The business of art

Lee Krasner and the making of Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock, “403: Action Painting I” (1948) at the Museum of Modern Art (photo by me)

I recently read the latest edition of Gwyneth Paltrow’s occasional “this & that” email newsletter sent to Goop subscribers. In it, she answers quite a few curated reader questions about what she’s into and what she recommends. While I’m not a GP stan by any stretch, I find her curiosity and taste appealing, and we have some common interests… She loves Italy and is working on her Italian. I love Italy and am working on my Italian. She loves good food and cooking delicious healthy meals. And I love good food and cooking delicious healthy meals. She is reading “All Fours” by Miranda July. And I recently finished reading “All Fours” by Miranda July.

So when I reached, “What podcast are you listening to right now?” to which GP’s answer was, “Obsessed with Death of an Artist, season two, about Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner,” it caught my attention, which surprised me and not. It surprised me because my podcast listening tends to be advice-driven across my various interests (business, writing, motivation, etc.), not real-world historical records. And not, because I knew of Lee Krasner. First as the partner of Jackson Pollock, whose paintings I’d seen at MoMA and The Met. And about whose life (and death) I was curious enough to visit the former home he shared with Krasner in Springs (East Hampton, NY), now the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. For me back then, it was about Jackson Pollock, the artist, and Lee Krasner, the wife.

“Death of an Artist” cover art via Pushkin

Then, a few years ago, I started reading “Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement” by Mary Gabriel and my perspective shifted. I made it half-way through (it’s 700+ densely-printed pages with almost 200 pages of footnotes at the end), but those 300 pages opened my mind. The history of art and women and the world, the characters who populated the Greenwich Village scene and how they lived, how women were treated as artists, and how they worked to make their way — I dog-eared pages, underlined passages, took notes. Lee Krasner was one of those characters. And she is the focus of “Death of an Artist, season two.”

And rightfully so. Because not only was she an exceptional artist in her own right, she’s the one who made Jackson Pollock, “Jackson Pollock.”