ABSTRACT
One night at the Cedar, in March 1956, Pollock met Ruth Kligman, a twentyfive-year-old brunette who provoked comparisons with Elizabeth Taylor. Enrolled in a painting class at the New School, she had a job at a small downtown gallery and an apartment on East Sixteenth Street. According to a memoir Kligman published years afterward, she and Pollock began a love affair a week after they met. Other accounts suggest that their affair didn't start for several months, that she had to pester him into it. Pollock was afraid of Krasner, who had developed a loathing of his behavior but refused to consider divorce. It is certain that, by late spring, he had fallen into the routine of spending Monday nights at Kligman's apartment, then taking the train back to the Hamptons the following morning. Before meeting again, they would talk by telephone, Kligman in Manhattan, Pollock at Springs, with Krasner nearby. She refused to acknowledge the affair.
