BARBARA ROSE
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Lee Krasner:
No. The pattern was that if he went out to work, I did not
ever just come into the studio. But he might come back from the
studio and I might say something like, "How did it go?", although I
could tell before I asked the question. And he would say on occasion,
"Not bad, would you like to see what I did?" I would go out with
him and see what he did. Sometimes on these occasions he might
pick up and start
to
work while I was there. I saw him do some
cutouts, for example. At different times I saw him do bits and pieces.
Barbara Rose:
Do you have any idea why he cut out parts of the canvas?
Lee Krasner:
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more than why I might start to collage at some point.
Barbara Rose:
Is there anything you can remember about his working
process? I guess he was simply very absorbed.
Lee Krasner:
When he worked, oh yes.
Barbara Rose:
You get the impression that it was like a trance.
Lee Krasner:
It's a romantic idea, but
to
a degree it is true. He would
take off so to speak.
It
is a form of leaving your surroundings. There
were periods when he would just observe his work or be critical.
There are both aspects-the total involvement and the subsequent
objective criticism.
Barbara Rose:
That's very important. E. A. Carmean writes in his
National Gallery text that there was a series of paintings all painted
at the same time. He claims that the first layer of the "drip" was
applied on all equally. He then left them and went back to them at
different stages as a kind of critical revision.
Lee Krasner:
Sometimes he did revise and sometimes he didn 't.
Barbara Rose:
He might do something, look at it, leave it, then go back
to it?
Lee Krasner:
Certainly, although he didn't have a standard procedure.
A painting like
Blue Poles
he reentered many, many times, and just
kept saying, "This won't come through." That went on for quite a
long time.
Barbara Rose:
How long, normally, would it take him to paint a
painting?
Lee Krasner:
It really varied. When he got hung up in something, like
Blue Poles,
where he did get hung up, it took quite a long time. This
went on beyond weeks. He might just walk away from it for a stretch
of time, and then come back, reenter. Others came through more
easily for him. When they came through, they came through rather
rapidly. Relatively.
Barbara Rose:
What percentage of the work was destroyed?
Lee Krasner:
Very little. Generally, he wouldn 't give up a canvas. He
