told them we wouldn’t
be having any people and we needed a second witness. They thought I was from out of
town. Who in New York doesn’t have two friends?”

On October 25, 1945, at one in the afternoon, Jackson Pollock and Lenore Krassner
were married in a ten-minute ceremony at the Marble Collegiate Church, at Fifth Avenue
and Twenty-ninth Street. May Rosenberg served as a witness. The second witness was
August Schulz, a janitor who worked at the church. After the ceremony May Rosenberg
took the newlyweds to Schrafft’s for lunch.