Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: You've heard of Jackson Pollock, but you may have never
Speaker 2: heard of Lee Krasner, an artist Pollock's wife and the
Speaker 2: woman who made him famous and in doing so, changed
Speaker 2: everything about the landscape of American modern art. My name
Speaker 2: is Katie Hessel. I'm an art historian and the author
Speaker 2: of a book called The Story of Art Without Men.
Speaker 2: I've spent the past decade uncovering the stories of great
Speaker 2: women artists, but I've never come across an artist more
Speaker 2: influential than Lee Krasner. Today, I'm in your feed to
Speaker 2: bring you a preview of my podcast from Pushkin Industries
Speaker 2: and Samasdat Audio. This is Death of an Artist Krasner
Speaker 2: and Pollock. You can find the show wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. I hope you enjoy this preview. It's a
Speaker 2: cool summer evening in Paris, August nineteen fifty six. An
Speaker 2: American artist called Lee Krasner is at a friend's place.
Speaker 3: It was a magnificent apartment, was a huge skylight, easels everywhere.
Speaker 3: She was completely at home, amid the smell of turpentine
Speaker 3: and linseed oil.
Speaker 2: Paris is Lee's mecca, the home of modern art. Now
Speaker 2: in her late forties. She's finally here.
Speaker 3: Looking at what was happening in Paris and who was
Speaker 3: doing what, who was painting, who was showing what? Galleries
Speaker 3: were showing what.
Speaker 2: But this isn't just a work trip.
Speaker 3: Lee was there to recharge her batteries because of a
Speaker 3: very tricky relationship with a husband she had left behind
Speaker 3: in the States.
Speaker 2: A turbulent relationship to say the least, his ego, alcoholism,
Speaker 2: and now an affair. But a month in Paris has
Speaker 2: helped take her mind off life back home. That evening,
Speaker 2: Lee's relaxed, drifting into sleep.
Speaker 3: And as she settled in on her friend's couch for
Speaker 3: the night, about three in the morning, the phone rang.
Speaker 3: Her host answered the phone and didn't say anything, but
Speaker 3: she could tell by the stricken look on his face
Speaker 3: that something terrible had happened. Without knowing any of the
Speaker 3: words on the other end of the phone, Lee knew
Speaker 3: exactly what had happened, and she shouted out, Jackson's dead.
Speaker 2: Lee's husband is Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 3: Her host saw that agony in her face, the absolute pain,
Speaker 3: and rushed over to her, held her in his arms
Speaker 3: for what he described as an endless half hour, during
Speaker 3: which she writhed and moaned and was in utter agony.
Speaker 3: He was actually terrified for her life because their apartment
Speaker 3: had a balcony, and he was afraid she might do
Speaker 3: something drastic. You know, that she might try to throw
Speaker 3: herself off.
Speaker 2: Later that same day, Lee would get on a plane
Speaker 2: to New York, arrange his funeral, and mourn her husband.
Speaker 2: But the story of Lee and Jackson doesn't end there.
Speaker 2: After spending weeks in a daze, unable to sleep, she
Speaker 2: would embark on something extraordinary. What she'd do next would
Speaker 2: change history, turning her dead husband into the most famous
Speaker 2: American painter of all time and changing the way we
Speaker 2: all think about art. I'm Katie Hessel, art historian and writer,
Speaker 2: and this is Death of an Artist. Season two, The
Speaker 2: Krasner and Pollock, Episode one Crash. Okay, so Audrey, please,
Speaker 2: can you introduce yourself who you are and what you do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. You should do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's leave that.
Speaker 4: You know you should say, here's Ardrey Flak and she's
Speaker 4: blah blah blah, and she's uh an ancient.
Speaker 1: Person.
Speaker 2: Audrey flat is ninety two years old and is as
Speaker 2: New York as it comes. She's been a painter for
Speaker 2: seven decades now, and back in the nineteen fifties she
Speaker 2: was right at the center of the downtown art scene,
Speaker 2: then made up of only a handful of people.
Speaker 4: I had a studio on Eighth Street and Third Avenue.
Speaker 4: My studio was in a condemned building. The floors were
Speaker 4: rotted and the stairway was hanging down, and it wasn't safe.
Speaker 4: So of course that's a perfect place for artists.
Speaker 2: A few blocks up was a dive bar called the Cedar.
Speaker 4: The Cedar was, you know, the place that everybody went, smoky, crowded.
Speaker 4: I was very busy and jam packed and exciting. And
Speaker 4: the talk they were really arguments about who was a
Speaker 4: greater artist, a Tintrredo or Caravaggia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not my usual Saturday night chat.
Speaker 1: There was a bar with stools.
Speaker 4: They were drinking little shots of Scotch with a beer chaser.
Speaker 4: Jackson liked to sit towards the back. His face was bloated,
Speaker 4: his skin, you know, had little capillaries had broken in
Speaker 4: his nose, and you don't ever notice when somebody drinks
Speaker 4: too much.
Speaker 2: Audrey'd see Jackson Pollock there most nights. He was a
Speaker 2: big guy early forties, scruffy, often wearing a baggy coat
Speaker 2: to hide his beer belly inside the cedar. Among fellow artists,
Speaker 2: he was a big deal, the one they all looked
Speaker 2: up to. And that goes for Audrey Flack, then a
Speaker 2: young artist.
Speaker 4: One night I went to the cedar, Jackson wandered over.
Speaker 4: He stumped below over because he was clearly plastered, and
Speaker 4: sort of fell into the other chair next to me.
Speaker 4: We were talking and I wanted to ask him about
Speaker 4: his art, and then he started coming close to me.
Speaker 4: He brushed his face against mine and he had a
Speaker 4: three day stubble. It was scratchy, and obviously he didn't
Speaker 4: smell too good because I don't think he had washed.
Speaker 4: And then he burped, he belched, and then he was
Speaker 4: embarrassed and he tried to pinch my behind and then
Speaker 4: he leans over and he says, let's fuck. I said, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do that. Jackson, just calm down.
Speaker 4: And that was the night that I vowed I would
Speaker 4: never go back to the seat.
Speaker 2: And she didn't, but plenty of others did. Because the
Speaker 2: reality was that if you wanted to be in the
Speaker 2: art scene, really wanted to make it, you had to
Speaker 2: show your face at the Cedar.
Speaker 1: They were the.
Speaker 4: One of the girls who followed the rock stars groupies groupies.
Speaker 1: They were groupies.
Speaker 4: They thought if they slept with big had shows, it
Speaker 4: would rub off and they would have some importance.
Speaker 1: That is how it was.
Speaker 2: And it was there at the Cedar that Jackson met
Speaker 2: a friend of Audrey's who just moved to the city,
Speaker 2: a twenty six year old artist called Ruth Kligman.
Speaker 1: Ruth was unbelievably sexy.
Speaker 4: It just wreaked, thick black hair, rimmed sunglasses and red lipstick.
Speaker 1: She looked like Elizabeth Taylor. She was really knockout.
Speaker 4: She really had a good eye and an ability to
Speaker 4: talk that mesmerized.
Speaker 1: View, which she must have done to Jackson.
Speaker 4: She really got him.
Speaker 2: By this point, Jackson had been married to Lee for
Speaker 2: a decade. Their marriage well, it had its ups and downs,
Speaker 2: and the downs largely corresponded to Jackson's binges. And when
Speaker 2: Jackson met Ruth at the Cedar, he was in one
Speaker 2: of his spirals.
Speaker 3: Jackson had carried on his affair in secret, well secret
Speaker 3: to Lee.
Speaker 2: That's Mary Gabriel, a journalist who wrote the book Ninth
Speaker 2: Street Women, all about the women of the American modern
Speaker 2: arts scene. You'll be hearing a lot from her throughout
Speaker 2: the show. Anyway, back to Jackson's.
Speaker 3: Affair, everyone else in their community was well aware of
Speaker 3: it because he wore Ruth Kligman and his arm like
Speaker 3: a prize.
Speaker 2: A few months after getting together, Ruth started spending more
Speaker 2: and more time at Jackson's home in Long Island, a
Speaker 2: little farmhouse right by the beach. Lee was away that
Speaker 2: summer in Paris, and Ruth made the most of it.
Speaker 2: One hot day, she invited her friend Edith Metzger to
Speaker 2: take the two hour train ride out to Jackson's place
Speaker 2: with her. Ruth couldn't wait to take a cool dip
Speaker 2: in the ocean and show off her new artist's boyfriend.
Speaker 3: They were met at the train station by a Sadden,
Speaker 3: middle aged drunk who barely spoke, who was angry that
Speaker 3: Ruth had brought Edith with her.
Speaker 2: It was ten am and already he reaped of booze.
Speaker 2: Not knowing what else to do, Ruth and her friend
Speaker 2: Edith piled into Jackson's mint green eighty eight Oldsmobile convertible,
Speaker 2: but instead of going to the house or to the beach,
Speaker 2: Jackson headed straight to a bar.
Speaker 3: Carlock's usual drink of choice was beer, but that day
Speaker 3: he turned to gin and got immediately hammered.
Speaker 2: Jackson drank until lunchtime, then finally drove them home. The
Speaker 2: two women changed into their bathing suits ready to go
Speaker 2: to the beach, but when they came into the kitchen,
Speaker 2: they found Jackson raiding the cupboards for more booze. Ruth
Speaker 2: was desperate to salvage the situation to show her friend
Speaker 2: at least some kind of Saturday night. She started arguing
Speaker 2: with Jackson, but he didn't want to go to the beach.
Speaker 2: All he wanted to do was drink. Ruth wore him down,
Speaker 2: and finally he announced that they were going to a party.
Speaker 3: Was going to be a cancert at a mansion on
Speaker 3: Long Island.
Speaker 2: The hottest ticket in town.
Speaker 3: That was exactly what Ruth and Edith needed to hear
Speaker 3: to resurrect their fantasy and their plans. So they changed
Speaker 3: into pretty dresses and Jackson cleaned himself up.
Speaker 2: They got into Jackson's convertible. It was getting dark out
Speaker 2: no street lights.
Speaker 1: From the moment we ken riding the car into a mistake.
Speaker 2: That's Ruth speaking in a rare interview.
Speaker 5: We are on our way, kept stopping the car, crying
Speaker 5: it is became provocative in the sense that she didn't
Speaker 5: understand and should not.
Speaker 1: Very scared.
Speaker 2: Jackson was paying so little attention at this point that
Speaker 2: the car simply rolled to a stop.
Speaker 3: A policeman pulled up alongside him and they ask it
Speaker 3: everything was okay. He had his wits about him enough
Speaker 3: to reassure the policeman that yes, he said. They had
Speaker 3: just stabbed to talk.
Speaker 2: The policeman drove on, and Jackson turned the car around.
Speaker 2: He headed towards home, stopped at another bar, but changed
Speaker 2: his mind about going in. Edith couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2: She got out of the car and refused to get
Speaker 2: back in. Jackson was furious. They were just two minutes
Speaker 2: from his house. Ruth managed to coax her friend to
Speaker 2: get back in the car. Jackson put his key in
Speaker 2: the ignition.
Speaker 6: The acting just wildly started to speed, and then he put
Speaker 6: his foot on the gas.
Speaker 1: He did started to scream, and he laughed. He speeded
Speaker 1: down Fargo's Road. That's when the car swore.
Speaker 2: The car hurtled off the road into a ditch and
Speaker 2: smashed into some trees. Ruth blacked out. She was woken up.
Speaker 2: A few minutes later, the young.
Speaker 5: Girl came up to me and she's patting me, and
Speaker 5: there was a man.
Speaker 6: I was holding his hand, and they covered me and
Speaker 6: I made this girl.
Speaker 3: I said, go over there to where the car.
Speaker 2: Is and I'll be watching you and come back and tell.
Speaker 1: Me if he's all right.
Speaker 6: And she did, and she came back and I said,
Speaker 6: is he alive? She said yes, I said, swear by God,
Speaker 6: she said I can't.
Speaker 1: So I knew.
Speaker 2: Both Jackson and Edith were dead in only a few hours.
Speaker 2: The art world would find out. That's coming up. After
Speaker 2: the break, The news that Jackson Pollock was dead spread
Speaker 2: quickly through the Within a few hours, it seemed like everybody.
Speaker 1: Knew, Oh my god, the whole world stopped. Well, the
Speaker 1: whole art world stopped.
Speaker 3: He was the center of their world and now he
Speaker 3: was gone.
Speaker 1: Everybody called each other.
Speaker 4: It was electrifying, like a spark went out. Everybody was
Speaker 4: shocked and sad and depressed.
Speaker 2: Later that day, while Lee Krasner, Jackson's wife, was on
Speaker 2: a plane back to New York, their friends gathered at
Speaker 2: their house in Long Island waiting for her arrival.
Speaker 3: They weren't sure how much she knew about the circumstances
Speaker 3: of Jackson's death. That Ruth was in the carr that
Speaker 3: a young woman had died with him.
Speaker 2: Ruth's clothes were still everywhere, as were Jackson's bottles, broken glasses,
Speaker 2: cigarette butts.
Speaker 3: No one was sure what to expect from Lee.
Speaker 2: Late afternoon on Monday, the thirteenth of August nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: barely forty eight hours after the death of her husband,
Speaker 2: Lee opened the door.
Speaker 3: She walked in the house, strong and calm and determined
Speaker 3: and focused. They were shocked because it was a house
Speaker 3: of mourning she had entered. Their friends were grieving. Their
Speaker 3: friends were crying, and yet Lee wasn't. She was there,
Speaker 3: dry eyed, seemingly to console them. It was Lee who
Speaker 3: put her arms around people. It was Lee who was
Speaker 3: the strength in that community at that moment.
Speaker 2: As their friends were crying, not knowing what to do,
Speaker 2: Lee took charge. She was ready to face what was coming.
Speaker 3: To be the person she always was, which was the
Speaker 3: person who took care of a situation coldly, analytically. If
Speaker 3: there was any private morning to be done, if there
Speaker 3: was any pain or grief to be shown, she would
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: Later because first Lee was going to have to organize
Speaker 2: her husband's funeral, and there was a problem.
Speaker 3: They only had two hundred dollars in the bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, only two hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: And with that she had to find a way to
Speaker 3: bury her husband, to arrange a funeral in a chapel,
Speaker 3: to buy a burial plat.
Speaker 2: Lee moved quickly. She borrowed money from friends, called Jackson's family,
Speaker 2: made arrangements with the vicar, and just four days after
Speaker 2: the crash, the small local chapel was hosting an odd
Speaker 2: mix of people, artists, friends, Jackson's family, and locals.
Speaker 3: The funeral at the Springs Chapel was somber and silent.
Speaker 3: The artists were silent. The minister didn't mention Jackson's name.
Speaker 2: Not the sendoff you might have imagined for Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 3: This was where the locals from Springs were buried, the
Speaker 3: fishermen and the farmers.
Speaker 2: After the burial, the mourners headed back to the house.
Speaker 3: All of that emotion that had been pent up through
Speaker 3: the morning at the applin at the cemetery exploded in
Speaker 3: what everyone agreed was the most raucous parody that had
Speaker 3: ever been thrown at Fireplace Road. Someone joked at one
Speaker 3: point that Jackson must have been spaking the punch because
Speaker 3: they all got drunk so quickly, and they danced and
Speaker 3: the release was palpable.
Speaker 2: If this story had finished here, Jackson might have been forgotten.
Speaker 2: That would be it. But as you know, that's not
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: It is then, at fifty two million.
Speaker 2: Dollars, his work would go on to sell for eye
Speaker 2: watering sums sold fifty two million, he would become the
Speaker 2: most famous American artist of all time. Jackson Pollock is
Speaker 2: a name recognized by people well beyond the art world.
Speaker 2: He's famous for those drip paintings that seem to him.
Speaker 2: His paintings would influence filmmakers, musicians, fashion, you name it.
Speaker 2: They would change the course of twentieth century culture.
Speaker 4: When you enter a Pollock painting or entering out of space,
Speaker 4: he was like a living god.
Speaker 2: Many of us have been told a certain story about
Speaker 2: Jackson Pollock as the man who changed art forever, who
Speaker 2: changed America, who changed how we see. That's probably what
Speaker 2: you know about him, and that's what's so intriguing to me,
Speaker 2: because as I see it, the story we've been told
Speaker 2: about Jackson Pollock is a myth. The real story is
Speaker 2: so much better. I'm Katie Hessel, and I've spent the
Speaker 2: past decade uncovering the stories of great women artists that
Speaker 2: come across one more game changing than this one. When
Speaker 2: Jackson Pollock died in nineteen fifty six, his global fame
Speaker 2: and fortune hadn't peaked yet, nowhere near. And none of
Speaker 2: it would ever have happened if not for someone else,
Speaker 2: someone hiding in plain sight, the woman who just put
Speaker 2: her husband in the ground and had less than two
Speaker 2: hundred dollars to her name, Lee Krasner.
Speaker 3: Nobody knew Pollack. He was just a figure in the village,
Speaker 3: a drunk. You're kicking all these Jackson Pollock paintings.
Speaker 4: When are you going to deal with the paper your
Speaker 4: living room?
Speaker 3: This shy, good looking young man appeared at this art opening,
Speaker 3: and the arm of a supernovrite and.
Speaker 2: One fells who she reset the entire market, not just
Speaker 2: Jackson Pollock's market, but the market for American abstract painting.
Speaker 3: If it hadn't been for Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock would
Speaker 3: not have been the the it was.
Speaker 2: That's all coming up on Death of an Artist, Season two,
Speaker 2: Krasner and Pollock. Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock
Speaker 2: is produced by Pushkin Industries and Samasdat Audio. Clem Hitchcock
Speaker 2: is our producer. Story editing by Dasha Litz at Sina,
Speaker 2: Sophie Crane and Karen Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer
Speaker 2: is Jacob Smith from Samasdat Audio. The executive producers are
Speaker 2: Dasherlitz at Sina and Joe Sykes. Sound design by Peregrin Andrews.
Speaker 2: Original scoring and our theme were composed by Martin Ustwick.
Speaker 2: Fact checking by Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weissberg.
Speaker 2: I'm Katie Hessel.