You’ve heard of artist Jackson Pollock, but you may have never heard of Lee Krasner. Krasner was an artist, Pollock’s wife, and the woman who made him famous. She also changed everything about the landscape of modern art.
Death of an Artist: Krasner and Pollock is a story about love, power, alcoholism and an ill-timed death. Hosted by curator, author, and broadcaster Katy Hessel, this 6-episode series from Pushkin Industries and Samizdat Audio offers an inside look into two of the greatest artists of the 20th century, and how their vision impacts ours. Listen in your favorite podcast player.
Pushkin.
You've heard of Jackson Pollock, but you may have never heard of Lee Krasner, an artist Pollock's wife and the woman who made him famous and in doing so, changed everything about the landscape of American modern art. My name is Katie Hessel. I'm an art historian and the author of a book called The Story of Art Without Men. I've spent the past decade uncovering the stories of great women artists, but I've never come across an artist more influential than Lee Krasner. Today, I'm in your feed to bring you a preview of my podcast from Pushkin Industries and Samasdat Audio. This is Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy this preview. It's a cool summer evening in Paris, August nineteen fifty six. An American artist called Lee Krasner is at a friend's place.
It was a magnificent apartment, was a huge skylight, easels everywhere. She was completely at home, amid the smell of turpentine and linseed oil.
Paris is Lee's mecca, the home of modern art. Now in her late forties. She's finally here.
Looking at what was happening in Paris and who was doing what, who was painting, who was showing what? Galleries were showing what.
But this isn't just a work trip.
Lee was there to recharge her batteries because of a very tricky relationship with a husband she had left behind in the States.
A turbulent relationship to say the least, his ego, alcoholism, and now an affair. But a month in Paris has helped take her mind off life back home. That evening, Lee's relaxed, drifting into sleep.
And as she settled in on her friend's couch for the night, about three in the morning, the phone rang. Her host answered the phone and didn't say anything, but she could tell by the stricken look on his face that something terrible had happened. Without knowing any of the words on the other end of the phone, Lee knew exactly what had happened, and she shouted out, Jackson's dead.
Lee's husband is Jackson Pollock.
Her host saw that agony in her face, the absolute pain, and rushed over to her, held her in his arms for what he described as an endless half hour, during which she writhed and moaned and was in utter agony. He was actually terrified for her life because their apartment had a balcony, and he was afraid she might do something drastic. You know, that she might try to throw herself off.
Later that same day, Lee would get on a plane to New York, arrange his funeral, and mourn her husband. But the story of Lee and Jackson doesn't end there. After spending weeks in a daze, unable to sleep, she would embark on something extraordinary. What she'd do next would change history, turning her dead husband into the most famous American painter of all time and changing the way we all think about art. I'm Katie Hessel, art historian and writer, and this is Death of an Artist. Season two, The Krasner and Pollock, Episode one Crash. Okay, so Audrey, please, can you introduce yourself who you are and what you do?
Well?
I don't want to do that. You should do that.
Okay, let's leave that.
You know you should say, here's Ardrey Flak and she's blah blah blah, and she's uh an ancient.
Person.
Audrey flat is ninety two years old and is as New York as it comes. She's been a painter for seven decades now, and back in the nineteen fifties she was right at the center of the downtown art scene, then made up of only a handful of people.
I had a studio on Eighth Street and Third Avenue. My studio was in a condemned building. The floors were rotted and the stairway was hanging down, and it wasn't safe. So of course that's a perfect place for artists.
A few blocks up was a dive bar called the Cedar.
The Cedar was, you know, the place that everybody went, smoky, crowded. I was very busy and jam packed and exciting. And the talk they were really arguments about who was a greater artist, a Tintrredo or Caravaggia.
Yeah, not my usual Saturday night chat.
There was a bar with stools.
They were drinking little shots of Scotch with a beer chaser. Jackson liked to sit towards the back. His face was bloated, his skin, you know, had little capillaries had broken in his nose, and you don't ever notice when somebody drinks too much.
Audrey'd see Jackson Pollock there most nights. He was a big guy early forties, scruffy, often wearing a baggy coat to hide his beer belly inside the cedar. Among fellow artists, he was a big deal, the one they all looked up to. And that goes for Audrey Flack, then a young artist.
One night I went to the cedar, Jackson wandered over. He stumped below over because he was clearly plastered, and sort of fell into the other chair next to me. We were talking and I wanted to ask him about his art, and then he started coming close to me. He brushed his face against mine and he had a three day stubble. It was scratchy, and obviously he didn't smell too good because I don't think he had washed. And then he burped, he belched, and then he was embarrassed and he tried to pinch my behind and then he leans over and he says, let's fuck. I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Jackson, just calm down. And that was the night that I vowed I would never go back to the seat.
And she didn't, but plenty of others did. Because the reality was that if you wanted to be in the art scene, really wanted to make it, you had to show your face at the Cedar.
They were the.
One of the girls who followed the rock stars groupies groupies.
They were groupies.
They thought if they slept with big had shows, it would rub off and they would have some importance.
That is how it was.
And it was there at the Cedar that Jackson met a friend of Audrey's who just moved to the city, a twenty six year old artist called Ruth Kligman.
Ruth was unbelievably sexy.
It just wreaked, thick black hair, rimmed sunglasses and red lipstick.
She looked like Elizabeth Taylor. She was really knockout.
She really had a good eye and an ability to talk that mesmerized.
View, which she must have done to Jackson.
She really got him.
By this point, Jackson had been married to Lee for a decade. Their marriage well, it had its ups and downs, and the downs largely corresponded to Jackson's binges. And when Jackson met Ruth at the Cedar, he was in one of his spirals.
Jackson had carried on his affair in secret, well secret to Lee.
That's Mary Gabriel, a journalist who wrote the book Ninth Street Women, all about the women of the American modern arts scene. You'll be hearing a lot from her throughout the show. Anyway, back to Jackson's.
Affair, everyone else in their community was well aware of it because he wore Ruth Kligman and his arm like a prize.
A few months after getting together, Ruth started spending more and more time at Jackson's home in Long Island, a little farmhouse right by the beach. Lee was away that summer in Paris, and Ruth made the most of it. One hot day, she invited her friend Edith Metzger to take the two hour train ride out to Jackson's place with her. Ruth couldn't wait to take a cool dip in the ocean and show off her new artist's boyfriend.
They were met at the train station by a Sadden, middle aged drunk who barely spoke, who was angry that Ruth had brought Edith with her.
It was ten am and already he reaped of booze. Not knowing what else to do, Ruth and her friend Edith piled into Jackson's mint green eighty eight Oldsmobile convertible, but instead of going to the house or to the beach, Jackson headed straight to a bar.
Carlock's usual drink of choice was beer, but that day he turned to gin and got immediately hammered.
Jackson drank until lunchtime, then finally drove them home. The two women changed into their bathing suits ready to go to the beach, but when they came into the kitchen, they found Jackson raiding the cupboards for more booze. Ruth was desperate to salvage the situation to show her friend at least some kind of Saturday night. She started arguing with Jackson, but he didn't want to go to the beach. All he wanted to do was drink. Ruth wore him down, and finally he announced that they were going to a party.
Was going to be a cancert at a mansion on Long Island.
The hottest ticket in town.
That was exactly what Ruth and Edith needed to hear to resurrect their fantasy and their plans. So they changed into pretty dresses and Jackson cleaned himself up.
They got into Jackson's convertible. It was getting dark out no street lights.
From the moment we ken riding the car into a mistake.
That's Ruth speaking in a rare interview.
We are on our way, kept stopping the car, crying it is became provocative in the sense that she didn't understand and should not.
Very scared.
Jackson was paying so little attention at this point that the car simply rolled to a stop.
A policeman pulled up alongside him and they ask it everything was okay. He had his wits about him enough to reassure the policeman that yes, he said. They had just stabbed to talk.
The policeman drove on, and Jackson turned the car around. He headed towards home, stopped at another bar, but changed his mind about going in. Edith couldn't take it anymore. She got out of the car and refused to get back in. Jackson was furious. They were just two minutes from his house. Ruth managed to coax her friend to get back in the car. Jackson put his key in the ignition.
The acting just wildly started to speed, and then he put his foot on the gas.
He did started to scream, and he laughed. He speeded down Fargo's Road. That's when the car swore.
The car hurtled off the road into a ditch and smashed into some trees. Ruth blacked out. She was woken up. A few minutes later, the young.
Girl came up to me and she's patting me, and there was a man.
I was holding his hand, and they covered me and I made this girl.
I said, go over there to where the car.
Is and I'll be watching you and come back and tell.
Me if he's all right.
And she did, and she came back and I said, is he alive? She said yes, I said, swear by God, she said I can't.
So I knew.
Both Jackson and Edith were dead in only a few hours. The art world would find out. That's coming up. After the break, The news that Jackson Pollock was dead spread quickly through the Within a few hours, it seemed like everybody.
Knew, Oh my god, the whole world stopped. Well, the whole art world stopped.
He was the center of their world and now he was gone.
Everybody called each other.
It was electrifying, like a spark went out. Everybody was shocked and sad and depressed.
Later that day, while Lee Krasner, Jackson's wife, was on a plane back to New York, their friends gathered at their house in Long Island waiting for her arrival.
They weren't sure how much she knew about the circumstances of Jackson's death. That Ruth was in the carr that a young woman had died with him.
Ruth's clothes were still everywhere, as were Jackson's bottles, broken glasses, cigarette butts.
No one was sure what to expect from Lee.
Late afternoon on Monday, the thirteenth of August nineteen fifty six, barely forty eight hours after the death of her husband, Lee opened the door.
She walked in the house, strong and calm and determined and focused. They were shocked because it was a house of mourning she had entered. Their friends were grieving. Their friends were crying, and yet Lee wasn't. She was there, dry eyed, seemingly to console them. It was Lee who put her arms around people. It was Lee who was the strength in that community at that moment.
As their friends were crying, not knowing what to do, Lee took charge. She was ready to face what was coming.
To be the person she always was, which was the person who took care of a situation coldly, analytically. If there was any private morning to be done, if there was any pain or grief to be shown, she would do that.
Later because first Lee was going to have to organize her husband's funeral, and there was a problem.
They only had two hundred dollars in the bank.
Yeah, only two hundred dollars.
And with that she had to find a way to bury her husband, to arrange a funeral in a chapel, to buy a burial plat.
Lee moved quickly. She borrowed money from friends, called Jackson's family, made arrangements with the vicar, and just four days after the crash, the small local chapel was hosting an odd mix of people, artists, friends, Jackson's family, and locals.
The funeral at the Springs Chapel was somber and silent. The artists were silent. The minister didn't mention Jackson's name.
Not the sendoff you might have imagined for Jackson Pollock.
This was where the locals from Springs were buried, the fishermen and the farmers.
After the burial, the mourners headed back to the house.
All of that emotion that had been pent up through the morning at the applin at the cemetery exploded in what everyone agreed was the most raucous parody that had ever been thrown at Fireplace Road. Someone joked at one point that Jackson must have been spaking the punch because they all got drunk so quickly, and they danced and the release was palpable.
If this story had finished here, Jackson might have been forgotten. That would be it. But as you know, that's not what happened.
Here.
It is then, at fifty two million.
Dollars, his work would go on to sell for eye watering sums sold fifty two million, he would become the most famous American artist of all time. Jackson Pollock is a name recognized by people well beyond the art world. He's famous for those drip paintings that seem to him. His paintings would influence filmmakers, musicians, fashion, you name it. They would change the course of twentieth century culture.
When you enter a Pollock painting or entering out of space, he was like a living god.
Many of us have been told a certain story about Jackson Pollock as the man who changed art forever, who changed America, who changed how we see. That's probably what you know about him, and that's what's so intriguing to me, because as I see it, the story we've been told about Jackson Pollock is a myth. The real story is so much better. I'm Katie Hessel, and I've spent the past decade uncovering the stories of great women artists that come across one more game changing than this one. When Jackson Pollock died in nineteen fifty six, his global fame and fortune hadn't peaked yet, nowhere near. And none of it would ever have happened if not for someone else, someone hiding in plain sight, the woman who just put her husband in the ground and had less than two hundred dollars to her name, Lee Krasner.
Nobody knew Pollack. He was just a figure in the village, a drunk. You're kicking all these Jackson Pollock paintings.
When are you going to deal with the paper your living room?
This shy, good looking young man appeared at this art opening, and the arm of a supernovrite and.
One fells who she reset the entire market, not just Jackson Pollock's market, but the market for American abstract painting.
If it hadn't been for Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock would not have been the the it was.
That's all coming up on Death of an Artist, Season two, Krasner and Pollock. Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock is produced by Pushkin Industries and Samasdat Audio. Clem Hitchcock is our producer. Story editing by Dasha Litz at Sina, Sophie Crane and Karen Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer is Jacob Smith from Samasdat Audio. The executive producers are Dasherlitz at Sina and Joe Sykes. Sound design by Peregrin Andrews. Original scoring and our theme were composed by Martin Ustwick. Fact checking by Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weissberg. I'm Katie Hessel.