Significantly Other:Pollock/Krasner Relationship as an Example of Couple Collaboration

From English 194 Wiki Site

By Victoriya Filippova
07:44, 11 May 2006 (PDT)

Abstract

Given the inner complexity of the male/female relationship and the bigger system or society in which they function, is it possible for two people to remain individually successful in their work, or does one submerge under the weight of their spouse’s genius? Further, if this submerging does or does not take place, what role does the society at large have in the process and is it possible to ignore the outside forces and create an alternative story?

Description

A closer look at the life and work of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, two major American artists of the 20th century, for the purpose of finding common trends and paradigms of husband/wife creative collaboration.

Analysis and Evaluation

Hardly anyone believes in the idea of the solitary genius, since none of us is ever truly alone in the moments of artistic creation. The mind of one person can become a pretty crowded place when a second, third, and any subsequent number of consciousnesses start to surface. It gets even more complicated when a couple of geniuses, perfectly capable of existing and flourishing by themselves, converge in the relationship of matrimony or close domestic partnership. The resulting relationship can take many shapes and forms, based not only on the dynamics within the partnership but also on the forces existing outside of the familial union, such as gender, sexuality, and other socially arranged structures and expectations. Given the inner complexity of the male/female relationship and the bigger system or society in which it functions, is it possible for two people to remain individually successful in their work, or does one submerge under the weight of their spouse’s genius? Further, if this submerging does or does not take place, what role does the society at large have in the process and is it possible to ignore the outside forces and create an alternative story?

Looking for examples of creative coupling in the field of visual arts, one cannot pass by the fourteen-year long relationship of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, two major figures in the history of 20th century American art, particularly the Abstract Impressionist movement of the forties and fifties. A study of their life and work demonstrates that at no time were the two individual geniuses capable of being in a state of equilibrium; they were rather in a state of continuous imbalance in their degree of influence on each other. On a larger scale, taking into consideration the societal forces working outside of the couple’s relationship in the post-war United States, one can observe that the female genius is in a much more precarious position than that of the male. Regardless of the degree of their individual artistic ability, the amount of recognition awarded female artists not only depends on the popularity and success of their husband, but also on the degree of recognition the society is willing to allow them at that particular time.

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner lived and painted together from 1942, when they met, until Jackson Pollock’s death in 1956. As seen from the biographical accounts, act exhibit catalogs, personal interviews, as well as critical speculators of their time and the present, Pollock and Krasner shared a life of collaboration and mutual influence. It is also a fairly established fact that while Pollock enjoyed international recognition of the international art community, Krasner never quite made it to the same spot in the limelight of their time.

Jackson Pollock, who earned his renown during early forties for his large “action” paintings (also known as “drip” paintings), became and still is one of the most talked-about artists in America. Lee Krasner was far better known before she entered the relationship with Pollock, exhibited more often than he, and was more active in the avant-garde circles. When she met Pollock her output in painting slowed down, as she simultaneously tried to break away from the cubist aesthetic and its necessity of working from the model in which she received formal training from Hans Hoffman. During that time, Pollock was interested in mysticism, myth, ritual, and Jungian archetypal imagery. This difference in their background could have been what initially attracted Krasner to Pollock’s work. Barbara Rose, in her essay to accompany the couple’s exhibition in 1981 titled “Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship”, speculates that ever since Krasner met Pollock, their “interaction […] caused Lee to loosen up, to give up painting from nature and to turn her attention to the interior world of imagination, away from the objectivity of the still life and the nude.” It is clear that Pollock helped Krasner become more free and spontaneous in her style and that such influence was welcomed and needed.

Lee Krasner was not the only party who benefited from this relationship. Having received more formal training than Pollock and being very learned in the ways of the sophisticated cosmopolitan art of the School of Paris, Krasner helped Pollock to turn away from the primitive and somewhat barbaric expressionist modes. In her interview with Doloris Holmes, of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in 1972, Krasner reveals that “with regard to his painting I daresay that the only possible- [sic] influence that I might have had was to bring to Pollock an awareness of Matisse.” Unsure of whether it was his treatment of shape or color that could have influenced Pollock, it is certainly arguable that it is through Krasner’s overt fascination with Matisse and frequent discussion of his work with her husband that caused Pollock’s work to be more elegant and refined. Clearly Pollock and Krasner did for each other the same thing – they freed each other from the dogma of their teachers, Thomas Hart Benton and Hans Hoffman, respectively.

While sharing a common living space, the two artists maintained separate studio areas. Partially out of necessity for more room to create his very large canvases which he often spread around the floor, Pollock chose to work in a barn located on the couple’s property, The Springs, on the outskirts of East Hampton. Lee Krasner maintained her studio in the residential part of the property, inside their home. She worked in the room that used to be Jackson’s old studio as well as in the room between the kitchen and the parlor. On invitation, they visited each other’s studios to pass criticism on what went on there, and were honest in their judgments. The couple shared many interests and engaged in various activities together. Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, a biographical work by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, tells that the couple spent a lot of time gardening, cooking, baking, and entertaining. Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock had much in common: their love for nature and animals, their passion for Melville and Joyce, their interest in the unknown, and the world of images beyond verbal language.

While the working relationship of Pollock and Krasner seemed to be beneficial to both of the artists, one may argue that Krasner’s career as an artist faltered while Pollock’s continued to flourish. It does not mean that she stopped painting. She continued painting throughout her life with Pollock. She would, however, destroy whole groups of her work due to periods of extreme self-criticism. In fact, she did not have a solo exhibition until 1951, nine years after starting her relationship with Pollock. Krasner’s career as a painter was put on hold, whether by choice or by chance the cause of the delay is difficult to pin down. On the one hand, her marriage to Pollock allowed her to enjoy the benefits of his acclaim in terms of having access to the artistic milieu. Doloris Holmes, in the same interview for the Smithsonian Foundation, posed Krasner the question of whether she had any difficulty “getting information about where you can show, about, [sic] getting names of curators to whom you can send your slides, about getting material concerning supplies,” to which Krasner replied, “Since I lived here with Jackson for many years, and since that was more or less one of the centers of this movement, all that sort of information was available to me. I didn't have to pry into corners to get at what was happening.” Unlike most women of her time, Krasner did not feel that the secrets to success as an artist were kept in the male domain, even though the Abstract Expressionism movement that the couple was part of was composed mainly of men. Krasner’s first solo exhibition took place, in fact, largely due to her husband’s initiative, when he persuaded his own dealer, Betty Parsons, to come to their house in East Hampton to look at Lee’s painting with the intention of giving her a show.

Krasner was granted unrestricted access to artists clubs and societal exposure, only however, as an extended courtesy to her husband. Having this kind of access was vital to her success as an artist but it did not mean that she actually enjoyed or benefited from it. It is true that Krasner as well as Elaine de Kooning and Joan Mitchell were the few female members of the New York School, to which most women were admitted only as members of the audience. She recalls, however, as quoted in Whitney Chadwick’s book Women Art and Society that “women were treated like kettle” (302).

As if the harsh reception of her peers was not enough to cause irreparable damage to Krasner as an artist, the critics seemed to want to add to it as well. In 1949 Krasner and Pollock contributed their work to the group exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, “Artists: Man and Wife.” The very title of the exhibition organized women’s production into a subsidiary, socially defined category. The critics of Art News described their painterly collaboration as follows: “There is a tendency among some of these wives to ‘tidy up’ their husbands’ styles. Lee Krasner (Mrs. Jackson Pollock) takes her husband’s paints and enamels and changes his unrestrained, sweeping lines into neat little squares and triangles” (qtd. in Wagner 224). It is no wonder that most of her married life Krasner spent trying to establish her “otherness” from Pollock, whose shadow she never did escape.

As an attempt to find her own style and technique, Lee Krasner created what was called “Little Image” paintings. In contrast with the larger-than-life drip canvases of her husband, Krasner’s works were small, on the average of 22’’ by 22’’, into which, according to Cindy Nemser’s article “The Indomitable Lee Krasner,” she incorporated “the most advanced ideas in art of that period; tapping into the unconscious, she came up with an all-over structuring of space which simultaneously melted spontaneity with control” (7). Her “little image” paintings, however, were never shown, while the exhibitions of Pollocks huge paintings were causing great commotion and gaining popularity in the art world. Krasner was acutely aware of the societal forces working against her, especially the post-war campaigns to push women out of the workforce and back into the home. She never pushed her work. As quoted in Nemser’s article, Krasner describes the choices she made as follows:

"I couldn’t run out and do a one-woman job on the sexist aspects of the art world, continue my painting and stay in the role I was in as Mrs. Pollock. I just couldn’t do that much. What I considered important was that I was able to work and other things would have to take their turn. Now rightly or wrongly, I made my decisions" (7).

The Pollock/Krasner duo is unique to neither the art world, nor the specific time period. The tension existing between these two creative people can be found in any version thereof: homosexual or heterosexual, married or dating/living together, childless or with offspring, and so on. As the society changes, so do the expectations for the performance of a particular gender. In addition, the trends and patterns in hiring practices change from time to time, so the economical incentives for couples to work for the same or different companies fluctuate. All of the above-mentioned factors can alter the course of the collaborative relationships within the couples.