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Throughout Greenberg’s first months of remedy, in the summertime of 1955, his therapist, Ralph Klein, moved out to stick with Jane Pearce and Saul Newton at their summer time residence at Barnes Touchdown in Amagansett. Greenberg, unable to just accept a prolonged separation from the therapist he had begun to see daily, started inviting himself to stick with buddies on Lengthy Island, particularly the artist Jackson Pollock and his spouse, the painter Lee Krasner, who lived in Springs, just a few miles from Klein, Newton, and Pearce.
Pollock was in a interval of deep disaster, one which Greenberg himself had helped create. A lifelong alcoholic, Pollock, with Krasner’s assist, had managed to stay sober between 1947 and 1951, one in every of his intervals of biggest productiveness. However in 1954 he determined to take his artwork in a brand new path, transferring away from the drip work that made him well-known.
Greenberg was unimpressed, describing Pollock’s 1954 present on the Janis Gallery as “compelled, pumped, dressed up.” His overview appeared to indicate that Pollock had misplaced his method: Pollock “discovered himself straddled between the easel image and one thing else laborious to outline, and within the final two or three years he has pulled again.” In the identical essay, Greenberg appeared to put the crown of America’s preeminent painter on the top of Clyfford Nonetheless, calling him “probably the most vital and authentic painters of our time.”
“So, Clem, who created the parable of Pollock—‘that is the best residing American painter’—goes on the market and says, ‘You’ve misplaced it, Jackson,’” stated Barbara Rose, who was an in depth pal of Krasner’s. “‘You don’t have it anymore. You’re no good’ . . . So Pollock, who has had the reassurance and confidence and backing of each Clem and Lee, has a nervous breakdown, and he begins ingesting once more.”
Within the midst of this disaster, Greenberg turned the fixed weekend visitor of Pollock and Krasner in order that he may proceed seeing his therapist, Ralph Klein. Their home was a warfare zone, with a drunk, indignant, and extremely abusive Pollock tearing into Krasner on a regular basis. “Jackson was in a rage at her from morning until night time,” Greenberg recalled.
The state of affairs was untenable. Feeling that this violent and ugly combating would find yourself killing his buddies, Greenberg insisted that Krasner see an analyst instantly, and he contacted Jane Pearce, hostess and mentor to his personal therapist. Greenberg, Krasner, and Pollock—probably the most well-known troikas of recent American artwork—drove over collectively to Pearce’s home. Pollock’s biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory Smith interviewed Jane Pearce in regards to the encounter (the one interview of any form Pearce is thought to have given). “Clem pushed her to do that as a result of he noticed that Jackson was killing her,” Pearce advised them. “Or permitting her to kill herself. It was a second of absolute disaster.” Pearce really useful that Krasner start remedy straight away. Though Pollock vehemently opposed Krasner’s seeing a therapist, he agreed to start remedy as effectively. “Jackson couldn’t stand the concept of Lee and me in remedy with out him,” Greenberg recalled. “He didn’t need to be disregarded.” Pollock, too, would start seeing Ralph Klein. When September rolled round and the analysts all returned to Manhattan, Greenberg resumed his common classes with Klein whereas Pollock made a weekly pilgrimage into town for remedy.
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