Jackson Pollock (43 page)

In 1958, after two years in New York City, Lee decided to return to Springs to see
if she could get any work done there. “The second attempt was very beautiful,” she
said. “I wasn’t depressed at all. Then, at a point during that time, I took over the
barn. There was no point in letting it stand empty.” She had a friend paint the floor,
so she wouldn’t have to see the splatters and splotches left behind by Pollock.

Lee naturally was eager to exhibit her new paintings, but her combative personality
sometimes worked against her. In 1960 Clement Greenberg, who was then an adviser to
French & Company Galleries, offered to give Lee a show. A few weeks later Greenberg
paid a visit to Springs and saw the works she planned to exhibit: a series of large
turbulent canvases in umber
and cream, with such titles as
Polar Stampede, Charred Landscape
, and
White Rage
. With characteristic self-righteousness, Greenberg told Lee he was “disappointed”
by her latest work. Lee was furious. “As of this minute,” she told him, “my show is
canceled.” She went on working in the same style.

As the years passed, honors accumulated. She was given a major exhibition at the Whitechapel
Art Gallery in London in 1965 and at the Whitney Museum in 1973. Art critics everywhere
acknowledged her status as a leading Abstract Expressionist. In 1981 a show called
“Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship” was held at New York University to advance
the idea that Krasner had had a large influence on Pollock’s work. While many people
thought that the idea behind the show was preposterous, no one denied that Krasner
was a painter of genuine talent who could certainly hold her own next to Pollock.

Much of Lee’s time continued to be taken up by Pollock’s career. As executor of his
estate she served his artistic reputation as faithfully after his death as she had
during his lifetime. She set high prices on the paintings and sold them off at a very
slow rate, strengthening the market for his work. Some people accused her of having
forced up the prices for her husband’s work, while others commended her for her business
acumen. Her friend John Little once commented: “The three greatest dealers in the
U.S.? Pierre Matisse, Leo Castelli, and Lee Krasner.”

One of the cruel ironies of Pollock’s career is that his death created a demand for
his work. Only a few weeks after the funeral Alfred Barr telephoned Sidney Janis to
say that the Museum of Modern Art, which previously had been unable to raise $8000
to purchase
Autumn Rhythm
, now wanted to buy the painting. Janis told Barr he would get back to him. He conferred
with Lee, who insisted that the price be raised to $30,000. Barr was livid when he
heard the news and gave up any hope of acquiring
Autumn Rhythm
. But the Metropolitan bought it immediately, establishing a new price range for Pollock—and
for his contemporaries. As a result of the sale, Janis explained, “we had a little
less trouble selling a de Kooning for $10,000 than we had a month earlier trying to
sell one for $5000.”

The prices continued to rise over the years to levels that astounded
everyone. By the 1980s a millionaire artist such as Andy Warhol could say jokingly
about his dead colleague, “I wish I had as much money as Jackson Pollock.”

Besides managing the business side of Pollock’s career, Lee made herself available
to virtually anyone who was interested in Pollock’s work. She granted dozens of interviews
to graduate students, professors, and journalists, and much of her time was taken
up with explicating her husband’s career. No matter how many times she was asked the
same questions, she answered good-naturedly, and she seemed to enjoy recalling the
details of her life with Pollock. Looking back, she was likely to remember the good
times. “There were many happy moments,” she once said. “I remember any one of them.
I remember sitting with Jackson on our country porch—sitting there for hours, looking
into the landscape, and always at dusk, when the woods ahead turned into strange,
mystifying shapes. And we would walk in those woods, and he would stop to examine
this or that stone, branch, or leaf. . . . His moodiness and depression would vanish,
and he would be calm—and there would often be laughter. I remember Jackson’s laughter.
It was wonderfully outgoing, it was warm, and there was such joy in it.”

As Lee grew older she became sick and took to spending most of her time by herself
in her apartment on East Seventy-ninth Street. She suffered from crippling arthritis,
which made it difficult for her to walk. She could hardly paint because of the pain
in her hands. As the illness worsened she had to use a wheelchair and could sometimes
be spotted in Central Park being wheeled by one of her nurses.

One consolation was that the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Museum of Modern
Art in New York jointly organized her first major retrospective in 1984. Lee traveled
to Houston that October for the opening of the show. Friends agreed that she was delighted
by the exhibition, although those who tried to congratulate her were invariably rebuffed.
“Too bad it’s thirty years too late!” she’d say.

After returning from Houston, Lee took to her bed and never painted again. But even
in sickness she remained as
interested as ever in the goings-on of the art world. She often had her assistant,
Darby Cardonsky, sit by her side and read her art reviews from newspapers and magazines.

Lee died at New York Hospital on June 20,1984, at the age of seventy-five. Her death
certificate does not specify what she died of beyond “natural causes.”

She left behind an estate valued at twenty million dollars. Most of the money was
to be given away. Her will authorized her executors to establish a foundation to assist
“needy and worthy artists.”

Lee didn’t leave any burial instructions, but her relatives knew what she wanted.
While visiting Pollock’s grave with a nephew a few years earlier, Lee had admired
a small boulder lying at the edge of the woods. That stone now marks her grave. An
ordinary rock, it rises but a foot off the ground and is barely noticeable beside
the huge stone on Pollock’s grave. Even in death Lee continues to enhance Pollock’s
stature.

Pollock’s personal papers can be found at the Archives of American Art, a division
of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. These papers include letters to
him, copies of his own letters, photographs, reviews of his exhibitions, medical records,
and various other documents, and are referred to in the notes as “Pollock Archive.”

If the source of a quotation is not cited, it is from an interview with the author.

Pollock’s letters remain in private hands unless otherwise noted.