Love story in paintings: Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner

Love is Blind

We need to understand what Pollock was like at the time when he met his future wife. From early childhood he had an ill, withdrawn temper and often experienced bouts of anger for minor reasons. Perhaps, the development of the artist’s personality was affected by his neurotic mother. But shan’t we forget the well-known liability of creative individuals to mental problems in general.

On top of all this, Pollock very early began to look for oblivion in alcohol, and at the age of 24 he managed to go on a drinking spree, scraping by occasional earnings and being supported by the program of helping indigent artists. And in 1938 he even got into the rehabilitation clinic, where he was treated for alcoholism for four months.

No wonder that the first meeting of the two artists didn’t lead to anything good. At one of the parties in 1936, Pollock, being drunk, tried to pick up Lee with a proposal to which a self-respecting girl could only respond with a slap. Only five years later she herself would go to his studio to see the work of "the only unfamiliar Abstractionist in New York", with whom the artist would soon participate in a joint exhibition.

Krasner either forgot Pollock’s obscene behavior years ago, or fell under his charm, but she became interested in him almost more than in his paintings. She was an extremely resolute girl and quickly took the artist in hand. Very soon they moved in together, and in 1945 Pollock and Krasner officially got married.

Per Aspera Ad Astra

Since the moment they met, Lee had become Jackson’s main driving force, the locomotive, which drove him into motion even in the darkest periods of creative and life stagnation. She unconditionally believed in Pollock’s art and talent, which she never forgot to remind him of when the artist began to doubt himself after another failed attempt to sell at least some of his paintings.

Among them there was Peggy Guggenheim herself — an influential patron of art, which Krasner introduced to Pollock before moving. It was a success: Peggy was really fascinated by his paintings and even assigned the artist a scholarship, which allowed the young family to stay afloat. But even she could not promote Pollock’s creativity in the financial equivalent: despite three solo exhibitions organized by Peggy from 1943 to 1947 and good reviews of the critics, paintings stubbornly did not want to be sold, which did not add to the confidence of the artist, prone to depression.

Things moved off dead center in 1947, when Pollock, experimenting for a long time in his barn-workshop near the house, invented a new artistic formula — drip painting, which became his signature style. Everyone wanted to know about the new artist: "The Times" published an article about him and there was shot a whole documentary film about his revolutionary technique of controlled pour painting on canvas. But what looked like the beginning of a long happy life, in fact, was the beginning of the end.

An Interrupted Flight

Pollock failed to go through it all, and it was at a time when his career went uphill, when he again plunged into the depths of alcohol after two years of abstinence. This not only influenced his productivity — during periods of binge Jackson almost did not take up the brush — but also turned him into an aggressive monster, whom Lee feared like the plague.

The last straw for her was Pollock’s affair with a young beauty, a 26-year-old artist Ruth Kligman. Their marriage crashed. The artist lost the guardian angel in the person of his wife and only a couple of months after their parting, his car with two more passengers flew off the road. Pollock’s misstress miraculously survived, but her friend Ethel Metzger with her lover were less lucky. And although the level of alcohol in his blood was poorly compatible with driving a vehicle, some fans believe in the suicide theory.


She managed to keep him in this world for a short time: the artist was only 44 years old when he died. She herself in fact began to live her own life only after his death. She returned to painting and created her best works — in the same barn where her husband once invented his author’s technique.

The artist will forever be considered Pollock’s wife. And it is unlikely that she managed to stop loving him despite of being hurt. "With Jackson, there was quiet solitude," she recalled. "Just to sit and look at the landscape

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. An inner quietness. After dinner, to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication."

She knew of other sides of a person whom others considered only a drunken brawler. It turns out that Pollock loved to bake and was quite good in it: "I did the cooking, but he did the baking," said Krasner about the division of roles in the kitchen. "He was very fastidious about his baking — marvelous bread, cake, and apple pies. He also made a great spaghetti sauce."

In 1991, the story of the crazy and fruitful in terms of painting marriage of two artists brought the Pulitzer prize to writers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith for their book "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga." And in 2000, based on the book, actor Ed Harris directed a feature film "Pollock" with himself in the lead role.

Author: Natalia Azarenko