May 31, 2024 • 33 mins
1942. Midtown. Peggy Guggenheim arrives, opens a gallery and gives hungry artists hope.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It's an early morning in May nineteen forty two.
Lee Krasner is in her apartment on Ninth Street when
she hears someone outside. Lee opens the door. It's someone
(00:40):
she recognizes.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It was Pollack's brother, saying she had to come to
the hospital because Pollack had been on a bender.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Lee doesn't know what to think. She asks where exactly
Jackson is. Here's Mary Gabriel, who you heard from in
our previous episodes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He was in such a bad way that he ended
up in Bellevue Hospital, New York's infamous hospital for Darryl
lexim mentally infirm for years.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Jackson had tried to stop king, but nothing helped for long.
At Bellevue, Lee could see that he was in bad shape.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The man she saw on the bed was not the
man she'd come to know.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Lee is speechless for a second. She knew Jackson like
to drink, but nothing like this.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
She just said, pull yourself together.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Lee cleans Jackson up, gets him dressed, and holds him
into a cab. Back at his flat. She feeds him
milk and eggs.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That was the first of what would become a lifetime
of such incidents with Lee. You know dragging Pollock back
from the very edge, nursing him back to life, putting
him on his feet, hoping to God that he continued
in the direction he needed to go.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
At this point, Lee is thirty three years old. She's
shown her work in a big exhibition with important artists.
She's also met someone who she feels is her artistic equal,
someone whose work she really believes in. But now this
His drinking is so bad he's ended up in a
(02:33):
psychiatric hospital, and still they have no money. It's a
lot to handle, and Lee's not sure she can. But
then she hears a whisper on the grapevine that gives
her hope. A whisper about a party girl airess who's
just arrived in the city. She's come with a bunch
(02:54):
of paintings, Margreet's Dullies and others that she smuggled out
from under the nose of the Nazis. She's got cash
to spend and a desire to buy new American art.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
The most important thing about it was it gave these
artists hope that there was passively an audience.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Her name was Peggy Guggenheim, and Lee thought she might
just be the solution to all of their problems if
only Lee can get her attention. I'm Katie Hessel and
this is Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock, Episode three,
(03:43):
The Collector. I'm going to go back in time now
to a few months before Jackson's drinking landed him at Bellevue,
because those months leading up to that moment is actually
when Lee and Jackson first start to get to know
each other. In January nineteen forty two, Lee went to
(04:06):
an exhibition organized by a friend. On the walls were
paintings by her Idols, Matisse, Picasso, Brack, and one of
her very own paintings, a still life that had morphed
into colorful abstract shapes.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
She was the tap of the art heap in Manhattan,
center of the scene.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
As author Mary Gabriel says, in the last few years,
Lee had become one of the most watched artists in
New York, but it was still a small, mostly unknown scene.
People were struggling to get by and get noticed, and
yet here she was, her work hanging up beside Picasso's.
(04:54):
Lee was a big deal and everyone wanted to talk
to her. But that night there was another reason people
were staring. Lee had arrived with a new man on
her own, Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
This shy, good looking young man appeared at this art
opening on the arm of a supernova.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Jackson had a painting on show too, called Birth. It
was a vision of childbirth with fragmented limbs intersecting with
Native American symbols painted in reds, blues, and whites.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Lee's was considered the stronger work. Pollack's was considered kind
of timid.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That night, the only really interesting thing about Jackson was
that he was with Lee.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Pollack was a complete unknown. Her friends didn't really know
what to make of them. Some of them thought he
wasn't worthy of Lee, that he didn't have the personality,
that his art wasn't good enough.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But Lee didn't care much for gossip. She wanted to
see more of Jackson the very moment she'd entered his flat.
She was impressed by his work, and she wanted to
see what else he had in him. Plus she thought
he was kind of cute. Soon they started dating, but
(06:18):
Lee wasn't interested in candle lit dinners and small talk.
Their courtship looked a little different.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I mean literally, the sparks that would have been flying
as they visited each other's studio. When she walked into
his and saw what he was doing, when he walked
into hers and sow what she was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Lee's studio was super tidy, neat stacks of canvasses, with
all the different styles she'd been working on, the latest,
usually standing on an easel. Jackson didn't even have his
own studio. He lived in his brother's cramped flat and
painted in the front room, surrounded by rubbish, old paint cans,
(06:57):
and broken coffee cups. His latest work usually just taped
to the wall. The early days of their relationship mostly
took place in these two spaces.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The relationship was built around art, beyond merely romantic or
sexual attraction. They had this intense artistic bond.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Lee was the educated one. She knew all the latest
trends in European modern art, and she was well connected.
Jackson was an outsider. He'd trained with a traditional mural
painter known for his illustrative scenes of American life. But
there was some shed ground his Lee. Our mutual interest
(07:44):
in painting was the Parish school of painting. We'd either
be talking about Casso or arguing about my teas. So
always French painting. That was their date chat.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They regarded each other equally as artists. His respect for
her work was great, her respect for his work was great.
They became so comfortable with these jays work. Then they
took liberties.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
One night, Jackson was over at Least studio looking at
one of her paintings. Now I don't know exactly which
one it was, but at the time Lee was making
colorful paintings with blocks of whites, pinks, and blues broken
up with curvy, loose lines inspired by Matis. I really
like these works. They're kind of jazzy and show the
(08:35):
start of something. Anyway, Jackson was standing in front of
one of these paintings giving his opinion. Lee looked at
the painting more closely. Something wasn't quite right, she.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Thought, snap, my painting, and she realized that Powak had
been there and it actually worked on it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
She shot Jackson a death ste Rule number one of
dating an artist don't mess with their work.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
An absolute violation of the highest degree for any artist
that is just not done.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Lee yelled, that's not my painting and slashed the canvas.
If it had been anyone else, that would have been
the end for Lee. Relationship over, but a month or
so later, Lee was back at Jackson's studio looking at
(09:35):
one of his paintings.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
She had a brush in her hand, a paint brush,
and it had paint on it.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Again, we don't know the exact work Lee was in
front of, but at that time Jackson was making heavily
texted canvases depicting surreal part animal part human forms mixing
sand and paint together.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And I don't know if she was paying him back
for all the liberties had taken with her work, but
she approached the painting closer and closer until she finally
touched it and left a smear of paint on his work.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Check Mate.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He stormed out and said, you know you've finished the
guard dayan painting.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
They squabbled like kids or like temperamental artists, but all
they wanted to do was hang out with each other.
Lee started showing him the good life, having a coffee
out together, taking him to cool parties, and soon they
became a bit of an it couple, an item of gossip.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Another painter on the scene said she actually felt like
Palack stole from Lee as his style developed, it as
he became stronger, it was because of Lee's influence in
what Lee was doing on canvas.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's true that when Lee looked at Jackson's latest paintings,
she could see her impact. She'd introduced him to one
of her heroes, Matisse, who used color like bluebody else,
and soon Jackson turned away from muddy brown's and reds
and embraced vibrant blues pinks. He turned away from symbols
(11:12):
and went in a more abstract direction.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
After meeting Lee, Jackson began painting in a much freer style,
not fully abstract. There were recognizable figures in them, women, animals,
but they were done in such a fresh way, with
such intense color, such passion, and the result was really magnificent.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And when Jackson was in a rut, he turned to Lee.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Lee spoke to him in a way that reassured him completely.
She gave him the encouragement he needed at that very
delicate moment to go beyond himself, to take the chances
he needed to take.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Lee had always tried to avoid destructions from her own career.
Determined and laser focused, she sought out the right schools,
the right mentals, and the right shows. Being with Jackson
shifted something for her. Here's what Lee said in an interview.
I must admit I didn't resist very long. I was
(12:21):
terribly drawn to Jackson, and I fell in love with
him physically, mentally, in every sense of the word. I
had a conviction when I met Jackson that he had
something important to say, something important to say that the
world needed to know, something no one apart from Lee
(12:42):
was hearing or seeing. Yet, for the first time in
her life, Lee started to wonder maybe her mission to
make a new kind of art in America was not
just about her own work. Maybe it was also about
Jackson's encouraging it, shaping it, and ultimately convincing the world
(13:04):
how important it was. In that same interview, she said,
my own work became irrelevant. He was the important thing.
I couldn't do enough for him. I know this sounds
like a bit of a one eighty from Lee. Certainly,
it was surprising to me that, after everything she'd sacrificed
(13:26):
for her own work, she'd begin to focus on someone else's.
But the more I listened to Lee's interviews, looked at
her writings, I came to think of it this way.
Lee's devotion to art was so total, so spiritual and
uncompromising that it transcended the usual bounds of artistic ego,
(13:48):
of success and fame. If Lee was going to achieve
her aim through Jackson, maybe so be it. But then,
just as Lee was starting to feel this way, she
got that knock on the door I told you about.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Pallack's brother, saying she had to come to the hospital
because Pollack had been on a bender.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He was in Bellevue Hospital, and Lee went to get him.
Before that day, her relationship with Jackson had been about art. Now,
as she was nursing him back to life, other concerns
wandered into her mind.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You know, they had very little by way of money.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
The government scheme that had been tiding Lee over for
the past couple of years was finally drying up. Soon
they wouldn't have enough money even for food, and now
Jackson's drinking had landed him in hospital. No one in
New York was buying the kind of art they were making.
(14:54):
But Lee understood the reality that if either of them
were going to sell anytime soon, it would probably be him,
because he was a man. Being a woman artist at
least one who actually made money was not a thing,
and so Lee practical as ever realized something, she.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Would have to be the agent, the one who represented him,
the one who kind of did aside her soul of
making sure that the right people saw his work.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And just as Lee started scheming, she heard the news
a wealthy heiress had just arrived in New York with
a massive collection of European modern art, the very kind
that had inspired Lee, and rumor had it, this woman
(15:43):
was now interested in something else in New American art.
Her name was Peggy Gubenheim. That's after the breakdown. In
(16:08):
October Sober nineteen forty two, Peggy Guggenheim's gallery opened in
New York. It was called Art of This Century and
was just south of Central Park. This was no ordinary
white walled gallery. It was a tube shaped room with
(16:31):
curved walls and a turquoise floor. Sheaths of material that
looked like sails hung from the ceiling and on them,
with paintings facing all kinds of directions. Here's Jacqueline Bogar DWorld,
Peggy's biographer.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
People were shocked. They didn't know what to make of it.
Many critics didn't think it was art.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
There were Picasso's stark cubist visions of an artist's studio
or mirrors, disfigured creatures. Even for her, this felt totally knew, intimate, dreamlike,
and definitely radical. In the middle of the sales and
(17:30):
the most cutting edge art was the mysterious Peggy Guggenheim,
surrounded by the who's who of the New York art scene.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
She had this quality, this charisma, this ability to have
all eyes on her in the room.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
She had her hair dyed a bootblack.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
She was very much a presence.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
She worked the room.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
She'd have one lighters like how many husbands have you had?
And she'd say mine or other people.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Peggy spent most of her time at the opening talking
to the well heeled crowd, business people, Some of them
even seemed to be considering buying the art. The vibe
felt different, new electric.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Peggy creates a world where there wasn't one before. She
becomes a beacon, if you will, of the new art.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
A rumor went around that for her next show, Peggy
was considering actually buying work from some of the New
York artists Lee's crowd.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
When Peggy arrived in New York, there were only a
handful of galleries showing American art, and none of them
showing the new American art.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The idea of Peggy showing contemporary American art was a
big deal because to everyone here Peggy Guggenheim eccentricities aside,
was herself a very big deal. She would eventually become
one of the most influential collectors and tastemakers of the
(19:09):
twentieth century, someone who identified in art that very few
even knew existed and made it popular.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
I think I got in this, said Monath a minute
I got into I learned it.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Peggy was born in eighteen ninety eight into one of
the most prominent families in America, but when she was thirteen,
her life was turned upside down her father died on
the Titanic. Peggy was left with a massive inheritance over
ten million dollars in today's cash, and unsure of her
(19:49):
direction in life. So in nineteen twenty, when she was
twenty two, she decided to leave home, leave America.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And she went to Paris, like many many people did
in those days, because.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It was the place to be.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
You sat in the cafes, you would absorb what was
going on because people would talk and and somehow you
know about what was happening. You would have met some
of the players.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Ernest Hemingway and f Scott Fitzgerald were brooding over black coffee,
trying to reinvent the novel. Coco Chanel was challenging women
to ditch their corsets for a little black dress.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Eagle.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Stravinsky's avant garde symphonies were stunning audiences, and at night
everyone headed to the bars. Peggy fit right in.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Peggy was one of the group. She was a rebellious
type of person. She liked that idea of shocking and
being outre and being different that was in her soul,
shall we say and mean as early as when she
was a schoolgirl. She shaved off her eyebrows, which was
then in vogue, but it shocked everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Peggy spent most of her nights at clubs in Montparnasse,
probably wearing a peacock headdress and dancing the foxtrot with
women dressed in monocles and tales. Other nights she might
have ended up at Cole Porter's house, listening to him
plays scandalous jazz while she chatted up the men.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Well, she went to bed with every man she ever met.
If she didn't it wasn't from want of trying.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But the people who really caught Peggy's attention were the artists.
She hung out in cafes with Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalis,
and Marcel Duchamp. They spent all their time feverishly talking
about new kinds of art, images they said came straight
out of their dreams or that broke the rules of representation.
(21:50):
And Peggy started to think about something she could do
with all of her money. What if she spent it
on this new, mysterious, beautiful art art no one else
was paying much attention to.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
She begins then to buy a picture from every show
she wanted to show the kind of art that was
not traditional. It wasn't by any means a given that
this was an accepted art, or that people thought of
it even out art.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Peggy didn't care, though. She opened a small gallery and
was even planning to start a museum. Then something happened
that brought the party to a stop. Before Hitler declared
actual war, he declared war on art in the nineteen thirties.
(22:46):
The Nazis had seized more than fifteen thousand works and
staged degenerate art exhibitions in Munich, labeled degenerate for not
conforming to Hitler's ideology. They featured many of the artists
Peggy collected or wanted to, Paul Clay, Picasso, Mondrian Dinski.
(23:14):
In nineteen thirty nine, Hitler announced that all modern art
was degenerate and should be destroyed. This flipped a switch
in Peggy. Her passion for collecting turned into a rescue
mission to save modern art from the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
So she went about collecting a picture a day.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Peggy went to see every artist she knew, cash in hand.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Since it was the war coming down the pipe, the
artists were only too happy to sell the.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Art to her.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Well, almost everyone.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Where she went to visit Pablo Picasso, he said, well, lady,
le laingerie is on the third floor. He resented that
she was buying pictures like she would be buying, you know, underwear.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
But Peggy just kept on buying.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
She visited them all, and she bought pictures for very
little money.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
By around nineteen forty she had a mass the greatest
collection of modern art in the world. Today it is
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Peggy's main concern then was how to preserve her by
now extensive collection.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
She asked the biggest museum in Paris, the Louver, to
store it.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
The louverra wouldn't save it. They consider it none art
to a large.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Degree, so Peggy decided to take matters into her own hands.
In nineteen forty she left Paris and secretly stashed her
art in a warehouse in the south of France, and
she laid low. Nine months later, she put her precious
(25:04):
collection on board a ship bound for America. She labeled
it hold goods and prayed no one would take a
closer look. On the twelfth of June nineteen forty one,
a few days before the Germans marched into Paris, Peggy
fled the country. By July she was safely back in Manhattan,
(25:31):
and a year later, here she was at her own gallery,
ruling the roost the bell of the ball. In the
spring of nineteen forty three, Peggy opened a show all
of the New York artists had been waiting for. Because
this show was about them.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You can imagine that just a few months earlier, these
artists only dreamed of being and the walls in her gallery,
and now she was offering them the opportunity for them
to show as well.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
On opening night, everyone was.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
There, collectors, other gallery honors, museum officials, art critics, everyone
who was anyone in the art world.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Lee pushed through the throngs, trying to draw people towards
one painting in particular, a mix of distorted human figures
and animal body parts over painted with scratchy lines. This
one was by Jackson, and Lee wanted everyone to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
She essentially worked at his promoter. She would bring art
critics in art dealers in to look at his work.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
But it had meant putting her own painting on the
back burner for now.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Lee chose not to submit any works because she would never,
throughout her career compete directly with Jackson in any way.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
The supernova of the New York art scene might have
had none of her own paintings in the show, but
she was on a mission. She needed Jackson's paintings to
get noticed. Because this group show was just stage one.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Peggy started expressing an interest in showing individual artists from
this exhibition that she would start representing some of these
artists in her gallery.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Actually giving someone a solo show. This could be a
game changer if you had a solo show, you might
actually have a chance of selling, a chance of earning
some money, and Lee wanted this to go to Jackson
because at this stage they were desperate, so Lee was
all the more determined to get Peggy's attention. But she
(27:45):
knew that coosing up to Peggy at an event like
this was going to get her nowhere. She needed to
set up a proper professional meeting a few weeks after
(28:06):
that group show. On an early June morning in nine,
eighteen forty three, Lee was in Jackson's flat hanging up
her favorite of his works on the walls. She tilted
one a little to straighten it. Everything had to be
perfect because that day they were going to receive a
visit from the most important person in the art world,
(28:27):
Peggy Guggenheim herself, and Lee knew that this visit could
change everything.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
The first time she ever saw his work, the earth
moved for her in a way that it did when
she saw Picasso or Matisse, and Lee wanted Peggy to
have that feeling.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
If Peggy liked Jackson's paintings, it would be the best
chance they'd had yet to get a solo show, make
a few sales, and actually pay some bills. Lee took
a final look around the room. Everything was all set.
She put a couple of her own paintings up too,
for good measure, and after one last tidy, she left
(29:06):
to join Jackson at a wedding. He was on best
man duties. It was a lunchtime thing, and he'd assured
her it wouldn't take long. A few hours later, at
five minutes to four, Lee was dragging a steaming Jackson
out of the wedding, pouring black coffee down his throat,
(29:27):
trying to sober him up.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You know, drooling, spitting drunk polock to a cafeteria to
try to sober him up so he'd be presentable when
he met Peggy.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
He still looked terrible, but he could walk, sort of.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
She got him to the stage where he could get
as far as their home.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
But as Lee dragged Jackson along their street, her heart sank.
She could see Peggy Guggenheim walking out their door.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
She and her assistant had climbed the five flights up
to Jackson and Lee's studio, waited very impatiently for Powerck
and Lee to arrive home, and when they didn't, after
fifteen minutes to Peggy's mind that was the end of
her relationship with Pallock. She stormed down the steps.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Peggy looked like she was fuming.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
That was going to be the end of Peggy's support
for Pollack.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Lee sprinted across the road and went into full groveling mode.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So Lee and Peggy's assistant spent fifteen minutes trying to
convince Peggy that it would be worth her while to
mount those steps again in the heat of the early
summer in New York to look at Jackson's work. Surprisingly,
she agreed.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Lee marshaled Peggy back up towards the flat. She opened
the door for Peggy, who still seemed furious.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The first paintings she encountered were Lee's. Lee signed her
paintings el K and as a slight. When Peggy walked
in the door, she said, who is el K? I
didn't climb these steps to look at el Ka's painting.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Lee bit her tongue today was about Jackson. She ushered
Peggy in front of the painting she'd carefully picked out
with ill shapes and also the bright blues and reds
she'd introduced him to, full of free brushstrokes painted with
an energy no one else had. Lee saw Peggy lean
(31:21):
in for a closer look.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Peggy wasn't effusive.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
That wasn't necessarily ann.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
She looked at the work without declaring whether or now
she would represent Jackson.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Lee held her breath. Their livelihoods hung in the balance.
Peggy had the power to change everything for them, but
only if Lee could convince her that Jackson, the man
and the artist was worth it. Coming up, Lee moves
Jackson out to the countryside to give him the space
(31:55):
to create.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
For those of us who lived here, was you know,
you're getting all these Jackson poll Up paintings. What are
you going to deal with the paper you're living room?
There simply was no understanding of what he was trying
to say.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
With paint That's next time on Death of an Artist.
Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock is produced by
Pushkin Industries and samasdat Audio. Clem Hitchcock is our producer.
Story editing by Dasherlitz at Sina, Sophie Crane and Karen
(32:32):
Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer is Jacob Smith from
samasdaut Audio. The executive producers are Dasherlitz at Sena and
Joe Sykes, sound design by Peregrin Andrews. Original scoring and
our theme were composed by Martin Ustwick. Fact checking by
(32:53):
Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg. Many thanks to
Jacqueline Bogard World for her audio interviews of Peggy Guggenheim,
which formed the basis of her book, Peggy the Wayward Guggenheim.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Do check it out.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm Katie Hassel.
Pushkin. It's an early morning in May nineteen forty two.
Lee Krasner is in her apartment on Ninth Street when
she hears someone outside. Lee opens the door. It's someone
(00:40):
she recognizes.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It was Pollack's brother, saying she had to come to
the hospital because Pollack had been on a bender.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Lee doesn't know what to think. She asks where exactly
Jackson is. Here's Mary Gabriel, who you heard from in
our previous episodes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He was in such a bad way that he ended
up in Bellevue Hospital, New York's infamous hospital for Darryl
lexim mentally infirm for years.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Jackson had tried to stop king, but nothing helped for long.
At Bellevue, Lee could see that he was in bad shape.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
The man she saw on the bed was not the
man she'd come to know.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Lee is speechless for a second. She knew Jackson like
to drink, but nothing like this.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
She just said, pull yourself together.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Lee cleans Jackson up, gets him dressed, and holds him
into a cab. Back at his flat. She feeds him
milk and eggs.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That was the first of what would become a lifetime
of such incidents with Lee. You know dragging Pollock back
from the very edge, nursing him back to life, putting
him on his feet, hoping to God that he continued
in the direction he needed to go.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
At this point, Lee is thirty three years old. She's
shown her work in a big exhibition with important artists.
She's also met someone who she feels is her artistic equal,
someone whose work she really believes in. But now this
His drinking is so bad he's ended up in a
(02:33):
psychiatric hospital, and still they have no money. It's a
lot to handle, and Lee's not sure she can. But
then she hears a whisper on the grapevine that gives
her hope. A whisper about a party girl airess who's
just arrived in the city. She's come with a bunch
(02:54):
of paintings, Margreet's Dullies and others that she smuggled out
from under the nose of the Nazis. She's got cash
to spend and a desire to buy new American art.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
The most important thing about it was it gave these
artists hope that there was passively an audience.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Her name was Peggy Guggenheim, and Lee thought she might
just be the solution to all of their problems if
only Lee can get her attention. I'm Katie Hessel and
this is Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock, Episode three,
(03:43):
The Collector. I'm going to go back in time now
to a few months before Jackson's drinking landed him at Bellevue,
because those months leading up to that moment is actually
when Lee and Jackson first start to get to know
each other. In January nineteen forty two, Lee went to
(04:06):
an exhibition organized by a friend. On the walls were
paintings by her Idols, Matisse, Picasso, Brack, and one of
her very own paintings, a still life that had morphed
into colorful abstract shapes.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
She was the tap of the art heap in Manhattan,
center of the scene.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
As author Mary Gabriel says, in the last few years,
Lee had become one of the most watched artists in
New York, but it was still a small, mostly unknown scene.
People were struggling to get by and get noticed, and
yet here she was, her work hanging up beside Picasso's.
(04:54):
Lee was a big deal and everyone wanted to talk
to her. But that night there was another reason people
were staring. Lee had arrived with a new man on
her own, Jackson Pollock.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
This shy, good looking young man appeared at this art
opening on the arm of a supernova.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Jackson had a painting on show too, called Birth. It
was a vision of childbirth with fragmented limbs intersecting with
Native American symbols painted in reds, blues, and whites.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Lee's was considered the stronger work. Pollack's was considered kind
of timid.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That night, the only really interesting thing about Jackson was
that he was with Lee.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Pollack was a complete unknown. Her friends didn't really know
what to make of them. Some of them thought he
wasn't worthy of Lee, that he didn't have the personality,
that his art wasn't good enough.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But Lee didn't care much for gossip. She wanted to
see more of Jackson the very moment she'd entered his flat.
She was impressed by his work, and she wanted to
see what else he had in him. Plus she thought
he was kind of cute. Soon they started dating, but
(06:18):
Lee wasn't interested in candle lit dinners and small talk.
Their courtship looked a little different.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I mean literally, the sparks that would have been flying
as they visited each other's studio. When she walked into
his and saw what he was doing, when he walked
into hers and sow what she was doing.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Lee's studio was super tidy, neat stacks of canvasses, with
all the different styles she'd been working on, the latest,
usually standing on an easel. Jackson didn't even have his
own studio. He lived in his brother's cramped flat and
painted in the front room, surrounded by rubbish, old paint cans,
(06:57):
and broken coffee cups. His latest work usually just taped
to the wall. The early days of their relationship mostly
took place in these two spaces.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The relationship was built around art, beyond merely romantic or
sexual attraction. They had this intense artistic bond.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Lee was the educated one. She knew all the latest
trends in European modern art, and she was well connected.
Jackson was an outsider. He'd trained with a traditional mural
painter known for his illustrative scenes of American life. But
there was some shed ground his Lee. Our mutual interest
(07:44):
in painting was the Parish school of painting. We'd either
be talking about Casso or arguing about my teas. So
always French painting. That was their date chat.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
They regarded each other equally as artists. His respect for
her work was great, her respect for his work was great.
They became so comfortable with these jays work. Then they
took liberties.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
One night, Jackson was over at Least studio looking at
one of her paintings. Now I don't know exactly which
one it was, but at the time Lee was making
colorful paintings with blocks of whites, pinks, and blues broken
up with curvy, loose lines inspired by Matis. I really
like these works. They're kind of jazzy and show the
(08:35):
start of something. Anyway, Jackson was standing in front of
one of these paintings giving his opinion. Lee looked at
the painting more closely. Something wasn't quite right, she.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Thought, snap, my painting, and she realized that Powak had
been there and it actually worked on it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
She shot Jackson a death ste Rule number one of
dating an artist don't mess with their work.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
An absolute violation of the highest degree for any artist
that is just not done.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Lee yelled, that's not my painting and slashed the canvas.
If it had been anyone else, that would have been
the end for Lee. Relationship over, but a month or
so later, Lee was back at Jackson's studio looking at
(09:35):
one of his paintings.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
She had a brush in her hand, a paint brush,
and it had paint on it.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Again, we don't know the exact work Lee was in
front of, but at that time Jackson was making heavily
texted canvases depicting surreal part animal part human forms mixing
sand and paint together.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And I don't know if she was paying him back
for all the liberties had taken with her work, but
she approached the painting closer and closer until she finally
touched it and left a smear of paint on his work.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Check Mate.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He stormed out and said, you know you've finished the
guard dayan painting.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
They squabbled like kids or like temperamental artists, but all
they wanted to do was hang out with each other.
Lee started showing him the good life, having a coffee
out together, taking him to cool parties, and soon they
became a bit of an it couple, an item of gossip.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Another painter on the scene said she actually felt like
Palack stole from Lee as his style developed, it as
he became stronger, it was because of Lee's influence in
what Lee was doing on canvas.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It's true that when Lee looked at Jackson's latest paintings,
she could see her impact. She'd introduced him to one
of her heroes, Matisse, who used color like bluebody else,
and soon Jackson turned away from muddy brown's and reds
and embraced vibrant blues pinks. He turned away from symbols
(11:12):
and went in a more abstract direction.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
After meeting Lee, Jackson began painting in a much freer style,
not fully abstract. There were recognizable figures in them, women, animals,
but they were done in such a fresh way, with
such intense color, such passion, and the result was really magnificent.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And when Jackson was in a rut, he turned to Lee.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Lee spoke to him in a way that reassured him completely.
She gave him the encouragement he needed at that very
delicate moment to go beyond himself, to take the chances
he needed to take.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Lee had always tried to avoid destructions from her own career.
Determined and laser focused, she sought out the right schools,
the right mentals, and the right shows. Being with Jackson
shifted something for her. Here's what Lee said in an interview.
I must admit I didn't resist very long. I was
(12:21):
terribly drawn to Jackson, and I fell in love with
him physically, mentally, in every sense of the word. I
had a conviction when I met Jackson that he had
something important to say, something important to say that the
world needed to know, something no one apart from Lee
(12:42):
was hearing or seeing. Yet, for the first time in
her life, Lee started to wonder maybe her mission to
make a new kind of art in America was not
just about her own work. Maybe it was also about
Jackson's encouraging it, shaping it, and ultimately convincing the world
(13:04):
how important it was. In that same interview, she said,
my own work became irrelevant. He was the important thing.
I couldn't do enough for him. I know this sounds
like a bit of a one eighty from Lee. Certainly,
it was surprising to me that, after everything she'd sacrificed
(13:26):
for her own work, she'd begin to focus on someone else's.
But the more I listened to Lee's interviews, looked at
her writings, I came to think of it this way.
Lee's devotion to art was so total, so spiritual and
uncompromising that it transcended the usual bounds of artistic ego,
(13:48):
of success and fame. If Lee was going to achieve
her aim through Jackson, maybe so be it. But then,
just as Lee was starting to feel this way, she
got that knock on the door I told you about.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Pallack's brother, saying she had to come to the hospital
because Pollack had been on a bender.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
He was in Bellevue Hospital, and Lee went to get him.
Before that day, her relationship with Jackson had been about art. Now,
as she was nursing him back to life, other concerns
wandered into her mind.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You know, they had very little by way of money.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
The government scheme that had been tiding Lee over for
the past couple of years was finally drying up. Soon
they wouldn't have enough money even for food, and now
Jackson's drinking had landed him in hospital. No one in
New York was buying the kind of art they were making.
(14:54):
But Lee understood the reality that if either of them
were going to sell anytime soon, it would probably be him,
because he was a man. Being a woman artist at
least one who actually made money was not a thing,
and so Lee practical as ever realized something, she.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Would have to be the agent, the one who represented him,
the one who kind of did aside her soul of
making sure that the right people saw his work.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And just as Lee started scheming, she heard the news
a wealthy heiress had just arrived in New York with
a massive collection of European modern art, the very kind
that had inspired Lee, and rumor had it, this woman
(15:43):
was now interested in something else in New American art.
Her name was Peggy Gubenheim. That's after the breakdown. In
(16:08):
October Sober nineteen forty two, Peggy Guggenheim's gallery opened in
New York. It was called Art of This Century and
was just south of Central Park. This was no ordinary
white walled gallery. It was a tube shaped room with
(16:31):
curved walls and a turquoise floor. Sheaths of material that
looked like sails hung from the ceiling and on them,
with paintings facing all kinds of directions. Here's Jacqueline Bogar DWorld,
Peggy's biographer.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
People were shocked. They didn't know what to make of it.
Many critics didn't think it was art.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
There were Picasso's stark cubist visions of an artist's studio
or mirrors, disfigured creatures. Even for her, this felt totally knew, intimate, dreamlike,
and definitely radical. In the middle of the sales and
(17:30):
the most cutting edge art was the mysterious Peggy Guggenheim,
surrounded by the who's who of the New York art scene.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
She had this quality, this charisma, this ability to have
all eyes on her in the room.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
She had her hair dyed a bootblack.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
She was very much a presence.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
She worked the room.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
She'd have one lighters like how many husbands have you had?
And she'd say mine or other people.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Peggy spent most of her time at the opening talking
to the well heeled crowd, business people, Some of them
even seemed to be considering buying the art. The vibe
felt different, new electric.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Peggy creates a world where there wasn't one before. She
becomes a beacon, if you will, of the new art.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
A rumor went around that for her next show, Peggy
was considering actually buying work from some of the New
York artists Lee's crowd.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
When Peggy arrived in New York, there were only a
handful of galleries showing American art, and none of them
showing the new American art.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The idea of Peggy showing contemporary American art was a
big deal because to everyone here Peggy Guggenheim eccentricities aside,
was herself a very big deal. She would eventually become
one of the most influential collectors and tastemakers of the
(19:09):
twentieth century, someone who identified in art that very few
even knew existed and made it popular.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
I think I got in this, said Monath a minute
I got into I learned it.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Peggy was born in eighteen ninety eight into one of
the most prominent families in America, but when she was thirteen,
her life was turned upside down her father died on
the Titanic. Peggy was left with a massive inheritance over
ten million dollars in today's cash, and unsure of her
(19:49):
direction in life. So in nineteen twenty, when she was
twenty two, she decided to leave home, leave America.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And she went to Paris, like many many people did
in those days, because.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
It was the place to be.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
You sat in the cafes, you would absorb what was
going on because people would talk and and somehow you
know about what was happening. You would have met some
of the players.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Ernest Hemingway and f Scott Fitzgerald were brooding over black coffee,
trying to reinvent the novel. Coco Chanel was challenging women
to ditch their corsets for a little black dress.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Eagle.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Stravinsky's avant garde symphonies were stunning audiences, and at night
everyone headed to the bars. Peggy fit right in.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Peggy was one of the group. She was a rebellious
type of person. She liked that idea of shocking and
being outre and being different that was in her soul,
shall we say and mean as early as when she
was a schoolgirl. She shaved off her eyebrows, which was
then in vogue, but it shocked everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Peggy spent most of her nights at clubs in Montparnasse,
probably wearing a peacock headdress and dancing the foxtrot with
women dressed in monocles and tales. Other nights she might
have ended up at Cole Porter's house, listening to him
plays scandalous jazz while she chatted up the men.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Well, she went to bed with every man she ever met.
If she didn't it wasn't from want of trying.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But the people who really caught Peggy's attention were the artists.
She hung out in cafes with Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalis,
and Marcel Duchamp. They spent all their time feverishly talking
about new kinds of art, images they said came straight
out of their dreams or that broke the rules of representation.
(21:50):
And Peggy started to think about something she could do
with all of her money. What if she spent it
on this new, mysterious, beautiful art art no one else
was paying much attention to.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
She begins then to buy a picture from every show
she wanted to show the kind of art that was
not traditional. It wasn't by any means a given that
this was an accepted art, or that people thought of
it even out art.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Peggy didn't care, though. She opened a small gallery and
was even planning to start a museum. Then something happened
that brought the party to a stop. Before Hitler declared
actual war, he declared war on art in the nineteen thirties.
(22:46):
The Nazis had seized more than fifteen thousand works and
staged degenerate art exhibitions in Munich, labeled degenerate for not
conforming to Hitler's ideology. They featured many of the artists
Peggy collected or wanted to, Paul Clay, Picasso, Mondrian Dinski.
(23:14):
In nineteen thirty nine, Hitler announced that all modern art
was degenerate and should be destroyed. This flipped a switch
in Peggy. Her passion for collecting turned into a rescue
mission to save modern art from the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
So she went about collecting a picture a day.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Peggy went to see every artist she knew, cash in hand.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Since it was the war coming down the pipe, the
artists were only too happy to sell the.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Art to her.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Well, almost everyone.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Where she went to visit Pablo Picasso, he said, well, lady,
le laingerie is on the third floor. He resented that
she was buying pictures like she would be buying, you know, underwear.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
But Peggy just kept on buying.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
She visited them all, and she bought pictures for very
little money.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
By around nineteen forty she had a mass the greatest
collection of modern art in the world. Today it is
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Peggy's main concern then was how to preserve her by
now extensive collection.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
She asked the biggest museum in Paris, the Louver, to
store it.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
The louverra wouldn't save it. They consider it none art
to a large.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Degree, so Peggy decided to take matters into her own hands.
In nineteen forty she left Paris and secretly stashed her
art in a warehouse in the south of France, and
she laid low. Nine months later, she put her precious
(25:04):
collection on board a ship bound for America. She labeled
it hold goods and prayed no one would take a
closer look. On the twelfth of June nineteen forty one,
a few days before the Germans marched into Paris, Peggy
fled the country. By July she was safely back in Manhattan,
(25:31):
and a year later, here she was at her own gallery,
ruling the roost the bell of the ball. In the
spring of nineteen forty three, Peggy opened a show all
of the New York artists had been waiting for. Because
this show was about them.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You can imagine that just a few months earlier, these
artists only dreamed of being and the walls in her gallery,
and now she was offering them the opportunity for them
to show as well.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
On opening night, everyone was.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
There, collectors, other gallery honors, museum officials, art critics, everyone
who was anyone in the art world.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Lee pushed through the throngs, trying to draw people towards
one painting in particular, a mix of distorted human figures
and animal body parts over painted with scratchy lines. This
one was by Jackson, and Lee wanted everyone to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
She essentially worked at his promoter. She would bring art
critics in art dealers in to look at his work.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
But it had meant putting her own painting on the
back burner for now.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Lee chose not to submit any works because she would never,
throughout her career compete directly with Jackson in any way.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
The supernova of the New York art scene might have
had none of her own paintings in the show, but
she was on a mission. She needed Jackson's paintings to
get noticed. Because this group show was just stage one.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Peggy started expressing an interest in showing individual artists from
this exhibition that she would start representing some of these
artists in her gallery.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Actually giving someone a solo show. This could be a
game changer if you had a solo show, you might
actually have a chance of selling, a chance of earning
some money, and Lee wanted this to go to Jackson
because at this stage they were desperate, so Lee was
all the more determined to get Peggy's attention. But she
(27:45):
knew that coosing up to Peggy at an event like
this was going to get her nowhere. She needed to
set up a proper professional meeting a few weeks after
(28:06):
that group show. On an early June morning in nine,
eighteen forty three, Lee was in Jackson's flat hanging up
her favorite of his works on the walls. She tilted
one a little to straighten it. Everything had to be
perfect because that day they were going to receive a
visit from the most important person in the art world,
(28:27):
Peggy Guggenheim herself, and Lee knew that this visit could
change everything.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
The first time she ever saw his work, the earth
moved for her in a way that it did when
she saw Picasso or Matisse, and Lee wanted Peggy to
have that feeling.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
If Peggy liked Jackson's paintings, it would be the best
chance they'd had yet to get a solo show, make
a few sales, and actually pay some bills. Lee took
a final look around the room. Everything was all set.
She put a couple of her own paintings up too,
for good measure, and after one last tidy, she left
(29:06):
to join Jackson at a wedding. He was on best
man duties. It was a lunchtime thing, and he'd assured
her it wouldn't take long. A few hours later, at
five minutes to four, Lee was dragging a steaming Jackson
out of the wedding, pouring black coffee down his throat,
(29:27):
trying to sober him up.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
You know, drooling, spitting drunk polock to a cafeteria to
try to sober him up so he'd be presentable when
he met Peggy.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
He still looked terrible, but he could walk, sort of.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
She got him to the stage where he could get
as far as their home.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
But as Lee dragged Jackson along their street, her heart sank.
She could see Peggy Guggenheim walking out their door.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
She and her assistant had climbed the five flights up
to Jackson and Lee's studio, waited very impatiently for Powerck
and Lee to arrive home, and when they didn't, after
fifteen minutes to Peggy's mind that was the end of
her relationship with Pallock. She stormed down the steps.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Peggy looked like she was fuming.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
That was going to be the end of Peggy's support
for Pollack.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Lee sprinted across the road and went into full groveling mode.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So Lee and Peggy's assistant spent fifteen minutes trying to
convince Peggy that it would be worth her while to
mount those steps again in the heat of the early
summer in New York to look at Jackson's work. Surprisingly,
she agreed.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Lee marshaled Peggy back up towards the flat. She opened
the door for Peggy, who still seemed furious.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
The first paintings she encountered were Lee's. Lee signed her
paintings el K and as a slight. When Peggy walked
in the door, she said, who is el K? I
didn't climb these steps to look at el Ka's painting.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Lee bit her tongue today was about Jackson. She ushered
Peggy in front of the painting she'd carefully picked out
with ill shapes and also the bright blues and reds
she'd introduced him to, full of free brushstrokes painted with
an energy no one else had. Lee saw Peggy lean
(31:21):
in for a closer look.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Peggy wasn't effusive.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
That wasn't necessarily ann.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
She looked at the work without declaring whether or now
she would represent Jackson.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Lee held her breath. Their livelihoods hung in the balance.
Peggy had the power to change everything for them, but
only if Lee could convince her that Jackson, the man
and the artist was worth it. Coming up, Lee moves
Jackson out to the countryside to give him the space
(31:55):
to create.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
For those of us who lived here, was you know,
you're getting all these Jackson poll Up paintings. What are
you going to deal with the paper you're living room?
There simply was no understanding of what he was trying
to say.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
With paint That's next time on Death of an Artist.
Death of an Artist Krasner and Pollock is produced by
Pushkin Industries and samasdat Audio. Clem Hitchcock is our producer.
Story editing by Dasherlitz at Sina, Sophie Crane and Karen
(32:32):
Schakerji from Pushkin. The executive producer is Jacob Smith from
samasdaut Audio. The executive producers are Dasherlitz at Sena and
Joe Sykes, sound design by Peregrin Andrews. Original scoring and
our theme were composed by Martin Ustwick. Fact checking by
(32:53):
Arthur Gompertz. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg. Many thanks to
Jacqueline Bogard World for her audio interviews of Peggy Guggenheim,
which formed the basis of her book, Peggy the Wayward Guggenheim.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Do check it out.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm Katie Hassel.
Host
Helen Molesworth
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