Lee Krasner (56 page)

Commenting on the film in
Women Artists News,
Diana Morris wrote, “She is shown unflatteringly getting a haircut at Kenneth's, the salon of the beautiful people; she looks awful. When Rose asks her, rather tactlessly, why she cares how she looks, Krasner laughs: ‘Why do I care? Well, I am a member of civilized society, even if I do make pictures!' No one who wants to become an art world myth would allow herself to be filmed with her hair in rollers, especially at Kenneth's.”
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In an interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein in 1977, Krasner remarked, “The show that is being worked on now, which I think will be enormously interesting, is being done by Cornell and the Whitney, and it's called ‘Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years,' and it ought to be damn interesting.”
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Krasner, who understood that she was finally being considered with male colleagues of her generation, had a hunch this show would be significant for her career.

That hunch was right. The show opened to praise, especially for Krasner, who was finally recognized as a pioneer and first-generation abstract expressionist. Barbara Cavaliere wrote that “the recent ‘Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years' was the first time a number of Krasner's Little Image series of 1945–50 were seen in relationship with her peers' work of the period. They are among her most powerful works, the achievements of
a mature artist who had internalized the ideas behind Abstract Expressionism.”
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Hilton Kramer praised Krasner in the
New York Times,
noting the revision of the early history of Abstract Expressionism: “The exhibition, called ‘Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years,' which opened last fall, was one of the first surveys of the subject to accord her an honored place in its history.”
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Just as her own work was beginning to win public acclaim, Krasner realized a longtime goal when Yale University Press published in October 1978 a four-volume catalogue raisonné for all of Pollock's authentic works. Krasner had required the project in her contracts with both Sidney Janis and Marlborough galleries, but although Marlborough did make a substantial financial contribution, the complicated project never got off the ground. It needed the help of Eugene V. Thaw, the New York dealer and also her friend. Thaw took over the demanding and complex project and established a committee to determine the authenticity of the works going into it. He hired the scholar Francis V. O'Connor to be his coauthor and paid for the rest of the costs himself. The committee consisted of Thaw, O'Connor, Krasner, William Lieberman (then director of the Museum of Modern Art's department of drawings), and Donald McKinney, the former president of Marlborough, with whom Krasner had developed a close relationship.

Krasner said she had demanded the creation of a catalogue because “there were so many fakes that…I began to feel the pressure.”
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She was prescient, since controversies over fake Pollocks have continued with greater frequency and audacity as prices for his work have soared.
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At the time, there were few such definitive catalogues of American painters, and Krasner was very proud of having pushed this one into being.

The publication of the Pollock catalogue raisonné was celebrated with an exhibition of his “New-Found Works,” which opened at the Yale University Art Gallery and then traveled to other towns. A week before the show opened at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington (NCFA; now called the
Smithsonian Museum of American Art), the curator Harry Rand (who had just run into Krasner at the Whitney) wrote to her that he admired her work and would like to organize “a project of significant historical scope and depth.” He never called it what she longed for—a retrospective.
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Rand indicated that he and Ellen Landau, then a research fellow at the museum who was preparing a dissertation on Krasner's early work, had been discussing this project. Landau recalled that Krasner asked her to propose an exhibition, which she did through Rand, who was the sponsor for her fellowship at the museum.
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On the same day that Rand wrote his letter, Landau wrote to Krasner as well, mentioning her discussions with Rand about a show that would be focused on her art before and including the Little Images of the 1940s—the exact topic of her dissertation. She indicated that the decision to focus on her earlier work was made based on her success in the show “Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years,” which Landau cited as demonstrating that Krasner was on a par with her peers. Despite the focus, Landau noted that she and Rand would be open to considering a show of broader scope.
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At the opening of the Pollock show in Washington, Rand told Krasner that he would like to organize a retrospective exhibition for which Landau would write most of the catalogue.
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Krasner replied that she would agree only if the show could go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By February 16, 1979, Landau wrote to Krasner that the NCFA had placed her retrospective exhibition on its schedule of proposed future shows and that she would be writing the catalogue, with the exception of a forward by Rand and a preface by the museum's director, Joshua Taylor.
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Krasner soon telephoned Rand to insist that Barbara Rose write an essay in the catalogue.
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This was hardly surprising, given Rose's extraordinary long-term commitment to promoting Krasner's work and the friendship between the two that went back to the early 1960s. Not only had Rose made a documentary film
about Krasner, but she had also included Krasner in her book on American art in 1967, when few in America paid Krasner serious attention.

The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation in Houston, which had purchased Krasner's 1957 canvas
April,
asked her for a statement for a catalogue it planned to publish. In a rare gesture, Krasner produced two pages. She began, “I certainly was there through the formative years of Abstract Expressionism, and I have been treated like I wasn't. So, I'd say the fact that this is being brought to light today by Barbara Rose, Gail Levin and others makes me feel pretty good. The fact that I was Mrs. Jackson Pollock has complicated matters. I want to be very clear about this. Because Jackson Pollock was in the forefront, a difficult light was thrown on the role that I had.”
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She included an asterisk by Rose's name to indicate both Rose's February 1977 article in
Arts Magazine
and her film. The double asterisk by my name referred to my essay in the catalogue
Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years.
She continued, “I have never denied that Pollock had an influence on my work. But then, so did Mondrian, Picasso, and Matisse. I never dripped that I was aware of and I never worked on the floor as Pollock worked. I always used brushes, which Pollock sometimes did and sometimes didn't. We are all influenced by other artists. Art brings about art.”
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She did not consider the very controlled dripping that she did do in some of her Little Images as the same process that Pollock employed.

Krasner continued to speak out about the attitudes of some of her male peers, noting that “Jackson always treated me as an artist. His ego was so colossal. I didn't threaten him. He always acknowledged what I was doing. I was working, and that was that. I couldn't have lived with him for one minute if this weren't so. Franz Kline spoke about my work, but quietly, just he and I in the room. Bradley Walker Tomlin would talk to me. But egos like Newman, Rothko, Motherwell…Baziotes was angelic; he didn't say no and he didn't say yes.”
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Krasner reserved her scorn for
de Kooning, whom she often accused of having a difficult “problem with women.” She recalled fighting with Gorky, “but at least, I had a level to fight on. It was more than I was given later on.”
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On February 3, 1979, the Pace Gallery opened “Lee Krasner Paintings 1959–1962,” featuring her umber and white work, which had been shown twice in the early 1960s by the Howard Wise Gallery. Hilton Kramer lamented the lack of color in these canvases and attributed this to an “act of homage to Pollock's memory.”
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Eleanor Munro found these works to be “full of tragedy and storm.”
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Barbara Cavaliere asserted that these works were “autobiographical,” and that Krasner was repeating themes Richard Howard had written about after interviewing Krasner for the catalogue. Howard's article cited Greenberg's dislike of her work, which led her to cancel her show at French & Company; her mother's death; and her grief over Pollock's death.
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In November 1979, Daniel Wildenstein of the New York gallery Wildenstein & Company wrote to Krasner to request the honor of inaugurating his gallery's new program with a show of both her work and Pollock's. Wildenstein suggested that he would borrow work from European museums and produce a scholarly catalogue that would get rid of the “American pejorative,” allowing her work and Pollock's to be ranked with Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Cézanne.
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He was already discussing a merger with Krasner's dealer, Arnold Glimcher. (This merger did not materialize until much later, in October 1993, when Wildenstein & Company purchased 49 percent of the Pace Gallery.) Wildenstein had hoped to add the Pollock estate to its roster, but Krasner, as always, did not want to cede control of it and trusted few dealers with it. By now she had an aversion to dealers who used showing her work as a means of getting hold of the Pollock estate. Since this is what she sensed, she declined the offer.

On November 28, 1979, Lee Anne Miller, the president of the Women's Caucus for Art, wrote to Krasner to tell her that the
Awards Selection Committee had named her as “a recipient of the 2nd Annual Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts” for her “extraordinary contributions as a painter.”
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The other recipients that year were the graphic artist Caroline Durieux; the painter Ida Kohlmeyer, who, like Krasner, had studied with Hofmann; weaver and designer Anni Albers; and the sculptor Louise Bourgeois. The selection committee was composed of Ann Sutherland Harris (the chair, then an art historian working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Lucy R. Lippard (art critic), Linda Nochlin (art historian, then teaching at Vassar College), Athena Tacha (artist and art historian, then teaching at Oberlin College), Eleanor Tufts (art historian, then teaching at Southern Methodist University), and Ruth Weisberg (artist, then teaching at the University of Southern California). All of the committee members were known as strong feminists. The award was going to be presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, which was in New Orleans that year.

Krasner agreed to receive the award but asked me to accept it for her because I was already planning to go to the meeting. She dictated an acceptance speech to me, which, after saying a few words of my own, I read at the ceremony in New Orleans: “I am really very pleased—honored—to receive this award from the Women's Caucus for Art. However, I hope for the day when such an award could be a joint acknowledgment from men and women. The belated recognition that I have recently received is largely due to consciousness raising by the feminist movement, which I consider the major revolution of our time. Thank you.”
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Wendy Slatkin echoed Krasner's speech in 1993, writing, “Feminist revisionism has helped us reevaluate the art of this major creator.”
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Slatkin noted that “Krasner's restoration into the pantheon of Abstract Expressionists began in 1978 with her inclusion in an exhibition curated by Gail Levin and Robert Hobbs for the Whitney Museum's ‘Abstract Expressionism: The Formative
Years' (1978). Her reputation so consistently overshadowed by her position as the wife of Jackson Pollock, began to emerge independently when the artist was over 70.”

Krasner declared, “Some part of me must have had an enormous confidence. No matter how hard the thing was, I sustained and kept going…. Tough position, tough place, and a hell of a lot of resentment…. A suicide I'm not. So, that's that. You know, you stay with it. You keep going. I might say thank God, thank women's lib.”
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Much of Krasner's resentment about sexism stemmed from the problem women faced with religion. “All Christian, Judaic and, for that matter, Moslem and Eastern civilization has a male image as God. So you're going to have to eliminate all of history if you're going to break it down. At what point do you stop? Now that's a fact, and culturally, we are a part of this civilization. You can't eliminate five thousand years even if you're a women's libber.”
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In 1979 Krasner told an interviewer who asked about feminism that she had “very little patience with clubby attitudes towards it and I can't devote time towards that kind of thing.”
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Another time, while recounting a story of discrimination early in her life, she said: “Well you don't just have a few feminist meetings and resolve the issue. It takes slow patient years. It's not a political revolution fought once and then it's over. I think it will take a long time for woman to find her proper place.”
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Lee frequently spoke with me and others about what it meant to be a woman artist. “There is discrimination against women artists, and it's going to take quite a while before it gets ironed out. Western culture is old, and the role of women has always had a specific place in it. That's changing now, but these things don't happen overnight. I agree that in a sense we older artists paved the way for the younger women. It's better now than it was ten or twenty years ago, but that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist.”
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At the same time, Krasner felt her case had become compli
cated because she also functioned as the widow: “In my case it's doubly complicated by being the wife and now the widow of Jackson Pollock. Thinking about it, I wonder whether the situation is discriminatory because I'm Pollock's widow or because I'm a woman. In both roles I'm a woman, but
who
I am makes it a little more difficult.”
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