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Today, Pollock artworks sell for tens of millions -- one painting in 2006 reportedly sold to an unidentified collector for $140 million
-- but when the couple lived in East Hampton in the late `40s and `50s, they struggled to pay their bills. Harrison says there was one bounced check found amid Pollock's papers for $4, and it was several years before the home was equipped with electricity and plumbing. A key turning point came in 1949, when Life magazine did a profile of Pollock, asking the question, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" The publicity "put him on the map in a huge way," Harrison said, noting he sold $4,000 in paintings soon after the article appeared. "He called a plumber, shingled the house, paid off the mortgage. They were normal people except for the fact they were artistic geniuses. Other than that they lived a normal life." Pollock, who descended into a deep alcoholic haze and may have suffered from depression or other mental illness
-- he was never properly diagnosed, says Harrison -- was having an affair with artist Ruth Klingman at the time of his death in August 1956. While Krasner was vacationing in Europe, Pollock smashed his Oldsmobile convertible in a drunken stupor about a mile from his home in Springs. Klingman survived the crash (she died in 2010), but a friend, Edith Metzger, was killed. "I don't mind the fact that he was a mean son of a bitch at times, and had a lot of personal problems that he fought through," Harris said. "The one thing that I feel harms his legacy is that he basically was responsible for the death of Edith Metzger." Besides the April 25 fundraiser in Manhattan, a centennial tribute of Pollock's art continues at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery in Washington, D.C. until May 15. An exhibit, "The Persistence of Pollock," will be on display at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center from May 3-July 28, and a lecture on Pollock and Krasner will be held at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton on July 22. Crocs will introduce a limited edition "Jackson Pollock Crocs Classic" shoe, featuring a replica of a photo taken from the floor of Pollock's studio in mid-June. The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will receive a royalty on each pair, which list for $50, said Harrison. She recalls working as a reporter for The New York Times in the late 1980s, and being sent to Springs when the paint-stained wooden floor was found under Masonite floorboards that Pollock installed in 1952. "All of a sudden the conservators start to make little noises, ooh ah, oh," Harrison said. "So we get down on our hands and knees and we start looking, and the colors keep coming and pretty soon we were all doing it. The joke was Jackson must have put it down when he was drunk, because the sticky side was up." Actually a handyman did the work, she later discovered. "You think, it's just a paint-covered floor. It's just kind of a mess, really, but it's a fascinating mess because it's got all of the colors, all of the gestures and all of the energy that's in his poured paintings and there it is right there on the floor." It's impossible to put a price on its value, she said. "It's a document; it's not a work of art because it's an accumulation over time. This covers a seven-year period of his work, the most productive and innovative period."
[Associated
Press;
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