Certifiably Married

Posted by Mary Murray on August 29th 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: Musem of Art

Certified: Artists and Their Wedding Documents
June 19—September 18, 2011
Cardamone Gallery, Museum of Art

Marlene Dietrich at the wedding of Cleve Gray and Francie du Plessix

In conjunction with Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns, the Museum of Art has joined with the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, to pair wedding-related archival materials with works of art from the Institute’s collection. Documents, including original marriage certificates and vintage photographs, record the nuptial union of some of the most renowned artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including artist couples Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner; and Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst. As expected, the stories behind these artist betrothals are often as colorful as the works of art themselves.

Certified includes the wedding certificate of Pollock and Krasner. Krasner remembered that, in the mid-1940s, ”Jackson and I had been living together for three years, and I gave him an ultimatum – either we get married or we split.”  Pollock agreed to the former. After refusals from several houses of worship that frowned upon mixed marriages (Jew and unbaptized Christian) a liberal minister at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City agreed to marry them. May Rosenberg, wife of critic Harold Rosenberg, and the church janitor served as witnesses. Rosenberg recalled that she and Krasner “ran around looking for a hat” for Lee to wear and that it was a lovely, simple ceremony in which the ”minister spoke about . . . beauties in faith . . . I took them to breakfast or brunch.  We were ecstatic.”

Jackson Pollock's studio, Springs, Long Island, New York

Shortly thereafter, the newlyweds purchased a house on Fireplace Road in Springs, East Hampton, borrowing funds from collector Peggy Guggenheim. It was in the barn studio here that Pollock would rise to the height of his artistic powers, creating such masterpieces as the Munson-Williams-Proctor’s monumental No. 2, 1949.

 Krasner and Pollock’s marriage would become tumultuous in the forthcoming years, fueled in part by Pollock’s alcoholism, but the couple would never formally separate. Pollock famously died in a car crash in 1956 in East Hampton as Krasner was traveling in Europe. Lee Krasner would live for another 28 years, her artistic achievements receiving their own just recognition.

Lee Krasner in her studio

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 Founded in 1954, the Archives of American Art is the world’s pre-eminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in the United States. Its vast holdings—more than 16 million letters, diaries and scrapbooks of artists, dealers, and collectors; manuscripts of critics and scholars; business and financial records of museums, galleries, schools, and associations; photographs of art world figures and events; sketches and sketchbooks; rare printed material; film, audio and video recordings; and the largest collection of oral histories anywhere on the subject of art—are a vital resource to anyone interested in American culture from the past 200 years. The Archives can be found on the Web at www.aaa.si.edu.

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 Certified is organized by Charles Duncan, Collections Specialist for the Archives of American Art and Mary Murray, MWPAI Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.