Lee Krasner (57 page)

Krasner continued to await a retrospective of her work at an American museum. She wanted that museum to be the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Harry Rand wrote to Bill Rubin on August 23, 1979, telling him that the National Collection of Fine Arts had committed to organizing a retrospective for Krasner, and that she had committed to working with them. He informed Rubin that Ellen Landau would be working on the project.
¹³⁷

In October 1979, Krasner traveled to the University of Virginia to attend a symposium entitled “Abstract Expressionism: Idea and Symbol,” organized by the art historian Elizabeth Langhorne. Although I was a participant, I was not there to talk about Krasner, but instead to speak about Richard Pousette-Dart, another of the lesser-known artists in “Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years.”
¹³⁸

At the time Ellen Landau was working on her doctoral dissertation, and Barbara Rose had just finished her film on Krasner.
¹³⁹
Because I was quite busy with work on my upcoming show (1980) and catalogue raisonné of Edward Hopper, I was content to keep Krasner as a friend and mentor. She and I saw a lot of each other, but our friendship made writing about her much more complicated, so I was not contemplating any project about her at that time.

For the symposium in Virginia, Krasner, accompanied by Barbara Rose and Bill Rubin, the director of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, traveled by train to Washington, where they had arranged for Landau to drive them to Charlottesville. Rand had already written to Rubin to say that he and
Landau had met with Krasner in New York and discussed the possibility of the retrospective organized by the NCFA. Rubin, however, had not responded to the letter Rand had sent about having MoMA share the Krasner retrospective. Not only did Krasner have an intense desire to have a retrospective in the United States, but she also strongly preferred having it at a museum with a more cosmopolitan, global perspective, like the Museum of Modern Art, rather than in a parochial museum limited to American art. And she wanted Barbara Rose to be the curator.

Landau recalls a scheme that would go into effect on the drive to Charlottesville. The car would stop at a restaurant en route, and Krasner and Rose would go to the ladies' room, giving Landau an opportunity to propose that Rubin give Krasner a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art to mark her seventy-fifth birthday in 1983.
¹⁴⁰

At the two-day symposium, Krasner, along with Richard Pousette-Dart, participated in an artists' panel, which was supposed to respond to the scholars' papers. A third participant, Robert Motherwell, had been announced but dropped out at the last minute and did not attend. A reporter for the local paper found that Krasner “managed to say more with a raised eyebrow and a gesture of the hand than some of the more bombastic orators. Somewhat dazed by all the rhetoric that read psychological meaning into every brushstroke, she announced, ‘After a session like this today, I wonder if I'll be able to paint another picture.'”
¹⁴¹

A week after this encounter, Landau sent Rubin a copy of Rand's letter from August 23, 1979, asking him to reply to Rand directly.
¹⁴²
A while later, Landau sent Krasner a letter stating that Rubin said in the restaurant that he would be interested in holding the retrospective. It is remarkable that such intrigue was employed to obtain a retrospective exhibition for an artist with unquestionable merits. However, it's not unusual, since women artists were so neglected in museums at that time and scheduling a major show often involves powerful players and large egos.

The sculptor Marjorie Michael sketched and took photographs of Krasner so that she could start making a portrait bust of her after they returned from the artists' conference where they met at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, in July 1975.

Though women artists still struggle, they experience and often appreciate the small improvements since the days when Krasner worked. The artist and feminist Helene Aylon recounted a chance encounter she had with Krasner in 1972, at the Museum of Modern Art cafeteria when she was with her sixteen-year-old nephew: “There was Lee Krasner sitting at the next table. My nephew was already an art lover, and had related to her work and he was in awe at being so close. He said hello. They got to speaking about art, and she told him to go to Marlborough [just four blocks away] and ask the gallery dealer to give him a poster of hers, which she would then sign. He still has it in his house.”
¹⁴³

“Krasner in life and death was put into the inferior position,”
complained Aylon. “Like the biblical quote to Eve: ‘Thy desire shall be for thy husband but he shall rule over thee.' The treatment at Betty Parsons alone could have made her a feminist. In life, she talked about her inner rhythm, an inner voice she listened to closely. And Pollock was about an outward gesture that he threw around flamboyantly, even allowing his cigarettes to drop down in the torrent. In death, he has the larger stone in the Cemetery.”
¹⁴⁴
Aylon concluded, “[Krasner's] influence on me, as she had been [like me] in the [Betty Parsons] gallery and was a role model for sure, was her speaking about how she wanted to be surprised. How she wanted the work to breathe and become alive.”
¹⁴⁵

Bernard Gotfryd's photograph of Lee Krasner, December 1983. Krasner got up out of her sickbed to pose in her bathrobe in her New York City apartment. She is standing in front of her 1983
Untitled
collage on canvas (CR 599), the last work she completed. She held it back from her retrospective, saying: “I wanted to keep the one I just finished because I need to have my work to look at. Even when I'm just looking, I am working.”

O
N
M
ARCH
27, 1980,
THE
S
TONY
B
ROOK
F
OUNDATION RECOGNIZED
Lee Krasner's lifelong “dedication to the arts” by giving her one of its Awards for Distinguished Contributions to Higher Education. Her fellow recipients were Sir Rudolf Bing, the Austrian-born opera impresario who served as the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972; and John Houseman, the noted actor and pro
ducer of both theater and film. The citation read in part: “Scores of prominent lay artists have learned from you. The critics here finally caught up to you. And now, Lee Krasner, the painter, is established as a prestigious and original artist in her own right as well as the strong and dedicated executor of the estate of the late, great Jackson Pollock…. All of this achievement called for a single-minded devotion to art.”
¹

Earlier that year Bill Rubin had written to Harry Rand about the Krasner retrospective, telling him how excited he was about it and saying he was sure it would be “very beautiful.”
²
On May 20, Rand replied, confirming the plans for the Krasner retrospective to open in Washington before going on tour to the MoMA at a time that would fit into the museum's schedule. Rand said that Joshua Taylor, the director of his museum, would write the catalogue's preface and that he and Rubin would contribute short essays. Ellen Landau would write a “biography.” The substantial criticism would come from Barbara Rose.
³
Rubin replied, telling him that he had long been “a great admirer” of Krasner's work and that he looked forward to participating in the retrospective.
⁴

In the summer of 1980, Krasner showed some of her work on paper from 1962 to 1970 at the Tower Gallery in Southampton, New York. Evelyn Bennett, writing for the
Southampton Press,
reported that Willem de Kooning was also supposed to show but pulled out at the last moment “by doubling the prices of his work (thereby making it impossible for the gallery to insure his paintings).” Krasner thought de Kooning was unprofessional. “You don't pull out of a show at the last minute, and leave the gallery high and dry.”
⁵
It's possible that her resentment stemmed from regret at missing the chance to have her work compared to Pollock's most significant rival instead of being compared to Pollock, as usual.

On view at the Tower Gallery were pieces from Krasner's
Water
series: “This was a series using Douglass Howell [handmade] papers. It took courage to take gouache and bathe it. They
were experiments in color, and a tough paper was needed for what I wanted to try. The monotone is something I tend to do a lot. With the water dipping techniques, I could get great varieties—and effects that would hold my interest and that of an observer too. You might say I was pushing, with the fixed points just the gouache and the paper.”
⁶
She also said she had tried acrylics (first commercially available in the 1950s) and had not liked them at all.

Krasner explained to Bennett that an underlying philosophy of her work for the series related to the totality of life—what she considered “nature.”

“There are ‘elements of nature' in my work,” she said, “but not in the sense of birds and trees and water. When I say nature I might mean energy, motion, everything that's happening in and around me. That's what I mean by nature.”

“So you're really talking about everything living, really?” Bennett rejoined.

“Yes and death too,” Krasner replied, “things that are dead; everything.”

When told, “There's something very religious about that,” Krasner returned, “Of course—art
is
religious; it has to be. That's what I think, anyway. These people who do paintings of trivia—it's a waste of my time.”
⁷
What she meant by paintings of trivia was subject matter found in Pop Art such as soup cans, comics, and other such themes taken from popular culture.

Despite favorable press attention, Krasner still longed for a retrospective of her work in America and remained anxious about her reputation and her legacy. But a September 10, 1980, letter from Landau to Rubin indicated that the Washington part of the retrospective was set.
⁸

Krasner met with Landau, still a graduate student when she traveled to New York. She took Krasner to lunch and began to go over a list of questions pertaining to her dissertation. Something rubbed Krasner the wrong way; for, according to Landau, Krasner started to scream at her and two days later telephoned to
inform Landau that she was no longer involved with her retrospective. Krasner had decided to cut off Landau and would now entrust her legacy to Barbara Rose, in whom she had much more confidence, based on their years of friendship and Rose's constant advocacy on her behalf.

Rose had been talking with Krasner for years about organizing her first American retrospective and now she was in a position to make it happen. Though Rose did not officially become the chief curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston until March 1981, she had already been offered the position by the time that Krasner decided to ditch Landau. Krasner knew Rose's writing and her high profile in the art world as well as her record organizing major shows for the Museum of Modern Art—one on Claes Oldenburg in 1969 and another on Patrick Henry Bruce in 1979. Over the years, Rose had spoken with Rubin about organizing a retrospective for Krasner and knew he respected her work.
⁹

On February 19, 1981, just a week before Rose began her new job, Landau wrote to Krasner. She was about to receive her doctorate that June. In her letter, she apologized for the anger she had expressed in their last telephone conversation. Yet there was also a certain bitterness to the letter. She had been annoyed that Krasner seemed to question her expertise, especially after Landau had devoted three years to researching Krasner's work for her dissertation. She felt she knew much more about Krasner's early work than just about any other person. Landau wrote that she hoped Krasner would cease “holding up Gail Levin to me.” Landau was responding in part to Krasner's earlier suggestion that she should consider making me the second reader of her dissertation.
¹⁰
Landau claimed that my work on Krasner was insignificant. In turn, Krasner sent a copy of Landau's letter to me on March 15. She enclosed her own letter telling me, “I'd like your reaction to the enclosed letter from Ellen Landau. I find it so arrogant, hostile and disgusting. Please read it and send your response to me.”
¹¹
I chose to stay out of their conflict and did not reply.

In the same letter, Landau also expressed resentment that Krasner preferred Barbara Rose as the curator of her retrospective, objecting that she should have made that preference clear at their first meeting. Landau also protested that Krasner had used her as a “pawn” to obtain the retrospective in New York. Rand claims to have suggested the retrospective to Krasner at the opening of the Pollock show at NCFA, but Landau says she was the one who first proposed Krasner's retrospective to the Washington museum.
¹²

What Landau failed to realize was how much Krasner had riding on the first American retrospective of her work. Except for the 1965 London show, this would be her only retrospective in her lifetime. Krasner knew Landau had not spent much time looking at her paintings because (as Landau stated in her letter) she had permitted Landau to look at the ones in storage only once. Gene Thaw, who believes Krasner was a smart woman when it came to analyzing people, recalled that Krasner feared that Landau was really only interested in Pollock.
¹³
Rose shared this same concern with Krasner.
¹⁴
In fact Landau's dissertation covered Krasner's career only up through 1949, and she often compared Krasner's early work to that of Pollock, even before the two artists met. Krasner saw Landau as lacking both curatorial experience and the familiarity with her later work necessary to organize her retrospective. These perceived faults quickly turned into distrust.

The questions Landau posed to Krasner that day at lunch may have provoked some kind of alarm. Landau may have been diligent and capable, but to Krasner she was an untested student. Their dispute reflects the reciprocal insecurity of a woman artist who felt unjustly overlooked and an art historian who felt inadequately appreciated.

Krasner wrote to Professor William I. Homer, Landau's faculty adviser at the University of Delaware, telling him how she had trusted Landau and had given her “free access” to her files of unpublished material for her dissertation research. Now, to Krasner's
consternation, she complained that Landau refused “to allow me to check her use of this material.” Then in a state of panic over what she termed a “very distressing problem,” she insisted, “She does not have my permission to publish any of the unpublished material without my checking and approving it.”
¹⁵
Because Krasner had carefully saved many documents about her career with an eye to posterity, it is difficult to know what inaccuracies she feared, but it is clear that she was not about to leave the matter to chance.

Landau says that during this period, she attempted to call Krasner, but Krasner refused to speak with her. Landau also attempted to resolve the complaint to her faculty adviser by offering to show her dissertation to Krasner just before it was published.

Krasner's frantic letter to Homer was dated the day before “Lee Krasner/Solstice” opened at Pace Gallery in March 1981. The exhibition was a show of her new collages, produced from rejected lithographs and paintings. The reviews were positive and noted that “Krasner has been painting for over a half-century now.”
¹⁶

Barbara Cavaliere saw that the “internal movements in Krasner's art signify the correspondences which link the present with the past and future,” singling out
Vernal Yellow
(1980) for its “vibrating movement.”
¹⁷
In the
New York Times,
John Russell called the show “a heady mixture,” noting “the recurrent and unmistakable rhythm of her images.”
¹⁸

Krasner, dressed in a perky felt hat and colorful scarf, was in an upbeat mood when she dropped in at the gallery for an interview with Jerry Tallmer, a critic at the
New York Post:
“Looks pretty good…. If you want my reaction to it, not bad at all.”
¹⁹

There was a big difference between her collages of 1977 and those showing in the Pace Gallery. While the 1977 collages utilized her old charcoal drawings from classes with Hofmann, these were filled with what Tallmer termed a “new flaming burst of color.”

About the show, she said: “The last time I did high-key color was nineteen seventy-something. So I must go into that from time to time. This time, because of the color, I wanted to call this series
The Rites of Spring
. Stravinsky, you know…. But then I thought, well, that's a little heavy, let's just call it
Solstice
. Which was also keeping with my picture
The Seasons.
”

She had exhibited this piece the previous month in a show titled “Abstract Expressionists and Their Precursors” at the Nassau County Museum. Though she painted
The Seasons
from 1957 to 1958, it still interested her.

In his article Tallmer said he told Krasner, “You know…when the record of this era is written 50 years from now, you're going to stand pretty high in it.”

“‘You think so?' She held up two crossed fingers. ‘Maybe. I have to say that when I saw my work beside all those others at Gail Levin's 1978 Whitney show [“Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years”] I was flabbergasted.'”

“So were a lot of other people. Knocked out,” Tallmer responded.

She reflected, “Yeah, but I'm the artist. In a way there's been this slow recognition of me. At one point I resented it. But now, in hindsight, it was a protection, a coating. I had to go into my studio and keep myself painting my own pictures, because the outside world wasn't dealing with it anyway.”

Tallmer reported that “Krasner from Brooklyn crossed herself in the air” before she added, “My concern has been to align myself with my contemporaries and to stay alive. As a painter, I don't mean just physically, but to have this work stay alive.”

That same spring John Post Lee, an art history major at Vassar College in his junior year, heard from a friend that Krasner was looking for someone to work for her during the summer. He didn't want to return home to Philadelphia, so he set about making a quick study of Krasner and her work, memorizing the names and dates of many of her paintings. He met with her in her New York apartment and was able to identify
Kufic
(1966) as the painting hanging on the wall. The job was his.