EAST END ART! Weather allowing, this coming weekend (Saturday, especially) could be ideal for an art trip on the East End of Long Island.
Closing on Sunday is the tiny exhibition of small paintings by Jackson Pollock hung on the ground floor of the house at the
Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center. Even though Pollock seemed to feel that large-scale murals represented the future, these small abstract expressionist works (curated by Dr. Francis V. O’Connor) are very good in their own right, almost dainty in comparison to the artist's grander works. The exhibition will be open from 1 pm to 5 pm Thursday through Sunday, when it closes. While you're there you can inspect the house as well as the famous studio and the grounds.
I've already covered the
LongHouse Reserve in the woods of East Hampton. Saturday is the last day of its limited season. It'll be open from 2 to 5 pm. (It's also open on Wednesday from 2 to 5 pm.)
At
Guild Hall in East Hampton proper, there's a modest but strong show of
portraits by Andy Warhol. Curator John Smith very smartly included a set of Warhol screen tests among the works (though they're on video, not film). The exhibition runs through October 22 (Monday-Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm; Sunday from noon to 5pm).
So it's feasible that, this Saturday, an art lover could start with the Warhol in East Hampton, head up to Springs for the Pollock show, and then head over to LongHouse.
Here's the Pollock-Krasner house in Springs.
Here is the stairwell of the house. At the top, outside the bathroom, is a local newspaper tearsheet reporting Pollock's drunk-driving death in 1956. Two other car accidents were reported that night.
Here is a detail of the stairwell wall. Note the texture on the surface.
This is the view from behind the house. It's much prettier than it appears in this picture, which barely shows the water and watercraft in the distance.
This is the famous studio.
These are the rules for entering the main studio, where photography is prohibited.
Below are the slippers. They seemed abrasive to me, but they apparently enable visitors to walk on the paint-spattered main studio floor without causing serious damage. Scholars are actually trying to relate the paint spatterings to particular Pollock works, using old photographs as clues. When researchers see photographs depicting
Pollock painting on the main studio floor, they take note of the variable sizes of the floor slats to approximate where off-edge drippings might have landed.
One of Pollock's brothers created a baseball board game, shown here on a wall of the studio anteroom. (
Pee Wee Reese's name can be found along the third-base line.)
Pollock used the game boards as flooring.
A sad irony of the Pollock-Krasner house is that stores selling alcohol are across the street, on the other side of an intersection. I took this picture from the middle of the intersection, then got out of the way of traffic.
Photos: David Marc Fischer
Posts
