I AM GRATEFUL TO THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION AND THE Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center for supporting this project with a fellowship that not only enabled me to take a year off from teaching but also provided, for the academic year, a research assistant, Karen Cantor. Her able assistance proved valuable, including when I organized a related symposium, “The Art and Life of Lee Krasner: Recollections, Cultural Context and New Perspectives,” which took place over two days in April 2007 at the Manhattan center of Stony Brook University. I am grateful to all who participated and to the Woman’s Art Journal, which published a special issue featuring some of the presentations from the program.
I was then fortunate enough to be able to write full-time for a second year, while holding the Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American Studies at the Roosevelt Study Center, in Middelburg, the Netherlands. There I wish to thank the director, Kees van Minnen, and his staff, as well as Janpeter Muilwijk and Guido Lippens, two of the town’s resident artists, and their families, whose friendship made my stay so far from home much more enjoyable. Several months spent at the University of Milan followed, where hospitality at the library and especially from colleagues such as Luigi Lehnus, Francesca Orestano, and Massimo Gioseffi was greatly appreciated. In addition, my research at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice was facilitated by its director, Philip Rylands, and by Venetian friends Mario Geymonat and Anna Lombardo, who offered hospitality in Italy, as did Blaise and Aniko Pasztory and Margherita Azzi-Visentini, who also welcomed me to Switzerland. In Paris, Evelyn Alcaude and Jeannine and Georges Richards were welcoming and encouraging.
This book was also supported by grants from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, the Getty Research Center, and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. I am also grateful to the City University of New York for granting me fellowship leave from teaching responsibilities during which time I worked on this book. I appreciate the help of Louisa Moy and Lisa Ellis at the Baruch College Library.
For permission to reproduce Krasner’s art works, and quote from her writing and that of Jackson Pollock, and for other help, I wish to thank the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, especially Kerrie Buitrago. I also wish to acknowledge the help of Maria Fernanda Meza at the Artists Rights Society.
Helen A. Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, deserves special thanks for sharing with me her expertise on Pollock and Krasner and the East Hampton scene, for helping me find some of my interview subjects, and for reading and commenting on an early stage of this book. She has made the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center into an exceptional resource that would have pleased Lee Krasner. For helping me there and for her enthusiasm, I would also like to thank Ruby Jackson.
Among the other writers who have worked on either Lee Krasner or Jackson Pollock, some generously shared their unpublished recorded interviews and deserve particular thanks: Jeffrey Potter, whose interviews for his oral biography of Pollock proved an essential resource; also Cassandra Langer, Elizabeth Langhorne, Andrea Gabor, Barbara Rose, and Deborah Solomon. I am also grateful to Michael Brenson, who made available to me an interview from his unpublished research for his biography of David Smith, still in progress, and to David Craven, who first obtained Krasner’s FBI file in 1992, and shared it with me. Eugene V. Thaw, coauthor of the Pollock catalogue raisonné was also particularly helpful. Speaking with each of these writers has enriched this project.
Anyone writing an artist’s biography is fortunate if there is a catalogue raisonné to consult, so I thank Ellen G. Landau and Jeffrey Grove, who served as her assistant, for having had the dedication to complete Krasner’s. When my findings have clearly contradicted theirs, I have sometimes reported this, usually in the endnotes. When my chronology disagrees with theirs or that of other authors, however, it does not reflect any oversight on their part, but reflects new evidence previously overlooked or undiscovered. I also wish to acknowledge writing on Krasner: by B. H. Friedman, including his catalogue essay for Krasner’s 1965 retrospective; extensive work by Barbara Rose, including the catalogue for Krasner’s 1983 retrospective and her 1978 film, Lee Krasner: The Long View; and work by Robert Hobbs, particularly the retrospective that he organized in 1999, making much of Krasner’s art accessible once again. Many other writers on Krasner too numerous to name here are listed in the selected bibliography. Limitations of space in this volume do not permit a discussion of how my conclusions differ from those of other scholars. However, the conclusions of this book represent my own point of view.
I am grateful to all those who had conversations with me about Krasner, especially to her extended family members: Diana Burroughs, Jack Dressler, Leslie Dressler, Muriel Dressler, James S. Gersing, Charles Glickman, Rusty (Rena Glickman) Kanokogi, Jason McCoy, Cindy Shapiro Munson, Sylvia Pollock, and Frances Patiky Stein; and to her closest friends: Edward Albee, Cile Downs, Sanford Friedman, Eda Mirsky Mann, Terence Netter, Therese Netter, Barbara Rose, Eugene Victor Thaw, and Clare Thaw.
I also learned from speaking about Krasner to Pamela Adler, Ruth Appelhof, Dore Ashton, Helene Aylon, Will Barnet, Nancy Miller Batty, Dyne Benner, Patricia Bowden, Paul Brach, Phyllis Braff, Rachel Brownstein, Arlene Bujese, Jeanne Bultman, Darby Cardonsky, John Cheim, Ann Chwatsky, Christopher Crosman, Laurel Daunis-Allen, Barbaralee Diamonstein, Ruth Dickler, Elizabeth Epstein DuBoff, Tejas Englesmith, Dallas Ernst, Audrey Flack, B. H. Friedman, Arnold Glimcher, Grace Glueck, Edward Goldman, Elaine Goldman, Bernard Gotfryd, Janice Van Horne (Jenny Greenberg), Helen Gribetz, Raphael Gribetz, John Gruen, Grace Hartigan, Ben Heller, Robert C. Hobbs, Richard Howard, Robert Hughes, Jill Jakes, Lana Jankel, Carroll Janis, Paul Jenkins, Luise Kaish, Morton Kaish, Howard Kanowitz, Deborah Kass, Diane Kelder, Nathan Kernan, Bill King, Joyce Kozloff, Max Kozloff, Ellen G. Landau, Elizabeth Langhorne, Denise Lassaw, Ernestine Lassaw, John Post Lee, Donald McKinney, Peter Matthiessen, Betsy Wittenborn Miller, Gerald Monroe, Eleanor Munro, Cynthia Navaretta, Cindy Nemser, Ruth Nivola, Francis V. O’Connor, Mark Patiky, Vita Petersen, Norman Podhoretz, Jeffrey Potter, Harry Rand, Virginia Pitts Rembert, Alex Rosenberg, Patia Rosenberg, Joop Sanders, Irving Sandler, Martica Sawin, Miriam Schapiro, Grace Schulman, Constance Schwartz, Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, Nancy Schwartz, Charles Seliger, Joan Semmel, David Slivka, Kiki Smith, Harry Striebel, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, Jerry Tallmer, Arlene Talmadge, Abigail Little Tooker, Marcia Tucker, Helen Weinberg, Tony Vaccaro, Judith Wolfe, Virginia Zabriskie, Athos Zacharias, and Barbara Zucker.
I sometimes wished that I had started this book sooner, since I was fortunate enough to meet and (in some cases interview) numerous others who figure in this biography but who were already deceased by the time I envisioned this writing, among them: Krasner’s teacher Leon Kroll, her nephew Ronald Stein, her friends and acquaintances including Fritz Bultman, Ray Kaiser Eames, Jimmy Ernst, Clement Greenberg, Peggy Guggenheim, Harry Holtzman, Sidney Janis, Buffie Johnson, Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, Ibram Lassaw, William Lieberman, John Little, Josephine Little, Howard Moss, Robert Motherwell, John Bernard Myers, Annalee Newman, Betty Parsons, David Porter, Richard Pousette-Dart, Bryan Robertson, Harold Rosenberg, William S. Rubin, Rose Slivka, and Sidney Waintrob. Likewise, I was fortunate to discuss Krasner, contemporary art, and women artists with the late critics David Bourdon, Emily Genauer, Hilton Kramer, and John Russell, as well as with the artist Hermine Freed, who made a video of Krasner as a part of her series on “Herstory.” Though I also met Robert Miller and Helen Frankenthaler, neither was able to be interviewed for this book.
I benefited from communications with the following, who, though they did not know Krasner, helped to illuminate other figures and events in her life story: Bonnie Bernstein, Diane Harris Brown, Judy Collins, Judy Chicago, Jack Drescher, Angela Gibbs, Emilie S. Kilgore, Patrick Michael, Celia Siegel Newman, Leigh Olshan, Mimi Pantuhova, Irene Pappas, Val Schaffner, Joan Ulman Schwartz, Melissa Michael Sheldon, Christina Strassfield, and Karole Vail.
Especially helpful to me in my research were Charles Duncan and Darcy Tell at the Archives of American Art; the Archives at the Armenian Church of North America Eastern Diocese; Joy Holland, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library; the Brooklyn Museum Archives; Carol Salomon, archivist, Cooper Union; Hillary Bober, archivist, and Jeffrey Grove, curator, at the Dallas Museum of Art; Tom Branigar, archivist at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; the Long Island Collection at the East Hampton Library; Jeannette Clough, Sally McKay, and Sarah Sherman of the Getty Research Institute Library; Philip Rylands of the Guggenheim Museum in Venice; Julie Greene and Marcia Mitrowski of the Hampton Library, Bridgehampton; Gwen David and Daniel Starr of the Thomas J. Watson Library, curators Lisa Messinger and Samantha Rippner, and Image Licensing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Jenny Tobias at the Museum of Modern Art Library and Archives; Marshall Price, curator at the National Academy of Design; Quinn Marshall at New Directions Press; Sipora Matatov, New York City archivist; Dan Sharon of the Spertus Institute Library in Chicago; Nina Yiakoumaki, archivist at Whitechapel Gallery, London; and the staff at YIVO Institute in New York.
I wish to thank the following who contributed in diverse ways to my research for this book: James Atlas, Debra Bricker Balken, Greta Berman, Judy Brodsky, Michele Cohen, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Cezar Del Valle, Tina Dickey, Jack Drescher, MD, Ann E. Gibson, Jeff Kisseloff, Brad Gooch, Kathleen L. Housley, Suzanne Jenkins, Erica Jong, Connie Kaplan, Pepe Karmel, Sandra Kraskin, Tom McCormick, Joan Marter, Irene Pappas, Claudia Oberweger, Elizabeth A. Sackler, Hope Sandrow, Martica Sawin, Amy B. Siskind, David W. Stowe, Vita Susak, Jacquelin Bograd Weld, and Barbara Wolanin.
I wish to thank Anne Abeles, who wrote her dissertation on James Brooks, and Tetsuya Oshima, who wrote his dissertation on Jackson Pollock, both under my supervision at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Both encouraged me to resume my studies in this field.
For helping with photographs of Krasner, her friends, and her art, I wish to thank George R. Allen, Dyne Benner, David and Maddy Berezov, Ann Chwatsky, Rameshwar Das, Leslie Dressler, Tracy Fitzpatrick and the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York, B. H. Friedman, James S. Gersing, Bernard Gotfryd, Ripley Golovin Hathaway, Rusty Kanokogi, Whitman E. Knapp, Laura Kruger, Donald McKinney, George T. Mercer, Barbara B. Millhouse, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Stephan Paley, Mark Patiky, Helen Rattray at the East Hampton Star, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Miriam Schapiro, David Stekert, and Tony Vaccaro. For helping me locate reproductions of Krasner’s art, I thank the Robert Miller Gallery, as well as Jason McCoy Inc. and Pace Gallery, all in New York. I have tried to locate, request permission of, and credit each of the photographers whose work I have included. I hope that anyone whom I have failed to find will forgive my unintentional oversight and accept my sincere thanks.
I thank my editor Henry Ferris for his unflagging support of this project from its inception and for his insight in posing the kind of questions that led me to make further discoveries. I also appreciate the careful attention to this book paid by his assistant, Danny Goldstein. I feel fortunate to have as my friend and literary agent Loretta Barrett, whose enthusiasm for books and interest in her authors make her exceptional.
I was able to visit Shpikov, Krasner’s parents’ remote shtetl in Ukraine, with the help of my friend Liya Chechik, a graduate student in art history in Moscow, and my husband, John B. Van Sickle, who shared the driving and the memorable adventure. I dedicate this book to John, who once again has accompanied me on my journeys, supported my work with his insights, and even documented some of it with his photographs. When needed, he has been there with sustenance and love.