Jackson Pollock Interviews, Articles, and Reviews PDF

Jackson Pollock : interviews, articles, and reviews Edited by Pepe Karmel Date 1999 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams ISBN 0870700375, 0810962128 Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/226 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in...

Jackson Pollock : interviews, articles, and reviews Edited by Pepe Karmel Date 1999 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams ISBN 0870700375, 0810962128 Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/226 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art  JacksonPollock Interviews, ; andArticles Reviews r The Museum of Modern Art New * Jackson Pollock Published in conjunction with the exhibition Jackson Pollock, organized by Kirk Varnedoe, Chief Curator, with Pepe Karmel, Adjunct Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Mod ern Art, New York, November 1, 1998 to February 2, 1999. This exhibition was made possible by Bank of America. Generous support was provided by The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. The reconstruction of Pollock's studio was made possible by EXORAmerica (Agnelli Group). The Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust and an anonymous donor. Additional funding was provided by TDI. An indemnity for the exhibition was granted by the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. This publication is made possible through the generosity of The David Geffen Foundation. Produced by the Department of Publications, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Edited by Jasmine Moorhead Designed by Steven Schoen- felder, New York Production by Christina Grillo Printed and bound by Poligrafiche Bolis SpA, Azzano San Paolo, Italy This book was set in Font Bureau Eagle and Adobe Stone Serif. Copyright © 1999 The Museum of Modern Art, New York Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 99-075246 ISBN:0-87070- 037-5 (MoMA,T&H) ISBN:0-8109-6212-8 (Harry N. Abrams) Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, New York 10019 Distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York Distributed outside the United States and Canada by Thames & Hudson, Ltd, London Printed in Italy Cover: One: Number 31, 1950 (detail). 1950. Oil and enamel paint on can vas, 8 ft. 10 in. x 17 ft. 5% in. (269.5 x 530.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund (by exchange) © 1999 Pollock-KrasnerFoundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS),New York  JacksonPollock Interviews,Articles,andReviews Edited by Pepe Karmel r The Museum of Modern Art New York r Distributed by Harry N. Abrams lnc. New York 52 Howard Devree, "Among the New Exhibitions," The New YorkTimes, March 25, 1945 52 "The Passing Shows: Jackson Pollock," Art News, April 1945 52 Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, April 1945 53 Manny Farber, "Jackson Pollock," The New Republic,June 1945 55 Ben Wolf, "By the Shores of Virtuosity," The Art Digest, April 1946 55 "Reviews & Previews: Jackson Pollock," Art News, May 1946 56 "Reviews & Previews: Jackson Pollock," Art News, February 1947 56 Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, February 1947 58 Alonzo Lansford, "Automatic Pollock," The Art Digest, January 1948 58 Robert M. Coates, "The Art Galleries: Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock," The New Yorker,January 1948 59 Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, January 1948 60 "Reviews & Previews: Jackson Pollock," Art News, February 1948 61 Sam Hunter, "Among the New Shows: Jackson Pollock," The New York Times,January 30, 1949 61 Margaret Lowengrund, "Pollock Hieroglyphics," The Art Digest, February 1949 62 Emily Genauer. "This Week in Art." New YorkWorld-Telegram, February 7, 1949 62 Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, February 1949 63 Dorothy Seiberling, "Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?" Life, August 1949 65 Amy Robinson, "Jackson Pollock," Art News, December 1949 65 Parker Tyler, "Jackson Pollock: The Infinite Labyrinth," Magazine of Art, March 1950 68 Bruno Alfieri, "A Short Statement on the Painting of Jackson Pollock," L'ArteModerna,June 1950 70 "Chaos, Damn It!" Time, November 1950 71 Jackson Pollock, Letter to the Editor, Time, December 1950 72 Robert M. Coates, "The Art Galleries: Extremists," The New Yorker, December 1950  Contents 9 Introduction Artist's Statements and Interviews 15 "Jackson Pollock: A Questionnaire," Arts and Architecture,February 1944 17 Application for Guggenheim Fellowship, 1947 17 "My Painting," Possibilities,Winter 1947-48 18 Berton Roueche, "Unframed Space," The New Yorker,August 1950 20 Interview with William Wright, The Springs, Long Island, New York, late 1950, broadcast on radio station WERI, Westerly, Rhode Island, 1951 24 Handwritten statements, undated Interviews with Lee Krasner 25 Bruce Glaser, "Jackson Pollock: An Interview with Lee Krasner," Arts Magazine, April 1967 30 Francine du Plessix and Cleve Gray, "Who Was Jackson Pollock?" Art in America, May-June 1967 35 B. H. Friedman, "An Interview with Lee Krasner Pollock," in Jackson Pollock:Black and White, 1969 39 Barbara Rose, "Jackson Pollock at Work: An Interview with Lee Krasner," Partisan Review,1980 Articles and Reviews 49 Edward Alden Jewell, "Art: Briefer Mention," The New YorkTimes, November 14, 1943 50 Maude Riley, "Fifty-Seventh Street in Review," The Art Digest, November 1943 50 "The Passing Shows: Jackson Pollock," Art News, November 1943 50 Robert M. Coates, "The Art Galleries: Situation Well in Hand," The New Yorker,November 1943 51 Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, November 1943 This publication is made possible through the generosity of The David Geffen Foundation. 74 Robert Goodnough, "Reviews & Previews: Jackson Pollock," Art News, December 1950 74 Robert Goodnough, "Pollock Paints a Picture," Art News, May 1951 79 James Fitzsimmons, "Jackson Pollock," The Art Digest, December 1951 80 Clement Greenberg, "Jackson Pollock's New Style," Harper's Bazaar, February 1952 81 Leo Steinberg, "Month in Review: Fifteen Years of Jackson Pollock," Arts, December 1955 84 Allan Kaprow, "The Legacy of Jackson Pollock," Art News, October 1958 90 Harold Rosenberg, "The Search for Jackson Pollock," Art News, February 1961 97 Michael Fried, "Jackson Pollock," Artforum, September 1965 104 Axel Horn, "Jackson Pollock: The Hollow and the Bump," The Carleton Miscellany, Summer 1966 HO Clement Greenberg, "Jackson Pollock: 'Inspiration, Vision, Intuitive Decision,'" Vogue,April 1967 114 Donald Judd, "Jackson Pollock," Arts Magazine, April 1967 118 William Rubin, "Jackson Pollock and the Modern Tradition," Artforum, February-May 1967 176 Rosalind Krauss, "Jackson Pollock's Drawings," Artforum, January 1971 180 Charles F. Stuckey, "Another Side of Jackson Pollock," Art in America, November-December 1977 92 Stephen Polcari, "Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton," Arts Magazine, March 1979 202 Elizabeth L. Langhorne, "Jackson Pollock's 'The Moon Woman Cuts the Circle,"' Arts Magazine, March 1979 220 William Rubin, "Pollock as Jungian Illustrator: The Limits of Psychologi cal Criticism," Art in America,November and December 1979 262 Anna C. Chave, "Pollock and Krasner: Script and Postscript," RES, Autumn 1993 281 Acknowledgments  PEPE KARHEL This book includes only texts that are specifically about Pollock; it thus excludes 2 numerous important essays about Abstract Expressionism in general. It is being published in tandem with a companion volume, Jackson Pollock:New Approaches; writers and approaches represented in that volume —such as T. J. Clark on Pollock and social history and Rosalind Krauss on the informe—are therefore not reproduced here. Several important texts by scholars such as Michael Leja, E. A. Carmean, and Francis V. O'Connor are also missing, either because they are eas ily available elsewhere, or because they depend on visual analysis which would 3 be hard to follow without illustrations. Finally, this volume is (with one excep tion) limited to texts published in the United States; the British and European responses to Pollock are, however, discussed by Jeremy Lewison in Jackson Pollock:New Approaches. Early reviewers were impressed with the expressive violence of Pollock's paint handling, although they often found his symbolism baffling. Beyond this emphasis, four issues dominated the Pollock criticism of the 1940s and 50s: the status of easel painting, decoration, chaos, and action. Almost from the outset, critics related Pollock's work to the ongoing rival ry between easel painting and the mural. An anonymous reviewer in the May 1946 issue of Art News (p. 55) noted that Pollock had developed a new "simpli fied" manner of placing larger shapes against "flat, monochrome backgrounds," and commented that this was "a logical development in Pollock's attempt to cre ate a new, abstract, mural style." Similarly, Greenberg observed in January 1948 that "Greenwich Village" artists were enlarging Henri Matisse's "simplified com positional schemes" in order to arrive at a "larger-scale easel art," which would 4 spread over the wall like a mural but remain distinct from it. Three months later, in "The Crisis of the Easel Picture," Greenberg again wrote that advanced art was "destroying" the easel picture. This time, however, he said that the elimination of "fictive depth" was being accomplished not by the placement of simplified shapes on a flat background, but by the develop ment of a '"decentralized," "polyphonic," "all-over" composition consisting of similar elements repeated across the canvas. Greenberg cited as examples recent work by Pollock, Jean Dubuffet, Joaquin Torres-Garria, Mark Tobey, Janet Sobel, and others artists who were working, at this moment, at relatively small scale. 5 Not a word here about mural painting. Greenberg compared these new allover compositions to "wallpaper pat terns a term he had already used in his review of Pollock's first exhibition of drip paintings (p. 59). He was not the only critic to feel ambivalent about the similarity between allover painting and decorative design. In "A Life Round Table on Modern Art," published in October 1948, Leigh Ashton, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum commented that Pollock's Cathedral "would make a 10  Introduction Pepe Karmel One of the great pleasures of researching an exhibition is discovering how much you don't know. Like most art historians, I used to think that Clement Green- berg had more or less single-handedly discovered Jackson Pollock, and that the critical history of Pollock's work therefore consisted of a list of disciples and dis senters from that grandly named dogma "Greenbergian formalism." But as Kirk Varnedoe and I dove into preparations for The Museum of Modern Art's 1998 exhibition Jackson Pollock, reading through stacks of photocopied articles, it gradually became apparent that Pollock's critical history was more complex and more interesting than this cliche suggested. We realized, for instance, that there had been a distinct shift, around 1960, in the way that critics understood Pollock's development as an artist. What had appeared to observers of the 1940s and 50s as a relatively seamless evolution was now broken into three distinct phases: the early work, the "classic" drip paint 1 ings, and the late work. Although Pollock's early work had been widely acclaimed when first exhibited, it was now downgraded to a mere prelude to the years 1947-50. Similarly, the later phase, which had seemed to many contem porary critics to represent an advance beyond the drip paintings, came to be seen as a dramatic falling-off. Although it became generally agreed that there was something revolutionary about Pollock's drip paintings of 1947-50 —a pro foundly radical quality absent from his earlier and later work—this quality proved surprisingly difficult to define. Pollock criticism since 1960 consists of a series of attempts to answer this question. The goal of this anthology is double: to trace the changing interpretations of Pollock's work and to gather together the statements by Pollock and by his wife, the artist Lee Krasner, that form the essential points of reference for all dis cussions of his working method. The exigencies of publication have, alas, imposed severe limitations on what can be included here. To keep this book affordable for students and the broader art community, we have had to omit all illustrations. I hope that readers will be able to consult our exhibition catalogue, which provides an extensive overview of Pollock's work, reproduced in color. 9 PEPE KARMEL a kind of Rosetta Stone for the interpretation of Pollock's work. (See, for exam ple, Elizabeth Langhorne's essay, pp. 202-19.) But Pollock's symbolism proved difficult to pin down, and interest in this approach dimmed after it was subject ed to a blistering critique by William Rubin (pp. 220-61). The Pollock criticism of the 1990s has been remarkable for its diversity. Social, biographical, and formal interpretations have coexisted with psychologi cal and philosophical analyses drawing on gender theory, psychoanalysis, and dissident Surrealism. Opulent and austere, dense and ethereal, hauntingly sug gestive and chastely matter-of-fact, Pollock's work seems to present an inex haustible challenge to scholars—past, present, and (no doubt) future. 12  INTRODUCTION most enchanting printed silk," and Theodore Greene, a Yalephilosophy professor, 6 said that it seemed a "pleasant design for a necktie." Later, in 1952, art critic 7 Harold Rosenberg would make a notorious reference to "apocalyptic wallpaper." As Life and Time magazines brought Pollock to the attention of a broader audience, the grounds for criticism changed. His pictures were now condemned as chaotic rather than decorative (p. 70). A new generation of critics tacitly accepted this description, but defended the seeming chaos as the evocative record of the "ritual dance" by which the work was created, with the rhythms of Pollock's movements determining the destination of the dripped and poured paint (p. 77). Though unnamed, Pollock was clearly a model for Rosenberg's 1952 portrait of "The American Action Painters," with its famous pronounce ment that "At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act.... What was to go on the can 8 vas was not a picture but an event." After Pollock's untimely death in 1956, critics began to focus less on the man and more on the pictures, struggling to define his achievement in aesthet ic rather than existential terms. The battle lines were drawn with Greenberg's 9 1960 lecture "Modernist Painting," a formalist manifesto. Pollock was not men tioned in this lecture, so it was left to a younger critic, Michael Fried, to deploy Greenberg's theories as a means of identifying what was truly revolutionary in 10 the drip paintings. A 1965 essay by Fried titled "Jackson Pollock" (pp. 97-103) was followed in 1967 by William Rubin's "Jackson Pollock and the Modern Tradition" (pp. 118-75), which imbedded the formalist interpretation within a rich historical narrative. These essays by Greenberg, Fried, and Rubin have remained central to Pollock criticism for over thirty years, providing a powerful, 11 coherent reading for subsequent critics to react against. The Minimalists came first, rejecting both the ideas of "diaristic gesture" 12 and "optical style." Instead, they praised Pollock's ability to make process apparent in his finished paintings. The so-called opticality of the paintings, Robert Morris argued, resulted from "the properties of fluidity and a more or less 13 absorptive ground," not from any grand theory about art. Similarly, Robert Smithson reduced Greenberg's theoretical arguments to a matter of personal taste, arguing that the "wet" mind of the critic enjoyed "'pools and stains' of 14 paint... melting, dissolving, soaking surfaces." Pollock had a valuable lesson to teach, not about pure painting, but about the impersonal poetry of materials. Parker Tyler had suggested a mythological dimension to Pollock's work as early as 1950 (pp. 65-67), and in 1961 Robert Rosenblum linked Pollock to a tra 15 dition of "The Abstract Sublime." But the mythological reading of Pollock's work really took off in the 1970s, jump-started by the disclosure of a group of almost seventy drawings that he had executed in 1939-40 while in Jungian analysis. Scholars turned to these drawings in the hope that they would serve as 11 Note Except where indicated, the texts in this volume have been reprinted as they appeared in their original place of publica tion. Obvious spelling errors have been corrected. Footnotes, even where they refer to other texts in this volume, have not been changed or updated, except to make them consistent within each essay. It has not been possible to reproduce the illustrations that originally accompanied these texts. Where a work by Pollock is referred to by title alone, it can generally be found in Jackson Pollock, the catalogue of 1998 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. References to numbered text figures have been replaced either by the name of the painting in question or (in the case of untitled works) by the number assigned the work in Francis V. O'Connor's and Eugene V. Thaw's Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works [hereafter "OT"]. Accessing the Bibliography Begin at the Museum's Web site at www.moma.org. From the Museum's home page, go to "Research Resources," and then to "DADABASE."Choose the option to "Search the Catalog." Then search by subject for "Jackson Pollock." The bibliogra phy should appear under its own heading.  INTRODUCTION Notes 1. It has often been argued that "drip" in O'Brian, vol. 2, pp. 221-25. is a misnomer, and that Pollock's 6. "A Life Round Table on Modern works of 1947-50 should be referred Art," Life 25, no. 15 (October 11, to instead as "poured" paintings. 1948), p. 62. According to the dictionary, "drip" 7. Harold Rosenberg, "The American connotes a sequence of separate Action Painters," Art News51, no. 8 drops, while "pour" suggests a con (December 1952): 49; reprinted in tinuous flow. To this extent, "pour" Rosenberg, The Traditionof the New would indeed seem more appropri (Chicago: at the University Press, ate. On the other hand, "pour" 1982), p. 34. suggests that the fluid in question 8. Rosenberg, "The American Action is being poured from a container, Painters," p. 22. which is not the case, since Pollock 9. Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," released his paint from heavily load 1960, in Modernismwith a Vengeance, ed sticks or brushes. Since Pollock 1957-1969, vol. 4 of ClementGreen himself described his technique as berg:The CollectedEssaysand Critic "dripping fluid paint" (see p. 18 of ism, ed. John O'Brian (Chicago: at this volume), I prefer to retain the the University Press, 1993), p. 86. conventional usage "drip." Other The logic of "Modernist Painting" critics disagree. is adumbrated in Greenberg's 1940 2. Along with other general criticism essay "Towards a Newer Laocoon," of Abstract Expressionism, the numer but it did not form the exclusive ous texts arguing that Pollock served basis of his critical practice in the as as an unwitting tool of Cold War 1940s or 50s. The battle with Rosen propaganda are not represented here berg and his followers came to a cli since they are concerned with the max in Greenberg's 1962 essay, "How uses of his work rather than the work Art Writing Earns Its Bad Name," re itself. See especially Max Kozloff, printed in O'Brien, vol. 4, pp. 135-44. "American Painting during the Cold 10. In "An Introduction to My Art War," Artforum11, no. 9 (May 1973): Criticism," in Art and Objecthood 43-54; Eva Cockcroft, "Abstract (Chicago: at the University Press, Expressionism,Weapon of the Cold 1998), pp. 16-23, Fried reevaluates War," Artforum12, no. 10 (June 1974): his own relation to Greenberg and 39-41; Serge Guilbaut, How New York explores the assumptions underlying Stolethe Idea of ModernArt: Abstract his criticism of the 1960s. Expressionism,Freedom,and the Cold 11.I have tried to suggest my own War (Chicago: at the University Press, formalist but non-Greenbergian read 1983); and Michael Kimmelman, "Re ing of Pollock in "A Sum of Destruc visiting the Revisionists:The Modern, tions," published in jackson Pollock: Its Critics, and the Cold War," in The NewApproaches(New York:The Museumof ModernArt at Mid-Century: Museum of Modern Art, 1999). At Homeand Abroad;Studiesin Modern 12. For "diaristicgesture," see Allan Art 4 (New York:The Museum of Kaprow,"The Legacyof Jackson Pol Modern Art, 1994), pp. 38-55. lock," 1958, pp. 84-89 of this volume. 3. See especially Michael Leja, For "optical style," see Michael Fried, ReframingAbstract Expressionism: "JacksonPollock," 1967, pp. 97-103 of Subjectivityand Painting in the 1940s this volume. (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 13. Robert Morris, "Anti Form," Art 1993); E. A. Carmean Jr., "Jackson forum 6, no. 8 (April 1968): 34-35. Pollock: Classic Paintings of 1950," Similarly, Donald Judd commented: in AmericanArt at Mid-Century—The "The dripped paint in most of Pol Subjectsof the Artist,exh. cat. (National lock's paintings is dripped paint. It's Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., that sensation, completely immediate 1978), pp. 127-53; and Francis V. and specific."("JacksonPollock,"April O'Connor, The BlackPourings, 1967, p. 116 of this volume.) 1951-1953, exh. cat. (Boston: 14. Robert Smithson, "A Sedimen Institute of Contemporary Art, tation of the Mind: Earth Projects," 1980). Artforum7, no. 1 (September 1968): 4. Clement Greenberg, "The Situa 49. The implicit reference to Green tion at the Moment," Partisan Review berg is underscored by Smithson's 15, no. 1 (January 1948): 83; reprint description of a "critic with a dank ed in in ArrogantPurpose, 1945-1949, brain" who "would prefer to see art vol. 2 of ClementGreenberg:The in a dewy green setting—say the hills CollectedEssaysand Criticism,ed. John of Vermont," where Greenberg was O'Brian (Chicago: at the University the patron saint of the Bennington Press, 1986), pp. 194-95. College art department. 5. Clement Greenberg, "The Crisis of 15. Robert Rosenblum, "The Abstract the Easel Picture," Partisan Review15, Sublime," Art News 59, no. 10 no. 4 (April 1948): 481-84; reprinted (February 1961): 39-41, 56-57. 13 artist's statements and interviews subject-matter. Their color is essentially Western, their vision has the basic uni versality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn't intentional; probably was the result of early memories and enthusiasms. Do you consider technique to be important in art? Yes and no. Craftsmanship is essential to the artist. He needs it just as he needs brushes, pigments, and a surface to paint on. Do you find it important that many famous modern European artists are living in this country? Yes. I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end. (The only American master who interests me is Ryder.) Thus the fact that good European moderns are now here is very impor tant, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. This idea interests me more than these specific painters do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miro, are still abroad. Do you think there can be a purely American art? The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the 'thirties seems absurd to me, just as the idea of creating a purely American math ematics or physics would seem absurd.... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by that fact, whether he wills it or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.  Artist's Statements and Interviews Pollock'sfirst solo exhibition openedat PeggyGuggenheim'sgallery,Art of This Century, on November9, 1943. Soon thereafter,he was asked to contribute a statement to the Los Angelesjournal Arts and Architecture. The anonymous interviewerwas probably the painter Robert Motherwell. Anon. "Jackson Pollock: A Questionnaire." Arts and Architecture (LOSANGELES)61, NO. 2 (FEBRUARY 1944): 14. © THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. Where were you born? Cody, Wyoming, in January, 1912. My ancestors were Scotch and Irish. Have you traveled any? I've knocked around some in California, some in Arizona. Never been to Europe. Would you like to go abroad? No. I don't see why the problems of modern painting can't be solved as well here as elsewhere. Where did you study? At the Art Students League, here in New York. I began when I was seventeen. Studied with Benton, at the League, for two years. How did your study with Thomas Benton affect your work, which differs so radically from his? My work with Benton was important as something against which to react very strongly, later on; in this, it was better to have worked with him than with a less resistant personality who would have provided a much less strong opposition. At the same time, Benton introduced me to Renaissance art. Why do you prefer living here in New Yorkto your native West? Living is keener, more demanding, more intense and expansive in New York than in the West; the stimulating influences are more numerous and rewarding. At the same time, I have a definite feeling for the West: the vast horizontality of the land, for instance; here only the Atlantic ocean gives you that. Has being a Westerneraffected your work? I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painter's approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly 15 artist's statements and interviews I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and other foreign matter added. When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. BertonRoueche,a gifted New Yorker writer,was an East Hampton neighborof Pollock's. Even after Life magazine's 1949 feature on the artist (pp. 63-64), it was only with some difficulty that Rouechepersuaded his editor to let him publish this brief interview with Pollockand Krasner. Berton Roueche. "Unframed Space." The New Yorker 26, NO. 24 (AUGUST5, 1950): 16. © 1950 BERTONROUECHE.REPRINTEDBYPERMISSION.ALL RIGHTSRESERVED. We improved a shining weekend on eastern Long Island by paying a call on Jack son Pollock—an uncommonly abstract abstractionist and one of seven American painters whose work was tapped for inclusion in the Twenty-fifth International Biennial Exhibition of Figurative Arts, now triumphantly under way in Venice— at his home, a big, gaunt, white clapboard, Ulysses S. Grant-period structure in the fishing hamlet of The Springs. Pollock, a bald, rugged, somewhat puzzled-look ing man of thirty-eight, received us in the kitchen, where he was breakfasting on a cigarette and a cup of coffee and drowsily watching his wife, the former Lee Krasner, a slim, auburn-haired young woman who also is an artist, as she bent over a hot stove, making currant jelly. Waving us to a chair in the shade of a huge potted palm, he remarked with satisfaction that he had been up and about for almost half an hour. It was then around 11:30 A.M. "I've got the old Eighth Street habit of sleeping all day and working all night pretty well licked," he said. "So has Lee. We had to, or lose the respect of the neighbors. I can't deny, though, that it's taken a little while. When'd we come out here, Lee?" Mrs. Pollock laughed merrily. "Just a little while ago," she replied. "In the fall of 1945." "It's marvellous the way Lee's adjusted herself," Pollock said. "She's a native New Yorker, but she's turned into a hell of a good gardener, and she's always up by nine. Ten at the latest. I'm way behind her in orientation. And the funny thing is I grew up in the country. Real country —Wyoming, Arizona, northern and southern California. I was born in Wyoming. My father had a farm near Cody. 18 In the spring of 1947, Pollock's 1943-44 Mural, painted for PeggyGuggenheim'stown- house, was included in The Museum of Modem Art's exhibition Large-Scale Modern Paintings, along with works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Femand Leger, Joan Mird, Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Max Beckmann, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.The tension between easel painting and mural painting was very much in the air, discussed, for instance, in an anonymous 1946 review of Pollock's work (p. 55, below) and in Clement Greenberg's 1948 essay "The Situation at the Moment " Indeed, Greenberg's influence seems visible in the following statement, which Pollock wrote as part of his application for a grant from the GuggenheimFoundation. As it happened,Pollockdid not receivethe grant, and it was three years beforehe returned to workingat a mural scale. Jackson Pollock. Application for Guggenheim Fellowship 1947. © THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. I intend to paint large movable pictures which will function between the easel and mural. I have a set a precedent in this genre in a large painting for Miss Peggy Guggenheim which was installed in her house and was later shown in the "Large-Scale Paintings" show at the Museum of Modern Art. It is at present on loan at Yale University. I believe the easel picture to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural. I believe the time is not yet ripe for a full transition from easel to mural. The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state, and an attempt to point out the direction of the future, without arriving there completely. Pollock contributed this statement to the first (and last) issue of Possibilities, a small magazine edited by Robert Motherwell and Harold Rosenberg.It was accompanied by illustrations of paintings Pollock had done in 1944-46, but did not include any of the "drip" paintings he had begun making in 1947. Pollock's oft-quoted description of his working technique seems to apply, however,to both his new and old work. Jackson Pollock. "My Painting." Possibilities (NEW YORK)I (WINTER1947-48): 78-83. © THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West. 17 artist's statements and interviews Jackson Pollock. Interview with William Wright. THE SPRINGS,LONG ISLAND,NEW YORK,LATE1950. BROADCAST ON RADIOSTATIONWERI, WESTERLY, RHODEISLAND,1951. © THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. ww: Mr. Pollock, in your opinion, what is the meaning of modern art? jp: Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we're living in. ww: Did the classical artist have any means of expressingtheir age? IP: Yes, they did it very well. All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims—the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a sub ject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a differ ent source. They work from within, ww: Would you say that the modern artist has more or less isolated the quality which made the classical works of art valuable, that he's isolated it and uses it in a purer form? jp: Ah—the good ones have, yes. ww: Mr. Pollock, there's been a good deal of controversyand a great many comments have been made regardingyour method of painting. Is there something you'd like to tell us about that? jp: My opinion is that new needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements. It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique, ww: Which would also mean that the layman and the critic would have to developtheir ability to interpret the new techniques. jp: Yes—that always somehow follows. I mean, the strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art. ww: I supposeeverytime you are approachedby a layman they ask you how they should lookat a Pollockpainting, or any other modem painting—what they look for—how do they leam to appreciate modem art? jp: I think they should not look for, but look passively—and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for. ww: Would it be true to say that the artist is painting from the unconscious, and the— canvas must act as the unconsciousof the person who views it? jp: The unconscious is a very important side of modern art and I think the unconscious drives do mean a lot in looking at paintings, ww: Then deliberatelylookingfor any known meaning or object in an abstract painting would distract you immediately from ever appreciating it as you should? 20 By the time I was fourteen, I was milking a dozen cows twice a day." "Jackson's work is full of the West," Mrs. Pollock said. "That's what gives it that feeling of spaciousness. It's what makes it so American." Pollock confirmed this with a re flective scowl, and went on to say that at seventeen, an aptitude for painting having suddenly revealed itself to him in a Los Angeles high school, he at once wound up his academic affairs there and headed East. "I spent two years at the Art Students League," he said. "Tom Benton was teaching there then, and he did a lot for me. He gave me the only formal instruction I ever had, he introduced me to Renaissance art, and he got me a job in the League cafeteria. I'm damn grateful to Tom. He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into non-objective painting. I'm also grateful to the W.P.A.,for keeping me alive dur ing the thirties, and to Peggy Guggenheim. Peggy gave me my first show, in 1943: She gave me two more, and then she took off for Europe, and Lee and 1 came out here. We wanted to get away from the wear and tear. Besides, I had an under neath confidence that I could begin to live on my painting. I'd had some won derful notices. Also, somebody had bought one of my pictures. We lived a year on that picture, and a few clams I dug out of the bay with my toes. Since then things have been a little easier." Mrs. Pollock smiled. "Quite a little," she said. "Jackson showed thirty pictures last fall and sold all but five. And his collectors are nibbling at those." Pollock grunted. "Be nice if it lasts," he said. We asked Pollock for a peep at his work. He shrugged, rose, and led us into a twenty-five-by-fifty-foot living room furnished with massive Italianate tables and chairs and hung with spacious pictures, all of which bore an offhand resem blance to tangles of multicolored ribbon. "Help yourself," he said, halting at a safe distance from an abstraction that occupied most of an end wall. It was a handsome, arresting job, a rust-red background laced with skeins of white, black, and yellow and we said so. "What's it called?" we asked. "I've forgotten," he said, and glanced inquiringly at his wife, who had followed us in. "'Number Two, 1949,' I think," she said. "Jackson used to give his pictures conventional titles: 'Eyes in the Heat' and 'The Blue Unconscious' and so on but now he simply numbers them. Numbers are neutral. They make people look at a picture for what it is— pure painting." "I decided to stop adding to the confusion," Pollock said. "Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Only he didn't know it." "That's exactly what Jackson's work is," Mrs. Pollock said. "Sort of unframed space." 19 artist's statements and interviews WW:Would it be possible for you to explain the advantage of using a stick with paint- liquid paint rather than a brush on canvas? jp: Well, I'm able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease, ww: Well, isn't it more difficult to control than a brush? I mean, isn't there more a pos sibility of getting too much paint or splattering or any number of things? Using a brush, you put the paint right where you want it and you know exactly what it's going to look like. jp: No, I don't think so. I don't— ah—with experience— it seems to be possible to control the flow of the paint, to a great extent, and I don't use—I don't use the accident —'cause I deny the accident, ww: I believe it was Freud who said there's no such thing as an accident. Is that what you mean? jp: I suppose that's generally what I mean. ww: Then, you don't actually have a preconceivedimage of a canvas in your mind? jp: Well, not exactly—no—because it hasn't been created, you see. Something new—it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be. ww: That does away, entirely, with all preliminary sketches? jp: Yes, I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing; that is, it's direct. I don't work from drawings, I don't make sketches and draw ings and color sketches into a final painting. Painting, I think, today —the more immediate, the more direct—the greater the possibilities of making a direct—of making a statement, ww: Well, actually every one of your paintings, your finished canvases, is an absolute original. jp: Well—yes—they're all direct painting. There is only one. ww: Well, now, Mr. Pollock, would you care to comment on modern painting as a whole? What is your feeling about your contemporaries? jp: Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exciting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taking here—is—away from the easel—into some sort, some kind of wall—wall painting, ww: I believesome of your canvases are of very unusual dimensions, isn't that true? jp: Well, yes, they're an impractical size—9 x 18 feet. But I enjoy working big and —whenever I have a chance, I do it whether it's practical or not. ww-.Can you explain whyyou enjoyworkingon a largecanvas more than on a small one? jp: Well, not really. I'm just more at ease in a big area than I am on something 2x2; I feel more at home in a big area, ww: Yousay "in a big area." Are you actually on the canvas while you're painting? 22 jp: I think it should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed —after a while you may like it or you may not. But—it doesn't seem to be too serious. I like some flowers and others, other flowers I don't like. I think at least it gives—I think at least give it a chance, ww: Well, I think you have to give anything that sort of chance. A person isn't born to like good music, they have to listen to it and gradually developan understanding of it or liking for it. If modem painting works the same way—a person would have to subject himself to it over a period of time in order to be able to appreciate it. jp: I think that might help, certainly. ww: Mr. Pollock, the classical artists had a world to express and they did so by repre senting the objects in that world. Why doesn't the modem artist do the same thing? jp: H'm—the modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechan ical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photo graph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world—in other words—expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces. ww: Would it be possible to say that the classical artist expressedhis world by repre senting the objects, whereas the modern artist expresseshis world by representing the effects the objects have upon him? jp: Yes, the modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating, ww: Well, Mr. Pollock, can you tell us how modem art came into being? jp: It didn't drop out of the blue; it's a part of a long tradition dating back with Cezanne, up through the cubists, the post-cubists, to the painting being done today, ww: Then, it's definitely a product of evolution? jp: Yes. ww: Shall we go to this method question that so many people today think is important? Can you tell us how you developedyour method of painting, and why you paint as you do? jp: 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. I happen to find ways that are different from the usual techniques of painting, which seems a little strange at the moment, but I don't think there's anything very different about it. I paint on the floor and this isn't unusual —the Orientals did that, ww: How do you go about getting the paint on the canvas? I understand you don't use brushes or anything of that sort, do you? jp: Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are used more as sticks rather than brushes —the brush doesn't touch the surface of the canvas, it's just above. 21 artist's statements and interviews Francis V.O'Connor dates these handwritten statements, found among Pollock'spapers, to late 1950, after the recordingof the Wright interview. Jackson Pollock. Handwritten statement. UNDATED.© THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. No Sketches acceptance of what I do—. Experience of our age in terms of painting —not an illustration of— (but the equivalent.) Concentrated fluid Jackson Pollock. Handwritten statement. UNDATED.© THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION,INC. Technic is the result of a need new needs demand new technics total control denial of the accident States of order organic intensity energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space, human needs and motives acceptance Jackson Pollock 24 jp: Very little. I do step into the canvas occasionally —that is, working from the four sides I don't have to get into the canvas too much, ww: I notice over in the corner you have something done on plate glass. Can you tell us something about that? jp: Well, that's something new for me. That's the first thing I've done on glass and I find it very exciting. I think the possibilities of using painting on glass in modern architecture —in modern construction —terrific, ww: Well, does the one on glass differ in any other way from your usual technique? jp: It's pretty generally the same. In this particular piece I've used colored glass sheets and plaster slabs and beach stones and odds and ends of that sort. Generally it's pretty much the same as all of my paintings, ww: Well, in the event that you do more of these for modern buildings, would you con tinue to use various objects? jp: I think so, yes. The possibilities, it seems to me are endless, what one can do with glass. It seems to me a medium that's very much related to contempo rary painting. ww: Mr. Pollock, isn't it true that your method of painting, your technique, is important and interesting only because of what you accomplish by it? jp: I hope so. Naturally, the result is the thing —and —it doesn't make much dif ference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement. 23 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER and 1950, which are not clearly related to her husband's generally more open, looser-flowing compositions of that period. But it was only recently in London, away from the habit of insidious associations prevalent in the New York art world, on the occasion of her retrospective exhibition, that her work was able to gain in dependent recognition from a very responsive public as well as from the experts. In the following interview with Miss Krasner I focused on her recollections of the artistic milieu of the late 'thirties and the early 'forties, the period leading up to the maturation of American painting into a world-wide influence. As such, this inquiry outlines a part of the background of the New American Painting of which Lee Krasner is an integral part. The interview was originally broadcast over WBAI-FM,New York, and appears here in a revised and edited form. GLASER: The American 'art scene' in the 1930's and 1940's must have been quite dif ferent from the years that followedthe advent of the so-called culture explosion. In con trast to the New Yorkart world today, where a mass public responds immediately to the latest styles of contemporarypainting, would it be fair to characterize that time as an 'Ageof Innocence'? KRASNER: I am certainly aware of the difference between that time and today, but I am not so sure it was an 'Age of Innocence' for the artists, as we were con scious of the directions that painting was taking. In the late 1930's the 'art scene' consisted of a rather intimate group of painters and their friends. I don't mean that we saw each other steadily, but one knew who was painting and what their work was about. We didn't know this through galleries since almost none of us had anywhere we could show and the galleries weren't interested in showing our kind of painting. There were some dealers who were interested in avant-garde art, but they were generally involved with its European manifestations. For most of us, our knowledge of what was happening here came from one another. We would meet at a bar or we might visit each other's studio from time to time and talk. Now, with us, as with the dealers, the focus was on French painting. We felt that what was contemporary and alive was happening in Paris and we looked forward to publications from there because not much of the work was being shown. We kept aware of the painting from abroad and were very much involved in it and developed from it, eventually achieving our independence and our own reputations. GLASER: Who did see your work then, in the early days? KRASNER: Many of us were members of a group called the American Abstract Artists which we formed to exhibit our works once a year. As the title implies, we were oriented to abstract art, but not all the abstract artists were members. We would rent a place, put a show together ourselves and then try to interest peo ple in coming to see it. However, a very few people actually bought our paint- ings. The public, critical and museum response to American painting was direct - 26  Interviews with Lee Krasner Beginningin 1967, Pollock'swidow,the painter Lee Krasner,gave a series of remarkable interviews discussing Pollock's developmentas an artist, his workingprocess, and the tensions in his life. Krasner's artistic and intellectual insights illuminate not only Pollock's career, but an entire era in American art. Bruce Claser. "Jackson Pollock: An Interview with Lee Krasner." Arts Magazine 41, NO. 6 (APRIL1967): 36-39. Lee Krasner's painting career spans a period of about thirty-five years, yet for the last twenty, her most vital years, she has not been accorded her due as a painter. This was not because she lacked in her capacity as an artist, as her continued and serious development during this time clearly indicates. Her inclusion in numer ous important group exhibitions since 1940, her six one-man shows at several of New York's leading galleries and her large, retrospective exhibition at the White- chapel Gallery in London in 1965, were a recognition of her place in the avant- garde of American art and an opportunity for the more knowledgeable members of the art world to affirm her position. Although these accomplishments were based on a solid body of work, a less serious minded public preferred their fasci nation for her first as Jackson Pollock's wife (1945-56) and then, as heir to his properties, as an ostensibly powerful manipulator of art prices and politics. Miss Krasner's identity as a serious painter was unquestioned by Pollock when he became acquainted with her in 1942, during the course of their partic ipation in an exhibition called, "French and American Painting." The exhibit was arranged to compare contemporary artists on both sides of the Atlantic, but also to convey the unpopular idea that American artists could hold their own in the context of the modern European masters. The show, organized by John Graham and held at the McMillen Gallery, included works by Matisse and Picasso, and other French painters along with a group of paintings by compara tively unknown Americans, including Stuart Davis and Gorky (as well as Pollock and Krasner) whom Graham considered the important members of the younger generation of abstract artists. The possibility of a proper assessment of Miss Krasner's work after that seems to have dissipated as she became closely associated with the powerful per sonality of Pollock. Nevertheless, her work retained its independence and was remarked upon for its quality by the more discerning critics. A case in point is the group of intricate, tightly-knit 'hieroglyphic paintings' from between 1946 25 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER in France, but they were the two dominant figures and one thought of Paris as the place from which the vitality and the living force of painting emanated. When many of the European artists, such as Mondrian, Matta, Chagall, Leger, Lipchitz, and others, came to New York as refugees at the beginning of World War II, we were highly conscious of their presence and very pleased and excited that they were here. I remember the American Abstract Artists invited Leger and Mondrian to take part in one of our exhibitions. But for me, the two artists I was most interested in were still in Paris. It was not the physical presence of the painters that mattered, but their work. GLASER: What was Jackson Pollock'seffect at this time, and what was his relationship to Europeanpainting? KRASNER: Jackson Pollock was an enormous factor as he exploded. He popped the lid, so to speak. His painting shifted the focus of attention from French painting to what was happening here. I think this change could be indicated by an incident I recall that took place between Hofmann, who was a leading expo nent of Cubism, and Pollock. I brought Hofmann up to meet Pollock for the first time and Hofmann said, after looking at his work, "You do not work from nature." Pollock's answer was, "I am nature." I think this statement articulates an impor tant difference between French painting and what followed. It breaks once and for all the concept that was still more or less present in Cubist derived painting, that one sits and observes nature that is out there. Rather, it claims a oneness. GLASER: Some of the criticism and analysis of Pollock'spaintings emphasizes the role of spontaneity or the 'automatic' quality of his working process. One has the feeling from these descriptions that he had little consciousnessof intention and that he made his paintings as if he were caught up in some sort of emotional outpouring or rhapsod ic transport. From what you knew of him, do you think this is an accurate description of the way he painted? KRASNER: The way you describe it, and I don't know where you read this, it sounds like a piece of intellectual snobbery of the lowest order. I go on the assumption that the serious artist is a highly sensitive, intellectual and aware human being, and when he or she 'pours it out' it isn't just a lot of gushy, dirty emotion. It is a total of the experiences which have to do with being a painter and an aware human being. The painter's way of expressing himself is through painting not through verbal ideas, but that doesn't preclude the presence of highly intellectual concepts. The painter is not involved in a battle with the intellect. GLASER: What kind of changes occurredin the New Yorkart world after World War II, in the late 1940's? KRASNER: Many exciting things were happening here and a larger group of peo ple began to respond to them. Galleries were beginning to show the work, some new schools started up and more magazines and articles about what we were 28 ed almost entirely toward the regional schools and social realist painting. CLASER: Was there anyone in your group of painters who was very highly regarded or looked up to as an influence at that time? KRASNER: We were aware of what others were doing but there was no special regard for any one artist. I was very aware of what Gorky, Stuart Davis, John Graham and De Kooning, among others, were doing. I didn't know Pollock at this point. I didn't get to see his work until 1942 when we both participated in a show at the McMillen Gallery. CLASER: What was the significanceof the WorksProgressAdministration (WPA)labor relief program to the artists? Didn't it provide an opportunity for you to meet other artists and also to have your work seen by the public at large? KRASNER: The Federal Arts Project of the WPA not only offered an opportunity for artists to meet, but more important, it provided a livelihood. This was, of course, during the Depression and a great many artists were dependent on the WPA. That it made it possible for them to survive and continue painting seems to me its most significant aspect, even if it had some bad ones. An organization as large as this one was, with its complex administration, would naturally get wound up in its own red tape. For example, in order to get a work of art for some public building, somebody from the public had to say we want a painting of a certain kind. Unfortunately, art doesn't work well when subjected to democrat ic processes. Predictably, the abstract artists were not much in demand. CLASER: Didn't the abstract artists reflect a strong political awareness in spite of their avoidance of representational styles that could be used to promote their views? KRASNER: Yes, many of us took part in demonstrations and sit-down strikes. In fact, I was arrested many times myself. But as far as I can see this had no con nection with my painting. My experience with Leftist movements in the late 1930's made me move as far away from them as possible because they were emphasizing the most banal, provincial art. They weren't interested in an inde pendent and experimental art, but rather linked it to their economic and politi cal programs. Eventually the Communist Party moved into the Artists' Union, which had been formed to protect the rights of the artists on the WPA, and start ed to take over. Then I decided it was time to leave. The trouble was that the union didn't meet to discuss any problems in painting, though occasionally they would put on some sort of exhibition. Their primary emphasis under the domi nation of the Communist Party was a quest for political power and influence. To me, and to the painters I was associated with, the more important thing was French painting and not the social realism and the picture of the Depression that they were interested in, even if it was going on right under our noses. Painting is not to be confused with illustration. CLASER: Who were the French painters you were most interested in? KRASNER: Matisse and Picasso. Of course, one was aware of other artists working 27 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER exhibit soon after leaving their art schools and they have little difficulty selling their work. The galleries are fighting for them. But of course, you can't get art the way you pick apples off a tree. In a situation like this the serious young painters who have not joined the bandwagon need encouragement and support because they are doing the most vital and interesting work. Francine du Plessix and Cleve Cray. Interview with Lee Krasner in "Who Was Jackson Pollock?" Art in America 55, NO. 3 (MAY-JUNE1967): 48-51. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHEDIN ARTIN AMERICA,BRANTPUBLI CATIONS,INC., MAY/JUNE1967. In a letter of 1929 written from Los Angeles, where Jackson was in Manual Arts High School, he told his brother Sandy, "People terrify and bore me." Jackson faced his problems. You ask about his drinking. The drinking was something we faced all the time; wouldn't I be foolish if I didn't talk about it? No one was more conscious about it than he was. Jackson tried everything to stop drinking —medical treatments, analysis, chemistry, everything available. In the late 1940s he went to a Dr. Heller, a general practitioner who had never treat ed an alcoholic. He was the first man who was really able to help Jackson stop drinking. From 1948 to 1950 Jackson did not touch alcohol. I often asked him what Dr. Heller did, when he saw him every week at the East Hampton Medical Clinic. Apparently they just talked. Once when I asked him about Dr. Heller, Jackson said to me, "He is an honest man, I can believe him." Do you realize what that means? "He is an honest man, I can believe him." He never drank while he worked. You know, he worked in cycles. There would be long stretches of work and then times when he did not work. He drank before and after these work cycles. In 1950 Dr. Heller got killed in an automobile accident —just like Jackson—and when Jackson took to drink again later that year there was no Heller to go to. I remember the day I went to his studio for the first time. It was late '41. I went because we had both been invited by John Graham to show in the Mc- Millen Gallery in January '42. I wanted to meet this artist I had never heard about. Actually we had met about four years before and had danced together at an Artists' Union party. But I had forgotten about that first meeting. When he was invited to the McMillen show I was astonished because I thought I knew all the abstract artists in New York. You know, in those days one knew everyone. Well, I was in a rage at myself, simply furious because here was a name that I hadn't heard of. All the more furious because he was living on Eighth Street and I was on Ninth, just one block away. He and his brother Sandy and Sandy's wife had the top floor; each had half. As I came in, Sandy was standing at the top of 30 doing appeared. Eventually the recognition became international. One of the things that might have influenced the public attitude about the New American Painting was the publication of several pages of full-color repro ductions of Pollock's work in Life magazine in 1949. It was the first instance of a mass circulation magazine reaching a public very innocent about modern art and telling them, in a featured article, about the significance of what was hap pening here. The article's title was, "Jackson Pollock, Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?", and I believe the question was stated as a result of Clement Greenberg's proposal of that idea when he was reviewing for the Nation. Greenberg was one of the few critics who spoke specifically for Pollock at the time Pollock was painting. There wasn't the solid front for the new artists, among writers and the art magazines, that one imagines. Art News, among other publications, hardly mentioned Pollock. Review after review of one major show after another consisted of just a few lines, a little blurb. So the article in Life was all the more extraordinary. The museums didn't show much more conviction. The She-Wolf,a painting that was in Jackson's first exhibition in 1943, at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery, was reserved for purchase by the Museum of Modern Art, but they felt that the price of $650 was too high for them. Only a short time later, after James Johnson Sweeney wrote an article called "Five American Painters" for Harper's Bazaar, that included a half-page color reproduction of the painting, did the museum get the $650 to buy it. Sweeney also was one of Pollock's early sup porters and he introduced his first show. CLASER: When did the public show its commitment by actually buying his paintings? KRASNER: I really don't know. It happened so fast that I haven't been able to fig ure it out. For instance, the painting Blue Poles, which was painted in 1953, and shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery within a year or two after that, was purchased from the gallery for $6,500. In 1957, it was included in the Jackson Pollock exhi bition that was sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and circulated in Europe. The show was planned before Jackson's death in the automobile acci dent in 1956, and so the show became a memorial. Now the man who owned the painting put it up for sale and it was purchased in Europe for $35,000. It seems as if the show's tour through Europe had something to do with the rise in price, and in effect European approval was still very important. CLASER: How do you feel about the often expressednotion that Abstract Expressionism is over with, and what is your feeling about the work of the youngerpainters? KRASNER: The idea that Abstract Expressionism is finished and dead has more to do with public relations than with art. It arises from the consumer's need to always have something new. In spite of the pressures in this country to keep up with the new, I think there is some very good painting being done today. The trouble is that one sees a commercialism that is shocking. As I said before, artists 29 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER If I conjure up the gentle part of Jackson, that was one part. But there was the other part, the other extreme, the angry man. Both of them existed in extremes. But Jackson's violence was all verbal. There never was any physical violence. He would just use more four-letter words than usual. Or he would take it out on the furniture. One night we were having ten or twelve people for din ner. Jackson and Hans Namuth were at one end of the table. I don't know what the argument was about, but I heard loud voices and suddenly Jackson over turned the whole table with twelve roast beef dinners. It was a mess. I said, "Coffee will be served in the living room." Everyone filed out and Jackson went off without any trouble. Jeffrey Potter and I cleaned up. I will tell you a story about de Kooning. Jackson and he were standing at the Cedar Bar, drinking. They started to argue and de Kooning punched him. There was a crowd around them and some of the fellows tried to egg Jackson on to hit de Kooning back. Jackson turned to them and said: "What? Me? Hit an artist?" He was not violent. Angry, yes. Bitter, yes. Impatient, yes. Not violent. This is how we got to live in Springs: We had friends, the Kadishes, who rented a house out there in the summer of '45. They invited us to spend a week end with them. Jackson loved city life. I was the one who had an aspiration to live in the country. At the end of that weekend I said to Jackson: "How about us looking for a place to rent and moving out there for one winter? We can rent that house we saw for forty dollars, and sublet our own place." He thought it was a terrible idea. But I remember when we got back to Eighth Street he spent three days stretched out on the couch just thinking. Then on Friday he leaped up and said, "Lee, we're going to buy a house in Springs and move out!" Well of course we didn't even have the forty dollars to pay rent, not to speak of buying a house, so I said, "Jackson, have you gone out of your mind?" His answer was: "Lee, you're always the one who's saying I shouldn't let myself worry about the money; we'll just go ahead and do it." We went back to Springs. The house we wanted had just been sold, so we asked the agent to see what else there was. He showed us a place we liked. The price was $5,000. We could get a $3,000 mortgage and had to raise $2,000 in cash. I went to Peggy Guggenheim, but she wouldn't con sider a loan and said sarcastically, "Why don't you go ask Sam Kootz?" I went to see Kootz, and he agreed to lend us the money but only with the understanding that Jackson would come over to his gallery; he had heard that Peggy was clos ing her gallery. When I got back to Peggy's and told her what Kootz had said, she exploded. "How could you do such a thing and with Kootz of all people! Over my dead body you'll go to Kootz!" I said, "But Peggy, it was your idea to ask Kootz." Well, we eventually reached an agreement by means of which Peggy lent us the $2,000. She did this by raising Jackson's monthly fee to $300, deducting $50 a month to repay the loan and having rights to all of Jackson's output for the next two years. This, incidentally, was the agreement that gave rise to her 32 the stairs; I asked for Jackson Pollock, and he said, "You can try knocking over there, but I don't know if he's in." I later found out from Sandy that it was most unusual for Jackson to answer. When I knocked, he opened. I introduced myself and said we were both showing in the same show. I walked right in. What did I think? I was overwhelmed, bowled over, that's all. I saw all those marvelous paintings. I felt as if the floor was sinking when I saw those paintings. How could there be a painter like that that I didn't know about? I must have made several remarks on how I felt about the paintings. I remember remarking on one, and he said, "Oh, I'm not sure I'm finished with that one." I said, "Don't touch it!" Of course I don't know whether he did or not. He was not a big man, but he gave the impression of being big. About five- foot-eleven —average—big-boned, heavy. His hands were fantastic, powerful hands. I wish there were photographs of his hands. All told, he was physically powerful. And this ran through from the first time I met him until the day he died, when there had been quite a change in his appearance. He was not in the war at the time I met him because he had been classified 4-F. He had spent six months at Bloomingdale's, a White Plains, New York, hos pital for treatment of psychiatric cases, when he was about eighteen. And the alcoholic problem had been with him most of his life. One morning before we were married Sandy knocked on my door and asked "Did Jackson spend the night here last night?" I answered, "No, why?" "Because he's in Bellevue Hospi tal and our mother has arrived in New York. Will you go with me and get him?" We went and there he was in the Bellevue ward. He looked awful. He had been drinking for days. I said to him, "Is this the best hotel you can find?" At Sandy's suggestion I took him back to my place and fed him milk and eggs to be in shape for dinner that night with Mother. We went together. It was my first meeting with Mother. I was overpowered with her cooking, I had never seen such a spread as she put on. She had cooked all the dinner, baked the bread, the abundance of it was fabulous. I thought Mama was terrific. Later I said to Jackson, "You're off your rocker, she's sweet, nice." It took a long time for me to realize why there was a problem between Jackson and his mother. You see, at that time I never connected the episode of Jackson's drinking with his mother's arrival. And around then Stella (Jackson's mother) moved out to Connecticut with Sandy and his family so we didn't really see that much of her. I hadn't yet seen anything of the dominating mother. When we were married Jackson wanted a church wedding; not me. He wanted it and we had it. Jackson's mother, in fact all the family, was anti-reli gious—that's a fact. Violently anti-religious. I felt that Jackson, from many things he did and said, felt a great loss there. He was tending more and more to religion. I felt that went back to his family's lack of it. You know in his teens he used to listen to Krishnamurti's lectures. 31 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER he did the baking when he felt like it. He was very fastidious about his baking- marvelous bread and pies. He also made a great spaghetti sauce. He loved machinery, so he got a lawn mower. We made an agreement about the garden when he said, "I'll dig it and set it out if you'll water and weed." He took great pride in the house. One of the reasons for our move to Springs was that Jackson wanted to do sculpture. You know, it was his original interest in high school and art school. He often said, "One of these days I'll get back to sculpture." There was a large junk pile of iron in the backyard he expected to use. He would get into grooves of listening to his jazz records—not just for days—day and night, day and night for three days running until you thought you would climb the roof! The house would shake. Jazz? He thought it was the only other really creative thing happening in this country. He had a passion for music. He had trouble carrying a tune, and although he loved to dance he was an awkward dancer. He told me that when he was a boy he bought himself a vio lin expecting to play it immediately. When he couldn't get the sound he want ed out of it, he smashed it in a rage. He was secure in his work. In that he was sure of himself. But I can't say he was a happy man. There were times when he was happy, of course; he loved his house, he loved to fool in his garden, he loved to go out and look at the dunes, the gulls. He would talk for hours to Dan Miller, the grocery store owner. He would drink with the plumber, Dick Talmadge, or the electrician, Elwyn Harris. Once they came into New York to see one of his exhibitions. It is a myth that he wasn't verbal. He could be hideously verbal when he wanted to be. Ask the people he really talked to: Tony Smith and me. He was lucid, intelligent; it was simply that he didn't want to talk art. If he was quiet, it was because he didn't believe in talking, he believed in doing. There is a story about Hans Hofmann related to this. It was terribly embar rassing to me, because I brought Hofmann to see Pollock. Hofmann, being a teacher, spent all the time talking about art. Finally Pollock couldn't stand it any longer and said, "Your theories don't interest me. Put up or shut up! Let's see your work." He had a fanatical conviction that the work would do it, not any outside periphery like talk. There is so much stupid myth about Pollock, I can't stand it! There is the myth of suicide. There is no truth in this. It was an automobile accident like many others. That was a dangerous part of the road; just a while before, I myself skidded on that part of the road. The state highway department had to fix it soon after Jackson's death. That speaks for itself. I'm bored with these myths. Jackson was damn decent to his friends no matter what the situation was. He saw few people; he didn't have a lot of friends. He was not interested in contemporary artists' work—except for a few—but, as it turned out, most of the people he saw had a connection with the arts. Among 34  recent lawsuit against me. I think that living in Springs allowed Jackson to work. He needed the peace and quiet of country life. It enabled him to work. The first two years we lived in Springs we had no car. You know, before I met him, there was an existence of dire poverty, about as bad as it can be. This was sometime between the time he arrived in New York and when he got on W.P.A. In the deep Depression he used to get a meal for five cents. I know that when he lived with Sandy he had to work as a janitor in the Little Red School- house in The Village. Later Jackson got a Model A Ford, but in the beginning we had to bicycle to do all the errands; that would take a good part of the day. He always slept very late. Drinking or not, he never got up in the morning. He could sleep twelve, fourteen hours, around the clock. We'd always talk about his insane guilt about sleeping late. Morning was my best time for work, so I would be in my studio when I heard him stirring around. I would go back, and while he had his breakfast I had my lunch. His breakfast would not set him up and make him bolt from the table like most people. He would sit over that damn cup of coffee for two hours. By that time it was afternoon. He'd get off and work until it was dark. There were no lights in his studio. When the days were short he could only work for a few hours, but what he managed to do in those few hours was incredible. We had an agreement that neither of us would go into the other's studio without being asked. Occasionally, it was something like once a week, he would say, "I have something to show you." I would always be aston ished by the amount of work that he had accomplished. In discussing the paint ings, he would ask, "Does it work?" Or in looking at mine, he would comment, "It works" or "It doesn't work." He may have been the first artist to have used the word "work" in that sense. There was no heat in his studio either, but he would manage in winter if he wanted to; he would get dressed up in an outfit the like of which you've never seen. He often said, "Painting is no problem; the problem is what to do when you're not painting." In the afternoon, if he wasn't working, we might bicycle to town. Or when we had a car, he would drive me to town and wait in the car for me while I shopped. When he was working, he would go to town when the light gave out and get a few cartons of beer to bring home. Of course, during those two years (1948 and 1949) he was on the wagon. He didn't touch beer either. We would often drive out in the old Model A and get out and walk. Or we would sit on the stoop for hours gazing into the landscape without exchanging a word. We rarely had art talk, sometimes shop talk, like who's going to what gallery. One thing I will say about Pollock; the one time I saw temperament in him was when he baked an apple pie. Or when he tried to take a photograph. He never showed any artistic temperament. He loved to bake. I did the cooking but 33 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER monumental drawing, or maybe painting with the immediacy of drawing — some new category.... There's one other advantage I had: I saw his paint ings evolve. Many of them, many of the most abstract, began with more or less recognizable imagery—heads, parts of the body, fantastic creatures. Once I asked Jackson why he didn't stop the painting when a given image was exposed. He said, 'I choose to veil the imagery'. Well, that was that painting. With the black-and-whites he chose mostly to expose the imagery. I can't say why. I wonder if he could have. BHF:Then, do you consider these paintings more 'naked' than his earlier work? lkp: No, no more naked than some of those early drawings—or paintings like Male and Female or Easter and the Totem. They come out of the same sub conscious, the same man's eroticism, joy, pain... Some of the black-and- whites are very open, ecstatic, lyrical; others are more closed and hidden, dark, even oppressive, just as with the paintings in color. BHF: In the 1950 show there seems to have been something like a primitive horror vacui; the entire canvas needing to be filled—except for Number 32. In that painting, as in the 1951 black-and-whites,there's an acceptanceof empty space, negativespace, the void. The voids read positively.Do you think the 1951 show came out of that one monumental black-and-whitein the '50 show? lkp: After the '50 show, what do you do next? He couldn't have gone further doing the same thing. BHF: Jackson spoke about liking the resistance of the hard surface of the floor when he painted. Perhaps, in a sense, limiting himself to black-and-white may have been another form of self-imposedresistance? lkp: I haven't a clue as to what swung him exclusively into black-and-white at that point—besides the drawings, he did some black-and-white paintings of considerable size earlier—but it was certainly a fully conscious decision. There were no external causes, no shortage of color or anything like that. bhf: He very much admired Guernica and the studies for it; was he maybe responding to that, reacting to it? lkp: If so, it was an awfully slow burn —say, twenty years. But there's no question that he admired Picasso and at the same time competed with him, wanted to go past him. Even before we lived in East Hampton, I remember one time I heard something fall and then Jackson yelling, 'God damn it, that guy missed nothing!' I went to see what had happened. Jackson was sitting, star ing; and on the floor, where he had thrown it, was a book of Picasso's work... Jackson experienced extremes of insecurity and confidence. You only have to see the film of him making his painting on glass (Number 29, 1950) to know how sure he was of himself: the way he wipes out the first start and begins over. But there were other times when he was just as unsure. A little later, in front of a very good painting —not a black-and-white —he asked me, 36 those who recognized Pollock's work, John Graham preceded everybody. One night when we were walking with John, we saw a little man with a long over coat; it was Frederick Kiesler.John introduced Pollock by saying: "I want you to meet the greatest painter in America." Kiesler bowed low to the ground, and as he came up he asked, "North or South America?" Jim Sweeney was the first to go into print for Pollock; he introduced Pollock's first show. It was a fine introduc tion, but in it he called Jackson "undisciplined." Jackson got furious. Oh, he was angry, really mad, and he painted a picture, Searchfor a Symbol,just to show how disciplined he was. He brought the wet painting to the gallery where he was meeting Jim Sweeney and said, "I want you to see a really disciplined painting." Herbert and Mercedes Matter brought Sandy Calder to see Jackson in '42. After looking at the paintings, Sandy said, "They're all so dense." He meant that there was no space in them. Jackson answered, "Oh you want to see one less dense, one with open space?" And he went back for a painting and came out with the densest of all. That's the way he could be. But he had deep under standing of his friends. One day I asked him, "Why is Jim Brooks so terrified of you when you are drunk?" Jackson explained sympathetically to me why Jim might be reacting that way. When I would speak to him about my own troubles with his drinking, he would say, "Yes, I know it's rough on you. But I can't say I'll stop, because you know I'm trying to. Try to think of it as a storm. It'll soon be over." B. H. Friedman. "An Interview with Lee Krasner Pollock." In Jackson Pollock: Black and White, exh. cat. NEW YORK:MARLBOROUGH-GERSON GALLERY, 1969, PP. 7-10. REPRINTEDBYPERMISSIONOF B. H. FRIEDMAN. bhf:In 1951, when Jackson had his black-and-white show at Betty Parsons', many of us were surprised, even shocked, not only by the lack of color, its seeming denial, but by the return in some of these paintings to figurative work. We, on the outside, had watched his developmentas an abstractionist and as a very original colorist, but did you experience the same sense of shock? Or, being closer to him and the work, had you seen or felt these paintings coming? lkp: Well, of course, I had one advantage that very few others had —I was famil iar with his notebooks and drawings, a great body of work that most people didn't see until years later, after Jackson's death. I'm not talking about draw ings he did as a student of Benton, but just after that, when he began to break free, about in the mid-'thirties. For me, all of Jackson's work grows from this period; I see no more sharp breaks, but rather a continuing devel opment of the same themes and obsessions. The 1951 show seemed like 35 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER John Boyle down on Duane Street. He'd roll a stretch of this out on the studio floor, maybe twenty feet, so the weight of the canvas would hold it down —it didn't have to be tacked. Then typically he'd size it with a coat or two of 'Rivit' glue to preserve the canvas and to give it a harder surface. Or sometimes, with the black-and-white paintings, he would size them after they were completed, to seal them. The 'Rivit' came from Behlen and Brother on Christopher Street. Like Boyle's, it's not an art-supplier. The paint Jackson used for the black-and- whites was commercial too —mostly black industrial enamel, Duco or Davoe & Reynolds. There was some brown enam el in a couple of the paintings. So his 'palette' was typically a can or two of this enamel, thinned to the point he wanted it, standing on the floor beside the rolled-out canvas. Then, using sticks, and hardened or worn-out brushes (which were in effect like sticks), and basting syringes, he'd begin. His control was amazing. Using a stick was difficult enough, but the basting syringe was like a giant fountain pen. With it he had to control the flow of ink as well as his gesture. He used to buy those syringes by the dozen.... With the larger black-and-whites he'd either finish one and cut it off the roll of canvas, or cut it off in advance and then work on it. But with the small er ones he'd often do several on a large strip of canvas and then cut that strip from the roll to make more working space and to study it. Sometimes he'd ask, 'Should I cut it here? Should this be the bottom?' He'd have long ses sions of cutting and editing, some of which I was in on, but the final deci sions were always his. Working around the canvas—in 'the arena' as he called it—there really was no absolute top or bottom. And leaving space between paintings, there was no absolute 'frame' the way there is working on a pre-stretched canvas. Those were difficult sessions. His signing the can vases was even worse. I'd think everything was settled —tops, bottoms, mar gins—and then he'd have last-minute thoughts and doubts. He hated sign ing. There's something so final about a signature.... Sometimes, as you know, he'd decide to treat two or more successive panels as one painting, as a diptych, or triptych, or whatever. Portrait and a Dream is a good example. And, do you know, the same dealer who told me Jackson's black-and-whites were accepted, asked him now, two years later, why he didn't cut Portrait and a Dream in half! 38  'Is this a painting?' Not is this a good painting, or a bad one, but a painting! The degree of doubt was unbelievable at times. And then, again, at other times he knew the painter he was. It's no wonder he had doubts. At the opening of the black-and-white show one of the New York dealers, suppos edly in the know, told him, 'Good show, Jackson, but could you do it in color?' A few weeks later another dealer said to me, 'It's all right, Lee, we've accepted it'. The arrogance, the blindness was killing. And, as you see, not only from the outside world, but the art world itself. bhf: What about the imagery?Did Jackson ever talk about it? lkp: I only heard him do that once. Lillian Kiesler and Alice Hodges were visiting and we were looking at Portrait and a Dream. (This is a diptych of 1953, in which the left panel is black-and-white, abstractly suggestive of two anthro pomorphic figures, and the right—gray, orange, and yellow—is clearly a man's head, probably a self-portrait.) In response to their questions, Jackson talked for a long time about the left section. He spoke freely and brilliantly. I wish I had had a tape-recorder. The only thing I remember was that he described the upper right-hand corner of the left panel as 'the dark side of the moon'. bhf: Severalwriters have connectedthe black-and-whitepaintings, and some of the col ored ones also, with the feel of the East Hampton landscape,particularly in winter: the look of bare trees against the sky and flat land movingout toward the sea. lkp: Jackson was pretty explicit about that in the Arts & Architecture question naire. ('... I have a definite feeling for the West: the vast horizontality of the land, for instance; here only the Atlantic Ocean gives you that.') Then (1944) he emphasized the West, but by the time of the black-and-white show, after living in Springs for six years, I think he would have given just as much emphasis to this Eastern Long Island landscape —and seascape. They were part of his consciousness: the horizontality he speaks of, and the sense of endless space, and the freedom.... The only time I heard him use the word 'landscape' in connection with his own work was one morning before going to the studio, when he said, 'I saw a landscape the likes of which no human being could have seen'. bhf: I guess he was talking about a sort of visionary landscape. lkp: Yes,but in Jackson's case I feel that what the world calls 'visionary' and 'real' were not as separated as they are for most people. bhf: Maybe Jackson lived in a visionary landscape all the time.... Can you say some thing about how these paintings were made, the physical procedure? lkp: Yes, there I'm on safer ground. Jackson used rolls of cotton duck, just as he had intermittently since the early 'forties. All the major black-and-white paintings were on unprimed duck. He would order remnants, bolts of can vas anywhere from five to nine feet high, having maybe fifty or a hundred yards left on them —commercial duck, used for ships and upholstery, from 37  INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER of life in Springs, during the most productive decade of Pollock's life, add to our understanding of Pollock's central role in the history of the New York School, as well as the nature of their relationship as two working professionals. BarbaraRose:When did Pollockbegin to use the Springsstudio? LeeKrasner:We moved out there in November 1945. Pollock started to work in the bedroom upstairs in the house because the barn, which later became the stu dio, was a mess, filled with lots of rough iron things and some farm implements. Mr. Quinn, the former owner of the house, had something to do with the town roads, so there were all kinds of things in there. You could barely get in, so it was a matter of clearing it out. And that would take time, so he started to work in the house. Pollock's 1946 show was painted in one of the bedrooms upstairs in the house. He painted The Keyin the bedroom. I remember because it was in the '46 show. As you know, Pollock painted on the floor: The Keytook up the whole space on the bedroom floor. He could barely walk around it. The move into the studio had to follow that, because in addition to clearing the barn out, we also moved it, to the site it's on now. (It was directly behind the house and cut off our whole view.) The next show he has is in 1949—in fact, he had two shows in '49, so it must have been between 1947 and 1949 that the building was cleared out and moved, and he began to work in the bigger studio in the barn. BarbaraRose:Was there a change in scale because of Pollock's move of his studio from the bedroomto the bam? Lee Krasner:Surely, since his 1950 show had some big paintings. It had One, Autumn Rhythm hanging opposite it, Lavender Mist, plus the big black and white painting in Diisseldorf, the Muriel Newman painting in Chicago, which is about the size of LavenderMist, plus some other big paintings. However, I want to point out that before we moved out to Springs, when we were living on Eighth Street in the Village, Peggy Guggenheim commissioned the mural for her apartment, which is the largest painting Pollock ever painted. That was in 1943. Incidentally, that's not painted on the floor. Pollock didn't always paint on the floor, although he painted a great deal on the floor. For that mural, we had to rip out a wall and carry out the plaster in buckets every night. We weren't sup posed to live in the building, which we rented from Sailor's Snug Harbor. At any rate, we needed to create a wall large enough to hold the mural, so we broke down a partition between two rooms. That created a wall long enough for him to get that big mural painting on. BarbaraRose:Was that PeggyGuggenheim'sdimensions or Pollock's? LeeKrasner:The mural was a commission from Peggy of a fixed dimension to fit into the hallway, I believe. She specified the dimension. BarbaraRose:Can you be morespecificabout the date Pollockbeganpainting in the bam? 40 Barbara Rose. "Jackson Pollock at Work: An Interview with Lee Krasner." Partisan Review 47, NO. 1 (1980): 82-92. REPRINTEDBYPERMISSIONOF BARBARA ROSE. As Jackson Pollock's paintings are slowly beginning to be understood as works of art belonging to a tradition of modernist painting, as opposed to scandalous per sonal acts that created the Pollock myth, any information regarding Pollock's own intention and methods becomes critical in defining the actual historical context within which the unprecedented masterpieces—the mural-sized, so- called "drip" paintings he began in 1947—were created. In the following inter view with Pollock's widow, painter Lee Krasner, the circumstances leading up to Pollock's discovery of a new style that involved pouring diluted paint onto an unstretched piece of canvas on the floor, rather than applying paint to the con ventional stretched painting on the easel or wall, are clarified. The interview, inspired by the forthcoming publication of Hans Namuth's celebrated action photographs in a book called Pollock Painting, reveals Krasner's intimate rela tionship as a colleague with her husband whose principal champion and great est supporter she was. Recent interest in Krasner's own career as a pioneer Abstract Expressionist, overshadowed by Pollock's celebrity, has raised the question of why her reputa tion suffered in relation to those of her male contemporaries. The interview makes it clear for the first time why Krasner was prohibited from painting the big pictures that were essential to the creation of the major reputations of the New York School until after Pollock's death in 1956. For, although she was an abstract artist earlier than any of the first generation New York School painters, except Reinhardt and Gorky (she was painting abstractly while her teacher Hans Hofmann was still a figurative artist), her development as a painter of large-scale, monumental works was artificially postponed as the result of the primacy both she and Pollock gave to his career. Pollock's large "drip" paintings date from the move of his studio from the bedroom in the house the couple purchased in 1945, when they moved from Greenwich Village to Springs, East Hampton, to the barn behind the house which became his studio in 1947. He had already been painting on the floor in the bedroom, but the move into the barn permit ted the kind of physical freedom documented in Namuth's photographs and the film made in fall 1950. With Pollock painting in the barn, Krasner finally had a studio of her own. (She had been working in the living room.) The "little image" series, her own version of all-over painting done with a conventional brush technique on easel- sized canvases, was done in this small bedroom in the late forties. After Pollock's death in 1956, Krasner began using the barn as her studio, working on a very large scale, although she never painted on the floor as Pollock had. Her memories 39 INTERVIEWS WITH LEE KRASNER called breakthrough —he could merge many traditions of art. You recall he had said in a '44 interview that here in the East, only the Atlantic gave him a sense of space that he was accustomed to. He did work with his father, who was a sur veyor, in the Grand Canyon, so he really had a sense of physical space. In find ing this technique of expressing what he expressed, he merged many things out of his American background —which does not disconnect him from tradition and his knowledge of European painting. His art was a synthesis. BarbaraRose:Was the bam heated at this time? LeeKrasner:The barn was not heated at that time. In some early photographs you can literally see between the boards, which means it wasn't insulated or heated. And that means seasonal work. BarbaraRose:So he didn't work in the winter? LeeKrasner:No, not dead, dead winter, until later on. At one point he got one of those terrible kerosene stoves, and if he was working he could ignite it, which terrified me. A little wooden barn, full of pigment and all sorts of flammable stuff, heated by one of those kerosene potbellies. You know, with a chimney and a big kerosene container on the bottom. Very frightening. BarbaraRose:When he didn't paint, did he draw? LeeKrasner:Not necessarily. He really worked in cycles. When he was working, the weather didn't especially stop him. He would put layers and layers of cloth ing on and would ignite that kerosene thing and work. But there were some months, about four or five months of the year when it was bitter, bitter cold out there, when you really couldn't work. Otherwise, he could manage somehow or other. He did an enormous amount of work considering that there was no heat in the barn. BarbaraRose:Did you feel that temperamentallythe seasons had an effect on him out there? LeeKrasner:At the time I wasn't aware of it as such. Certainly his relationship to nature was intense. For example, the moon had a tremendous effect on him, and he liked gardening. Just wal