Lee Krasner (65 page)

Read Lee Krasner Online

Authors: Gail Levin

BOOK: Lee Krasner
12.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

125. 1967-Parsons.

126. 1967-Glaser.

127. Gerald Monroe to the author, interview of July 17, 2007.

128. 1965-Friedman, 16, note 6.

129. 1970-Monroe.

130. 1970-Monroe.

131. 1970-Monroe.

132. Among the books in Krasner's library in PKHSC in Springs are: Leon Trotsky,
The History of the Russian Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936) and Leon Trotsky,
The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?
(New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1937). Inside the front cover, this volume is inscribed in pencil “Pantuhoff 38 E. 9th St.”

133. 1971-Monroe, 141–42.

134. Leon Trotsky,
The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?
(1937), http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch07.htm#ch07-3.

135. Lee Krasner interview with Christopher Crosman (assisted by Nancy Miller), both then of the education department at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Tape available at this museum in Buffalo, New York, or at the PKHSC. Crosman to the author, 10-31-2010, notes that Krasner was “delightful” to interview.

136. 1999-Hobbs, 194, n. 42. The author was also in attendance that weekend and does not recall Krasner ever bringing up this topic while she was present.

137. Leon Trotsky,
The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?
(1937), http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch07.htm;nsch07-3

138. 1984-Abel, 55.

139. See Tim Wohlforth, “Trotskyism,” in Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas,
Encyclopedia of the American Left
(Chicago: St. James Press, 1990), 782–83.

140. Reuben Kadish quoted in 1989-Kisseloff, 471.

141. Willem de Kooning interviewed by Anne Bowen Parsons, AAA.

142. Max Margolies to 1980-Mooradian, 165.

143. 1972-Rose-1.

144. See Sam Sills, “Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” in Buhle, et al.,
Encyclopedia of the American Left
, 2–3. Called the Debs Column by the socialists, their open recruitment caused government suppression.

145. Picasso quoted in “Artists Congress Denounces Japan,”
NYT,
December 18, 1937, 22.

146. The art education of Lincoln Brigade member Irving Norman (1906–1998) followed his participation in the Spanish Civil War.

147. 1965-Vogel.

148. 1983-Rose, 37.

149. 1967-Greene.

150. 1967-Greene.

151. 1964-Gorelick.

152. 2002-Hemingway, 39.

153. Joe Solman, “Chirico—Father of Surrealism,”
Art Front,
January 1936, 6.

154. Harold Rosenberg, “The Wit of William Gropper,”
Art Front,
March 1936, 7–8. 1970-Spivak.

155. “National Organization,”
Art Front,
March 1936, 2.

156. “National Organization,”
Art Front,
March 1936, 2.

157. Meyer Schapiro, “Race, Nationality, and Art,”
Art Front,
2, March 1936, 10.

158. LK to Dore Ashton, undated quote cited in 1972-Ashton, 31.

159. See John O'Brian,
Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 47.

160. LK to the author recorded by 1977-Rose, 1977.

161. 1966-Rose.

162. 1977-Bourdon, 57.

163. 1966-Mooradian, 189.

164. Edward Alden Jewell, “Quickenings,”
NYT,
May 27, 1934, X7.

165. A venerable institution, the Jumble Shop was once located in what had been the MacDougal Alley studio of James Earle Fraser, who produced the bison on the “Buffalo nickel.” See Henry Wysham Lanier,
Greenwich Village Today & Yesterday
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 150.

166. See Matthew Spender,
From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 206.

167. Edward Alden Jewell, “Art in Review,” May 2, 1932, 15, and Edward Alden Jewell, “Youthful Explorers in Form and Color Present Deep Problems for Lay Spectators,” May 7, 1932, 21.

168. 1972-Holmes. This is contrary to LKCR, which ignores Krasner's interest in Pereira's work.

169. Among them Yvonne Pène du Bois, Felicia Meyer [Marsh], Lena Glackens, Minna Citron, Mary Hutchinson, Beata Beach, Eloisa Schwab, and Janet Scudder, for example.

170. 1984-Abel, 35.

171. 1970-Rosenberg.

Chapter 6: From Politics to Modernism, 1936–39 (pp. 117–142)

1. 1979-Munro, 108.

2. 1979-Novak.

3. 1977-Bourdon, 57.

4. “Artists Increase Their Understanding of Public Buildings,”
Art Front,
November, 1935, 3.

5. 1994-Carroll, 81.

6. 1984-Carroll, 81.

7. 2007-Landau, 9. See also these articles from December 2, 1936: “WPA Artists Fight Police; 219 Ejected, Many Clubbed; Crowd Protesting Dismissals Forms ‘Human Chain,' Refuses to Leave Office–Scores Arrested, Dozen Treated by Doctors,”
NYT,
1; “231 Arrested in WPA Riot,”
Daily Mirror,
2; “250 Artists Arrested in Relief Battle,”
New York American
, 1.

8. 1970-Monroe.

9. 1964-Trubach and the following quotations from this source.

10. 1979-Munro, 108.

11. 1979-Novak.

12. 1994-Carroll, 81. See also Mercedes Matter in “Remembering Pollock,” symposium at MoMA, 11-17-98, tape 98, 164, no. 5.

13. “Pink Slips and the WPA,”
NYT,
July 25, 1937, 137.

14.
Still Life
was no. 28 in the catalogue of the exhibition, but she later forgot which work she exhibited. Catalogue in Lee Krasner papers at AAA.

15. LKCR 33.

16. Ford Madox Ford, Foreword,
Pink Slips over Culture
. Ford's grandfather was Ford Madox Brown, an English Pre-Raphaelite painter.

17. Ford, Foreword,
Pink Slips over Culture
.

18. Lewis Mumford,
Pink Slips over Culture.

19. For the night classes, see 1972-Rose; Pamela Adler in 1973-Tucker, 37, and the Web site www.HansHofmann.org/chronology lists the school as moving from this location to 52 West Eighth Street only in 1938, after Krasner was already enrolled. Rose-1.

20. 1979-Novak.

21. Hans Hofmann quoted by Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, oral history interview, Archives of American Art, 1990. Lillian Olinsey Kiesler to Deborah Solomon.

22. Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, oral history interview, Archives of American Art, 1990. The following recollections are also from this source.

23. 1972-Rose-1.

24. LK to the author; also almost verbatim in 1977-Diamonstein, and 1979-Novak.

25. 1966-Rose.

26. 1964-Seckler.

27. 1966-Rose.

28.
The Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts
, brochure of 1937–38 in Lillian Olinsey Kiesler papers, AAA.

29.
The Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts
, brochure of 1937–38 in Lillian Olinsey Kiesler papers, AAA.

30.
The Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts
, brochure of 1937–38 in Lillian Olinsey Kiesler papers, AAA.

31. 1983-Rose, 20.

32. “Cubism and Abstract Art,” March 2–April 19, 1936, 1936-Barr-1, no. 213, pp. 42, 43 (ill. fig. 27), 220. She might also have seen this work in “Beginnings and Landmarks, ‘291,' 1905–1917,” Stieglitz's gallery, An American Place, New York, October 27–December 27, 1937, exh. cat. no. 38.

33. Perle Fine recalling LK quoted 2005-Housley, 36–37.

34. 1980-Braff.

35. 1972-Rose-1.

36. Hofmann left an undated essay, “Toward the True Vision of Reality,” Hans Hofmann papers, AAA, box 7, roll 5808.

37. Ben Wolf, “The Digest Interviews Hans Hofmann,”
Art Digest,
April 1, 1945, 52.

38. 1979-Novak.

39. See Hofmann's
Cathedral
of 1959 with its floating rectangles compared to LKCR 100.

40. Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, oral history interview, Archives of American Art, 1990.

41. 1979-Novak.

42. 1979-Novak.

43. See Cynthia Goodman,
Hans Hofmann as Teacher: Drawings by Hofmann and His Students
(New York: American Federation of Arts, 1982).

44. 1973-Freed.

45. Greenberg to Rubenfeld, unedited transcript of interview, 2/16/1990, CG Papers, Getty; see also 1997-Rubenfeld.

46. 1979-Novak.

47. 1965-Friedman, 7, claims incorrectly that LK first met Greenberg at Hofmann's lectures.

48. 1997-Rubenfeld, 50. According to Rubenfeld, who interviewed Greenberg at length, he attended three of the six public lectures by Hofmann during the 1938–39 school year.

49. 1966-Greenberg at EDACA.

50. Clement Greenberg to Florence Rubenfeld, unedited transcript of interview, 2/16/1990, CG Papers, Getty; see also 1997-Rubenfeld.

51. Greenberg to Rubenfeld, unedited transcript of interview, 2/16/1990, CG Papers, Getty; see also 1997-Rubenfeld.

52. 1979-Novak.

53. 1972-Rose-1.

54. Lee Krasner to the author, August 1977 and other times.

55. Hofmann quoted in “Mrs. Jackson Pollock,”
Time,
March 17, 1958, 64.

56. 1984-Little, II-1. Little dated their meeting to the fall of 1936.

57. 1984-Little, II-1. Little was at the Hofmann school in New York and Provincetown from 1937 to 1942. He had previously studied at the Buffalo, New York, Fine Arts Academy and at the Art Students League under George Grosz. See “John Little, Painter,” his obituary in the
East Hampton Star,
August 2, 1984, 2.

58. 1964-Seckler.

59. 1976-Slobodkina, vol. II, 380.

60. 1967-McNeil.

61. Lee Krasner to the author, recorded by 1977-Rose.

62. 1979-Munro, 108. See A Note About Sources for the story of how Irving Sandler misunderstood why de Kooning's study was in the studio Pantuhoff and McNeil shared and how he omitted Krasner from the story, which has been repeated in biographies of both Pollock and de Kooning.

63. 1966-Rose.

64. 1966-Rose.

65. 1968-Wasserman, recounts this meeting, this time recalling about “eight or ten artists.”

66. 1966-Rose.

67. 1982-Bolotowsky, 22.

68. Susan Carol Larsen,
The American Abstract Artists Group: A History and Evaluation of Its Impact upon American Art
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1975), 226–28.

69. 1968-Wasserman.

70. Aristodimos Kaldis quoted in 1980-Mooradian, 156–57.

71. 1966-Rose.

72. 1967-Parsons.

73. Greta Berman,
The Lost Years: Mural Painting in N.Y. City under the WPA Federal Art Project, 1935–1943
(New York: Garland, 1978), 215.

74. 1979-Munro, 108.

75. 1966-Rose.

76. Lee Krasner to Betty Smith, interview of 11-3-73 in New York City, PKHSC.

77. By this time, Anna and Joseph Krasner had given up the farm and moved into the center of Huntington to a house on Winfield near the corner of Delaware.

78. Rena Glickman (daughter of Krasner's sister) became known as “Rusty” Kanokogi, interview with the author, 6-18-08. This other man was Jackson Pollock.

79. Rosalind Browne to Karlen Mooradian in 1966 quoted in 2000-Matossian, 278.

80. See Tina Dickey,
From Hawthorne to Hofmann: Provincetown Vignettes, 1899–1945
(New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2003), 68, fig. 2.

81. 1977-Ratcliff.

82. 1966-Rose.

83. 1968-Wasserman-1.

84. George Mercer to Lee Krasner and I. Pantuhoff, 44 E. Ninth St., New York, N.Y., July 29, 1939, Collection PKHSC.

85. Jean Cassou,
Paintings and Drawings of Matisse
(New York: 1939), Collection of the PKHSC.

86. These books are in the collection of the PKHSC.

87. Lillian Olinsey Kiesler, oral history interview, Archives of American Art, 1990. Also, author's interview with Jeanne Bultman.

88. See Merchandise for Sale, Radios,
NYT
, September 10, 1939, W14.

89. George Mercer to Lee Krasner, 9-18-1939, postcard from Provincetown, PKHSC.

90. Igor Pantuhoff to Lee Krasner, postcard from Baltimore, MD, PKHSC.

91. Igor Pantuhoff to Lee Krasner, October 24, 1939, addressed to Miss Lenore Krassner, 51 East Ninth Street, New York, N.Y. from West Palm Beach, Florida, PKHSC.

92. Igor Pantuhoff to L. Krasner, 51 East Ninth Street, New York, N.Y., October 31, 1939, PKHSC.

93. Lee Krasner to the author at the time that I was preparing to lecture on her work (at her request) at New York University in connection with the show, Pollock-Krasner: A Working Relationship, in 1981. She kept a copy of a handwritten letter of April 21, 1936, that Brown wrote about a group show of abstract art at the Municipal Galleries that a number of her friends were in, LKP, AAA.

94. Arthur Rimbaud,
A Season in Hell: Un Saison en Enfer,
translated by Delmore Schwartz (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1939), 27.

95. Lee Krasner to the author, repeatedly over many years, referred to her relationship with Pantuhoff as a “togetherness.”

96. 1936-Barr-2, 29–30.

97. Harold Rosenberg, “The God in the Car,”
Poetry,
52, no. 6, July 1938, 342, cited by 1999-Hobbs, 194, note 21 and 31–32, who speculates that LK learned about Rimbaud from Rosenberg, ignoring her earlier fascinaton with Poe. Hobbs also quotes his conversation with Lionel Abel that he believed Krasner to have been “more knowledgeable” than Rosenberg; he considered her to be Rosenberg's “artistic mentor.”

98. An announcement of publication appeared that day in the
New York Times.
Price at publication was one dollar.

99. 1984-Little, II-1. He misdated their meeting to fall 1936, when LK had not yet arrived at the Hofmann School.

100. Igor Pantuhoff to LK, letter of November 23, 1939, PKHSC.

101. Igor Pantuhoff to LK, letter of February 26, 1940.

102. Igor Pantuhoff to LK, letter of March 19, 1940, from West Palm Beach, Florida. By “Brodivish,” Pantuhoff was referring to Alexey Brodovitch, the photographer and
Harper's Bazaar
art director.

103. “Bullitt Is Guest in Palm Beach,”
NYT,
March 24, 1940, 36.

104. “Baseball Party Palm Beach Event,”
NYT
, March 1, 1940, 24.

105. Igor Pantuhoff to LK, postcard of March 28, 1940, PKHSC.

106. Betheny Ewald Bultmann to the author, August 7, 2007.

107. Joop Sanders to the author, interview of December 12, 2007.

108. The following account is based on the recollections of Bethany Ewald Bultman, a writer and former editor for
House & Garden,
who grew up in Natchez. She became fascinated with the portraits she encountered there that resembled the Russian aristocracy more than Natchez's
traditional style. Bethany Ewald Bultmann to the author, August 7, 2007, recounting the stories told to her in Natchez.

109. Oleg Pantuhoff, Sr., to Oleg Pantuhoff, Jr., letter of March 21, 1946, collection of Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.

Other books

The President's Daughter by Barbara Chase-Riboud
Epic by Ginger Voight
How to Win at High School by Owen Matthews
Banging Wheels by Natalie Banks
Silver Master by Jayne Castle
101. A Call of Love by Barbara Cartland
Love Letters by Murdoch, Emily