Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in LI

A view towards the sea at the Pollock Krasner House

A weekend trip to the Hamptons included plentiful art experiences. Today's post is the Pollock Krasner House and Studio.

An amazing storyteller was our tour guide at the East Hampton museum that was once the home and studio of the artists Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.

The house looks a lot better now than when Lee and Jackson put a down payment on it of $2k borrowed from Peggy Guggenheim.

Our animated tour guide in the studio building

Let me just say that their stories are fascinating and tragic, Pollock's alcoholism and early death in an automobile accident being the most well known part.

Lee abandoned for a time her own artistic ambitions after seeing Jackson's work. She thought he was the most original artist of their time and introduced him to a less than enthusiastic patron, Peggy Guggenheim.

In addition to admiring Jackson's work, Lee fell in love with him. She was not aware of his problem with alcohol.

The studio was an old barn on the property that was moved because it was blocking the view of the water. Inside, Pollock painted his famous large drip paintings with canvas spread on the floor, and the traces of that process are clearly evident in the space.

After his death, Krasner painted there, but used the walls to work on. Marks from her paintbrushes are still there too.

floor in the studio with slippered feet

Lee Krasner's story was less known to me, but I was impressed with her strong commitment to art that enabled her to leap the distance from daughter of an immigrant Orthodox Jewish family to art school and success in the NY art world.

Cemetery in East Hampton 

Lee first chose the smaller stone for her husband's grave marker, but thought it wasn't appropriate for an artist of his stature and she chose the boulder pictured behind it. When she died, many years later, the original stone was placed over her grave.

I have been thinking about these two people often since being there. I think the physical site where they lived still exudes a trace of their powerful auras.