June 14, 2024 • 22 mins
1955. Upper West Side. Jackson Pollock seeks help from a psychotherapist practicing controversial methods.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It's nineteen eighty six, about three decades after Jackson's death.
On a cold winter's day on the Upper West Side,
a woman called Maris has been sitting in a parks
car watching a house. She's on a steakout, a steakout
(00:40):
of her very own home.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Kind of alternative utopian community hidden in plain sight.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's Alexander Stiller, who has just written a book about
this community.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
You could drink as much as you want, you could
sleep as many people as you want. You didn't have
to feel guilty. Great, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
But it had a darker side. The year before, Marius
had had a baby.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Three months after giving birth, she is told not to
your child at all because she's a smothering mother and
it's going to be a toxic influence on her daughter.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
The kid was taken away from her, and now Maris
is parked outside the commune with two hired bodyguards waiting.
Finally she sees some movement. The front door opens and
(01:39):
out comes a pram in It is her baby daughter.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Eight bodyguards immobilize the babysitter and she takes the child
and off they go.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But what happened that day would have even bigger consequences.
It triggered the downfall of what had become a full
blow cult known as the Sullivanians.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And they literally had people living in communes. They were
controlling their behavior, who they could sleep with, all kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But it all started back in the mid fifties, not
as a cult, but as an alternative psychotherapy institute, and
one of its very first patients was Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Polock mis told don't worry about your drinking. Having affairs
and finding a new sex partner was a good idea.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sending Jackson to a Salavanian therapist was the kiss of
death as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I'm Katie Hessel, and this is death of an artist.
Krasner and Pollock Episode five, The Kiss of Death. Thirty
(03:21):
years earlier, on a summer afternoon in nineteen fifty five,
Lee Krasner was drinking black coffee in Springs with her
friend Clement Greenberg, the same table where eight years ago
they created Jackson Pollock inc. Now both Lee and Jackson
looked older, worn down.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The situation at the Polo Krasner house is disastrous. Pollock,
who had for a period of time been sober and
produced much of his best work in the late forties
and early fifties, has fallen off the wagon, is drinking heavily.
He is tearing into his wife, Lee Krasner, and they're
arguing day and night, and he's treating her very abusively.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Lee turned to their old friend Clement Greenberg for advice.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Green You're told Krasner like, you've got to do something.
You've got to get out of here. You're going to
kill each other if you keep this up.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
He told her that he'd been having a hard time
himself recently, and that he'd started seeing a therapist, someone
a bit unusual, but it was really doing wonders for him,
and maybe Lean Jackson should give it a go. This
wasn't the first time Jackson tried to get sober. He'd
tried alcoholism, specialists, medication, and analysis, you name it. Jackson
(04:41):
had even made a series of drawings while working with
a Youngian therapist. They would become known as his psychoanalytic
Drawings and were later exhibited. So why not try again?
A few months later? One Tuesday in September nineteen fifty five,
Jackson was sitting in an office on the Upper West Side.
(05:04):
He was waiting for his first therapy session. Leeds started
seeing a therapist and Jackson had agreed to follow suit.
She hoped that it would tame his drinking, but Jackson
had other motivations. For some time now, he'd been in
an artistic rut. Six years ago, Life magazine had suggested
(05:25):
he might be America's greatest living painter, but in the
past few years he'd barely painted at all. Jackson wanted
his creative mojo back, and he was hoping this session
could be a start. Soon, a therapist breezed into the room,
introducing himself as Ralph Klein. He looked around thirty years old, handsome, He.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Had a kind of rugged good looks, and was more
international and more cosmopolitan than other therapists. He was Jewish
and ended up fleeing Austria during the Nazi persecution.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
As Ralph began to explain his unique approach to therapy,
Jackson felt himself relax.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The traditional family was by definition limiting and suffocating.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
This was at the heart of Ralph's worldview. Now this
probably doesn't seem that outlandish to you at all, but
remember this was the fifties, the sexual Revolution and hippie culture.
Of the sixties hadn't happened yet, so when Jackson heard
this idea, it was truly radical.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This alternative form of psychotherapy was all about breaking up
the nuclear family and exploring multiple possibilities as creative people.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
This is not how Jackson thought this session would go.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
The therapy aimed at separating its patients from their families.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And for Jackson this would mean two things.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
The idea was that he would be a happier and
more creative person if he broke his ties.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
With his mother and crucially with Lee.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
He was told that having affairs and finding a new
sex partner was a good idea.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Lee had been his rock for fifteen years. She'd gotten
him out of some pretty ropy situations and had always
encouraged his work. But his therapist was telling him that
this is what he needed to do to get his
creative juices flowing again. And then came maybe the strangest
piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Ralph Klein appears to have told Pollock, don't worry about
your drinking. Pollock was happy to be told that he
didn't have to stop drinking, and so he would tell people, Hey, look,
you know if I want to digital lye and go
drinking with the boys. There's nothing wrong with that. And
that's essentially what he was hearing from his therapist.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And so that's what Jackson does every Tuesday. After finishing therapy,
Jackson began to put Ralph's teachings into practice, and that
meant one thing, heading straight to a favorite haunt, a
dive bar called the Cedar Tavern.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
He's getting ship faced drunk and carrying on and making
a spectacle and fighting with people and taking over the place.
This Tuesday night, It's a Jackson Pollock show.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Jackson would regurgitate what he'd heard in Ralph's living room hours.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Before he told people that he and his wife had
stopped having sex. He began propositioning women at the Cedar Tavern.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
This is around the time he came on to Audrey Flack,
the artist you heard back in episode one.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
And then he started becoming close to me, and then
he brought two belch and then he was embarrassed and
he tried to pinch my behind.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Night after night, Jackson sat at the bar drinking whiskey
and beer.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
He was of somewhat angry drunk and would you know,
and saw people in break clads.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
One time Jackson was slumped over finishing his final whiskey.
He smashed the glass onto the table, shattering it into
shards in between his fingers.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
His blood dripping from his hands onto the surface of
the table, like a kind of parody of his own
painting process.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Jackson had been spending more and more time in New
York City and less and less time at home in Springs,
less time with Lee. These last few months lead been
in Springs trying to paint Once. She'd have been grateful
to have all this time to herself to focus on
her own art. She actually had a show coming up,
(10:17):
and she was excited, but she just couldn't concentrate. All
she could think about was where the hell Jackson was
a few months later, on a hot morning in July
nineteen fifty six, Lee was walking up her driveway when
she saw Jackson's mint green convertible. This is Mary Gabriel,
(10:41):
author of Ninth Street Women.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Lee and Jackson were still living together, but their lives
were completely separate socially and artistically. The relationship was existing
and fumes.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
As Lee walked past the car, something caught her eye,
an elegant scarf. It definitely wasn't hers, Lee snatched it,
marched into the house, and laid down the scarf in
front of Jack Jackson.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
She confronted Jackson and asked who had belonged to and
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Slurring his words, he said that the scarf belonged to
another woman, a woman he'd been sleeping with, and then
more proudly, he said it was necessary for his creative potential.
Hearing this, Lee felt something break inside her.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
She had sacrificed her life literally to keep him, saying,
to keep him sober, to keep him working, and now
he had thrown their relationship to the wayside in favor
of this young woman.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Jackson had met Ruth Kligmann at the Cedar one night.
She was an aspiring artist who just moved to the city,
and they'd been dating all summer.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
No way, Lee Krasner, as fierce as she was, as
defensive as she was of her own life, of Jackson's life,
was going to share it with a young woman.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And so she took a breath and composed herself.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Lee presented him with an ultimatum, get rid of her
or stay with me.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
A few days later, Lee woke up early alone in
the house.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
As Lee came out on the porch in the back
of the house which faced the barn, dressed in her bathrobe.
She saw Pollock and Ruth emerge from the barn run
across the yard hand in hand, giggling. The raid she
felt was so intense she couldn't control herself. She shouted
(13:02):
at Jackson, get her off my property.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
With a smug still on his face, his arms still
around Ruth, Jackson shouted, first.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Of all, this isn't your property, and second, stop being
a goddamn ass.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Lee must have felt all the wind go out of her.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
The drunken fool she saw with a giggling young woman
on his arm was not the man she loved or respected.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The rage had gone, and in its place came something worse.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Her fighting spirit, by this point had been totally destroyed.
There hurt, the agony, the pain that Lee felt at
that moment, seeing that act of disloyalty and that cruelty
from a man she had supported with her whole being,
shook her to her core. Lee quite frankly didn't know
(13:59):
where to go from there.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But what Lee did know is that she couldn't stay
there any longer, and in just a matter of days,
Lee would be on a boat to Paris. While she
was there, she got the phone call that would change everything.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Her host answered the phone and didn't say anything, but
she could tell by the stricken look on his face
that something terrible had happened. Without knowing any of the
words on the other end of the phone, Lee knew
exactly what had happened, and she shouted out, Jackson's dead.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
When Lee heard the news of her husband's death, she
immediately came back to New York. She spent the next
weeks and months organizing a funeral, taking phone calls, and
helping to put on a big show of his work
at the Museum of Modern Art. The art world was
mourning its hero.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Oh my god, the whole world stopped, well, the whole
art world stopped.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
He was the center of their world, and now he
was gone.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
You know, everybody called each other. It was electrifying, like
a spark went out. Everybody was shocked and sad and depressed.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Lee had helped everyone else grieve, but had barely begun
to process his death herself.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
She was devastated by Jackson's death. No sooner does she
leave him on his own than he self destructs.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
This is Helen Harrison again, who managed the polk Krasna House.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
I mean, what could be worse. You've been nurturing this
alcoholic all these years, and then you finally take a
break and that's it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
One day in the summer of nineteen fifty seven, Lee
found herself in the barn at Springs. I can imagine
her looking at the vast space she'd renovated with Jackson
to give him room to paint, where he created the
work that had made his name.
Speaker 6 (16:34):
Some of her friends have told me that they thought
that she would have sold this place after that happened,
because of the bad associations and everything.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Lee's eyes drifted down to a roll of canvas that
she'd brought from the house. All the time they'd lived there,
she kept making art, but mainly in their tiny spare
bedroom the barn had always been Jackson's. Lee started unraveling
the canvas and taped it up on the longest wall,
the only place it would fit. It was huge, seventeen
(17:09):
by eight feet of endless possibility. Lee stad at it
and found herself thinking what could she create. She picked
up a brush, dipped it in one of the cans,
and heard a voice inside her.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Say now it's my turn.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Lee moved the brush from one side of the canvas
to the other, making sweeping, curving strokes.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
It's much larger than the studio she had upstairs. Really
gave her a scope to spread out what she had
always wanted to do but never had the opportunity to do.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
She'd never done anything on this scale before. It was
as if she was painting with her whole body for
the first time.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
For her, it was a way of claiming the space
and also just physically able to work so much larger
and with so much more energy.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Lee was using earthy greens and deep reds, creating a
swirling mass of plant and flower forms.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
You know what, we expect a woman in mourning to
paint dark, maybe angry pictures, maybe things how negative. No,
she pets these beautiful, bright, colorful, upbeat pictures that she
later called her happy pictures.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Lee felt like she was in a trance. She barely
even noticed the shape she was making.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
While she's painting them. She wasn't even seeing them because
her eyes were filled with tears.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Until this moment, Lee couldn't see how she could ever
move on after Jackson's death. But here in the bond,
just simply painting. She felt like she could handle anything,
like maybe this could be a new beginning.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
It seems to me that she was working in spite
of her grief. She was working over her grief and
overcoming it through her art.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
From that moment on, Lee would contain, I knew to
paint on a scale and at a rate she never had.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
Before, and in her case what came out was a positive,
life affirming energy. How did she do that?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I think I know what Hella means here. Lee had
painted for thirty years, but for me, this is her
first real masterpiece. She ended up calling this particular painting
The Seasons. It's one of my favorite works of all time,
and it now hangs pride of place in the Whitney
Museum of American Art. Colossal green and red plant shapes
(19:47):
roll into each other, sometimes looking torturous, sometimes joyous, but
always changing, all about hope and renewal. After so many
years of supporting Jackson to find his artistic voice, Lee
was rediscovering her own. When Lee was later asked how
(20:12):
she was able to start painting so soon after Jackson's death,
she had a simple answer, quote, painting is not separate
from life. It is one. It is like asking do
I want to live? My answer is yes, and I
paint coming up. In the final episode.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Lee Krasner had two hundred dollars in her bank account.
There was nobody spending money on American abstract painting.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
With cash tight. After Jackson's death, Lee sees a chance
to boost the price of one of his paintings.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
In one fells who she reseaid the entire market, not
just Jackson Pollock's market, but the market for American abstract.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Painting, and Lee's own artistic career begins to take off
the most accomplished work of her career, extraordinary, lyrical, vibrant,
luscious paintings. That's next time on the season finale of
Death of an Artist. Death of an Artist Krasner and
(21:31):
Pollock is produced by Pushkin Industries and Samasdat Audio. Clem
Hitchcock is our producer. Story editing by Dasherlitz at Sina,
Sophie Crane and Karen Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer
is Jacob Smith from Samazdat Audio. The executive producers are
Dasherlitz at Sina and Joe Sykes. Sound design by Peregrin Andrews.
(21:56):
Original scoring and our theme were composed by Martin Austwick.
Fact checking by Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weissberg.
I'm Katie hessel daaaaaaaa.
Pushkin. It's nineteen eighty six, about three decades after Jackson's death.
On a cold winter's day on the Upper West Side,
a woman called Maris has been sitting in a parks
car watching a house. She's on a steakout, a steakout
(00:40):
of her very own home.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Kind of alternative utopian community hidden in plain sight.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's Alexander Stiller, who has just written a book about
this community.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
You could drink as much as you want, you could
sleep as many people as you want. You didn't have
to feel guilty. Great, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
But it had a darker side. The year before, Marius
had had a baby.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Three months after giving birth, she is told not to
your child at all because she's a smothering mother and
it's going to be a toxic influence on her daughter.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
The kid was taken away from her, and now Maris
is parked outside the commune with two hired bodyguards waiting.
Finally she sees some movement. The front door opens and
(01:39):
out comes a pram in It is her baby daughter.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Eight bodyguards immobilize the babysitter and she takes the child
and off they go.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But what happened that day would have even bigger consequences.
It triggered the downfall of what had become a full
blow cult known as the Sullivanians.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
And they literally had people living in communes. They were
controlling their behavior, who they could sleep with, all kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
But it all started back in the mid fifties, not
as a cult, but as an alternative psychotherapy institute, and
one of its very first patients was Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Polock mis told don't worry about your drinking. Having affairs
and finding a new sex partner was a good idea.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Sending Jackson to a Salavanian therapist was the kiss of
death as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I'm Katie Hessel, and this is death of an artist.
Krasner and Pollock Episode five, The Kiss of Death. Thirty
(03:21):
years earlier, on a summer afternoon in nineteen fifty five,
Lee Krasner was drinking black coffee in Springs with her
friend Clement Greenberg, the same table where eight years ago
they created Jackson Pollock inc. Now both Lee and Jackson
looked older, worn down.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
The situation at the Polo Krasner house is disastrous. Pollock,
who had for a period of time been sober and
produced much of his best work in the late forties
and early fifties, has fallen off the wagon, is drinking heavily.
He is tearing into his wife, Lee Krasner, and they're
arguing day and night, and he's treating her very abusively.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Lee turned to their old friend Clement Greenberg for advice.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Green You're told Krasner like, you've got to do something.
You've got to get out of here. You're going to
kill each other if you keep this up.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
He told her that he'd been having a hard time
himself recently, and that he'd started seeing a therapist, someone
a bit unusual, but it was really doing wonders for him,
and maybe Lean Jackson should give it a go. This
wasn't the first time Jackson tried to get sober. He'd
tried alcoholism, specialists, medication, and analysis, you name it. Jackson
(04:41):
had even made a series of drawings while working with
a Youngian therapist. They would become known as his psychoanalytic
Drawings and were later exhibited. So why not try again?
A few months later? One Tuesday in September nineteen fifty five,
Jackson was sitting in an office on the Upper West Side.
(05:04):
He was waiting for his first therapy session. Leeds started
seeing a therapist and Jackson had agreed to follow suit.
She hoped that it would tame his drinking, but Jackson
had other motivations. For some time now, he'd been in
an artistic rut. Six years ago, Life magazine had suggested
(05:25):
he might be America's greatest living painter, but in the
past few years he'd barely painted at all. Jackson wanted
his creative mojo back, and he was hoping this session
could be a start. Soon, a therapist breezed into the room,
introducing himself as Ralph Klein. He looked around thirty years old, handsome, He.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Had a kind of rugged good looks, and was more
international and more cosmopolitan than other therapists. He was Jewish
and ended up fleeing Austria during the Nazi persecution.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
As Ralph began to explain his unique approach to therapy,
Jackson felt himself relax.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
The traditional family was by definition limiting and suffocating.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
This was at the heart of Ralph's worldview. Now this
probably doesn't seem that outlandish to you at all, but
remember this was the fifties, the sexual Revolution and hippie culture.
Of the sixties hadn't happened yet, so when Jackson heard
this idea, it was truly radical.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This alternative form of psychotherapy was all about breaking up
the nuclear family and exploring multiple possibilities as creative people.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
This is not how Jackson thought this session would go.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
The therapy aimed at separating its patients from their families.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And for Jackson this would mean two things.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
The idea was that he would be a happier and
more creative person if he broke his ties.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
With his mother and crucially with Lee.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
He was told that having affairs and finding a new
sex partner was a good idea.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Lee had been his rock for fifteen years. She'd gotten
him out of some pretty ropy situations and had always
encouraged his work. But his therapist was telling him that
this is what he needed to do to get his
creative juices flowing again. And then came maybe the strangest
piece of advice.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Ralph Klein appears to have told Pollock, don't worry about
your drinking. Pollock was happy to be told that he
didn't have to stop drinking, and so he would tell people, Hey, look,
you know if I want to digital lye and go
drinking with the boys. There's nothing wrong with that. And
that's essentially what he was hearing from his therapist.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And so that's what Jackson does every Tuesday. After finishing therapy,
Jackson began to put Ralph's teachings into practice, and that
meant one thing, heading straight to a favorite haunt, a
dive bar called the Cedar Tavern.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
He's getting ship faced drunk and carrying on and making
a spectacle and fighting with people and taking over the place.
This Tuesday night, It's a Jackson Pollock show.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Jackson would regurgitate what he'd heard in Ralph's living room hours.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Before he told people that he and his wife had
stopped having sex. He began propositioning women at the Cedar Tavern.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
This is around the time he came on to Audrey Flack,
the artist you heard back in episode one.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
And then he started becoming close to me, and then
he brought two belch and then he was embarrassed and
he tried to pinch my behind.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Night after night, Jackson sat at the bar drinking whiskey
and beer.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
He was of somewhat angry drunk and would you know,
and saw people in break clads.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
One time Jackson was slumped over finishing his final whiskey.
He smashed the glass onto the table, shattering it into
shards in between his fingers.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
His blood dripping from his hands onto the surface of
the table, like a kind of parody of his own
painting process.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Jackson had been spending more and more time in New
York City and less and less time at home in Springs,
less time with Lee. These last few months lead been
in Springs trying to paint Once. She'd have been grateful
to have all this time to herself to focus on
her own art. She actually had a show coming up,
(10:17):
and she was excited, but she just couldn't concentrate. All
she could think about was where the hell Jackson was
a few months later, on a hot morning in July
nineteen fifty six, Lee was walking up her driveway when
she saw Jackson's mint green convertible. This is Mary Gabriel,
(10:41):
author of Ninth Street Women.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Lee and Jackson were still living together, but their lives
were completely separate socially and artistically. The relationship was existing
and fumes.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
As Lee walked past the car, something caught her eye,
an elegant scarf. It definitely wasn't hers, Lee snatched it,
marched into the house, and laid down the scarf in
front of Jack Jackson.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
She confronted Jackson and asked who had belonged to and
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Slurring his words, he said that the scarf belonged to
another woman, a woman he'd been sleeping with, and then
more proudly, he said it was necessary for his creative potential.
Hearing this, Lee felt something break inside her.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
She had sacrificed her life literally to keep him, saying,
to keep him sober, to keep him working, and now
he had thrown their relationship to the wayside in favor
of this young woman.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Jackson had met Ruth Kligmann at the Cedar one night.
She was an aspiring artist who just moved to the city,
and they'd been dating all summer.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
No way, Lee Krasner, as fierce as she was, as
defensive as she was of her own life, of Jackson's life,
was going to share it with a young woman.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And so she took a breath and composed herself.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Lee presented him with an ultimatum, get rid of her
or stay with me.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
A few days later, Lee woke up early alone in
the house.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
As Lee came out on the porch in the back
of the house which faced the barn, dressed in her bathrobe.
She saw Pollock and Ruth emerge from the barn run
across the yard hand in hand, giggling. The raid she
felt was so intense she couldn't control herself. She shouted
(13:02):
at Jackson, get her off my property.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
With a smug still on his face, his arms still
around Ruth, Jackson shouted, first.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Of all, this isn't your property, and second, stop being
a goddamn ass.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Lee must have felt all the wind go out of her.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
The drunken fool she saw with a giggling young woman
on his arm was not the man she loved or respected.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The rage had gone, and in its place came something worse.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
Her fighting spirit, by this point had been totally destroyed.
There hurt, the agony, the pain that Lee felt at
that moment, seeing that act of disloyalty and that cruelty
from a man she had supported with her whole being,
shook her to her core. Lee quite frankly didn't know
(13:59):
where to go from there.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
But what Lee did know is that she couldn't stay
there any longer, and in just a matter of days,
Lee would be on a boat to Paris. While she
was there, she got the phone call that would change everything.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Her host answered the phone and didn't say anything, but
she could tell by the stricken look on his face
that something terrible had happened. Without knowing any of the
words on the other end of the phone, Lee knew
exactly what had happened, and she shouted out, Jackson's dead.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
When Lee heard the news of her husband's death, she
immediately came back to New York. She spent the next
weeks and months organizing a funeral, taking phone calls, and
helping to put on a big show of his work
at the Museum of Modern Art. The art world was
mourning its hero.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Oh my god, the whole world stopped, well, the whole
art world stopped.
Speaker 5 (15:25):
He was the center of their world, and now he
was gone.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
You know, everybody called each other. It was electrifying, like
a spark went out. Everybody was shocked and sad and depressed.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Lee had helped everyone else grieve, but had barely begun
to process his death herself.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
She was devastated by Jackson's death. No sooner does she
leave him on his own than he self destructs.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
This is Helen Harrison again, who managed the polk Krasna House.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
I mean, what could be worse. You've been nurturing this
alcoholic all these years, and then you finally take a
break and that's it.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
One day in the summer of nineteen fifty seven, Lee
found herself in the barn at Springs. I can imagine
her looking at the vast space she'd renovated with Jackson
to give him room to paint, where he created the
work that had made his name.
Speaker 6 (16:34):
Some of her friends have told me that they thought
that she would have sold this place after that happened,
because of the bad associations and everything.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Lee's eyes drifted down to a roll of canvas that
she'd brought from the house. All the time they'd lived there,
she kept making art, but mainly in their tiny spare
bedroom the barn had always been Jackson's. Lee started unraveling
the canvas and taped it up on the longest wall,
the only place it would fit. It was huge, seventeen
(17:09):
by eight feet of endless possibility. Lee stad at it
and found herself thinking what could she create. She picked
up a brush, dipped it in one of the cans,
and heard a voice inside her.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
Say now it's my turn.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Lee moved the brush from one side of the canvas
to the other, making sweeping, curving strokes.
Speaker 6 (17:33):
It's much larger than the studio she had upstairs. Really
gave her a scope to spread out what she had
always wanted to do but never had the opportunity to do.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
She'd never done anything on this scale before. It was
as if she was painting with her whole body for
the first time.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
For her, it was a way of claiming the space
and also just physically able to work so much larger
and with so much more energy.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Lee was using earthy greens and deep reds, creating a
swirling mass of plant and flower forms.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
You know what, we expect a woman in mourning to
paint dark, maybe angry pictures, maybe things how negative. No,
she pets these beautiful, bright, colorful, upbeat pictures that she
later called her happy pictures.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Lee felt like she was in a trance. She barely
even noticed the shape she was making.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
While she's painting them. She wasn't even seeing them because
her eyes were filled with tears.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Until this moment, Lee couldn't see how she could ever
move on after Jackson's death. But here in the bond,
just simply painting. She felt like she could handle anything,
like maybe this could be a new beginning.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
It seems to me that she was working in spite
of her grief. She was working over her grief and
overcoming it through her art.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
From that moment on, Lee would contain, I knew to
paint on a scale and at a rate she never had.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
Before, and in her case what came out was a positive,
life affirming energy. How did she do that?
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I think I know what Hella means here. Lee had
painted for thirty years, but for me, this is her
first real masterpiece. She ended up calling this particular painting
The Seasons. It's one of my favorite works of all time,
and it now hangs pride of place in the Whitney
Museum of American Art. Colossal green and red plant shapes
(19:47):
roll into each other, sometimes looking torturous, sometimes joyous, but
always changing, all about hope and renewal. After so many
years of supporting Jackson to find his artistic voice, Lee
was rediscovering her own. When Lee was later asked how
(20:12):
she was able to start painting so soon after Jackson's death,
she had a simple answer, quote, painting is not separate
from life. It is one. It is like asking do
I want to live? My answer is yes, and I
paint coming up. In the final episode.
Speaker 7 (20:47):
Lee Krasner had two hundred dollars in her bank account.
There was nobody spending money on American abstract painting.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
With cash tight. After Jackson's death, Lee sees a chance
to boost the price of one of his paintings.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
In one fells who she reseaid the entire market, not
just Jackson Pollock's market, but the market for American abstract.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Painting, and Lee's own artistic career begins to take off
the most accomplished work of her career, extraordinary, lyrical, vibrant,
luscious paintings. That's next time on the season finale of
Death of an Artist. Death of an Artist Krasner and
(21:31):
Pollock is produced by Pushkin Industries and Samasdat Audio. Clem
Hitchcock is our producer. Story editing by Dasherlitz at Sina,
Sophie Crane and Karen Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer
is Jacob Smith from Samazdat Audio. The executive producers are
Dasherlitz at Sina and Joe Sykes. Sound design by Peregrin Andrews.
(21:56):
Original scoring and our theme were composed by Martin Austwick.
Fact checking by Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weissberg.
I'm Katie hessel daaaaaaaa.
Host
Helen Molesworth
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