BARBARA ROSE
83
Hampton, to the barn behind the house which became his studio in
1947. He had already been painting on the floor in the bedroom, but
the move into the barn permitted the kind of physical freedom
documented in Namuth's photographs and the film made in fall 1950.
With Pollock painting in the barn, Krasner finally had a studio of
her own. (She had been working in the living room.) The "little
image" series, her own version of all-over painting done with a
conventional brush technique on easel-sized canvases, was done in
this small bedroom in the late forties. After Pollock's death in 1956,
Krasner began using the barn as her studio, working on a very large
scale, although she never painted on the floor as Pollock had. Her
memories of life in Springs, during the most productive decade of
Pollock's life, add to our understanding of Pollock's central role in the
history of the New York School, as well as the nature of their
relationship as two working professionals.
Barbara Rose:
When did Pollock begin to use the Springs studio?
Lee Krasner:
We moved out there in November 1945. Pollock started to
work in the bedroom upstairs in the house because the barn, which
later became the studio, was a mess, filled with lots of rough iron
things and some farm implements. Mr. Quinn, the former owner of
the house, had something to do with the town roads, so there were all
kinds of things in there. You could barely get in, so it was a matter of
clearing it out. And that would take time, so he started to work in the
house. Pollock's 1946 show was painted in one of the bedrooms
upstairs in the house. He painted
The Key
in the bedroom. I
remember because it was in the '46 show.
As you know, Pollock painted on the floor:
The Key
took up the
whole space on the bedroom floor. He could barely walk around it.
The move into the studio had to follow that, because in addition to
clearing the barn out, we also moved it, to the site it's on now.
(It
was
directly behind the house and cut off our whole view.) The next
show he has is in 1949-in fact, he had two shows in '49, so it must
have been between 1947 and 1949 that the building was cleared out
and moved, and he began to work in the bigger studio in the barn.
Barbara Rose:
Was there a change in scale because of Pollock's move of
his studio from the bedroom to the barn?
Lee Krasner:
Surely, since his 1950 show had some big paintings.
It
had
One, Autumn Rhythm
hanging opposite it,
Lavender Mist,
plus
the big black and white painting in Dusseldorf, the Muriel Newman
