Saving His Genius at Her Expense

Codependent or realistic assessment?

Abstract painting — Steve Johnson on Unsplash

The book Ninth Street Women by Mariel Gabriel, 2019, is a large (over 900 pages) biography of five women of Abstract Expressionism, variously artists, lovers, wives of the men of Abstract Expressionism.

I’ve never understood that movement’s roots. I did well to read this book, and see the sweep of history and wonder about individual decisions. Europe was rebuilding after World War II, and New York City took Paris’s longstanding title, the capital of art in both senses of the word capital.

It’s an old story that the men of a movement (this was late 1940’s to early 1960’s) were lionized, and the women were also-rans. Society was moving from Rosie the Riveter to Betty Crocker. I wonder how social movements like this happen — I don’t believe some conspiracists got together and said, “OK, the economy requires this change.”

Change to tradition was in the air, but these women were not traditional homemakers or mothers. More than one person speculated about her identity as an artist and how marriage could change it as a wife.

Lee Krasner, according to the narrative, saw Pollock’s paintings in his studio and decided he was a genius. It was her job to save him. She lived with and then married him.

He was an alcoholic, perhaps manic depressive. The shy, quiet man became a raging, insulting, fighting maniac with booze. But they had an unabashed belief in themselves, inventing a new form of art and creating community by either dropping in to cafeterias and bars or hanging together with writers and visual artists at parties as the night turned into early morning. I was jealous of the repartee and community of fellow-believers.

Jackson learned a lot from Lee, and her job, as she saw it, was to keep him sober as much as possible and keep him painting. Her own art became secondary to supporting Jackson. She was not a natural beauty, but she was a natural intellect. She managed the business of art and later managed his legacy, carefully ensuring his predominance.

These artists and refugees from the middle class embraced the hardships of living in lofts without heat, wearing winter jackets inside, skipping meals, and hiding from landlords. They had little to no income and saw painting as both their calling and their means of saving the world.

Later, when they had arrived, these would be the halcyon years.

Pollock, for example, had little income, but he invented a new way of painting, pouring from cans onto canvas on the floor, using a stick, string, and moving the paint into shapes and directions. He viewed painting as the paint and the canvas, his intuition and his feelings. He became known as Jack the Dripper.

He and Lee moved out to the Hamptons on Long Island, to some farm buildings adjacent to potato fields. Lee managed the business side, the relationships with galleries, with buyers, with museums, and their forays back to the City.

I thought of the challenges of being an artist at any time. Galleries, exhibits, buyers, museums, consultants, art journal writers — it was a lot of relationships to manage. It was not just the painting, paying for the materials, the space, but the politics.

For example, Mark Rothko, he of the luminous rectangle paintings, big bands of color, refused a commission of $35,000, huge at that time, because his art would hang at The Four Seasons in The Seagram Building. The Four Seasons was a five-star restaurant that catered to well-heeled diners. Rothko had grown up a socialist and wanted everyday people to enjoy his art. Rothko’s paintings now exceed $150 million at auction.

I think of my own expenses as a writer, and recognize writing is first an expense. I should belong to writing associations, present at readings, take workshops with the right people, pay entry fees, win contests, be published by respected journals, and have an author’s website. It is the way one climbs the writing ladder, the publication ladder. It is the business of writing, not the joy of writing.

Jackson Pollock died driving a car into a tree, drunk, killing one female passenger and injuring another. Although the accident was described as shocking, Jackson often drove drunk.

Lee was in Europe at the time.

She set up the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which oversees their estates, their intellectual property, and provides grants to artists who are struggling with living costs.

Unlike other artists whose legacies get tied up in probate court for years (Mark Rothko, Jack Kerouac), the foundation serves its purposes. But I wonder, especially with the abstract artists, what impact artificial intelligence will have on the painting community. The art world, and relative value, has already become artificial.