Reuben Nakian interviews, 1981 June 9-June 17

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Reuben Nakian interviews, 1981 June 9-June 17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Ruben Nakian
Conducted by Avis Berman
In Stamford, Connecticut
June 9, 1981

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Ruben Nakian on June 9, 1981. The interview took place in Stamford, CT, and was conducted by Avis Berman for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

[Transcriber’s note: RN’s transcribed words make him appear on the written page as gruff, irritable, and even unkindly. The timbre of his voice, however, is usually at odds with the words.]

Interview

[Tape 1, side A (all tapes are 45 minutes per side)]

DON ROSS: DON ROSS (Nakian’s assistant)

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t care anymore what anyone thinks. It doesn’t matter, you know, what I do or what I say. I just try to keep busy. Even my art’s, you know. . . . I do things just to keep busy. I don’t give a goddamn if. . . . I don’t even care to go to the Metropolitan Museum, and that was like a sacred place for me, and that meant, you know, I don’t even care to go there. So, Jesus, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m bored and blasé, you know. But I think my eyes. . . . I can’t see too good. Then I’ve been tired, I have a cold in my system. And it stays all summer and I’ve been tired as hell. Well, I’m feeling a little better now; maybe the cold’s worn off. I’ve got a little more pep. But when you’re saggy and tired and your eyes are not too sharp, you know, I get depressed.

AVIS BERMAN: Can you see well enough to go to the Gorky show, since Gorky was a friend of yours?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, well, I have to go close up to look at the paintings.

DON ROSS: He’s still producing a lot of work.

AVIS BERMAN: Certainly.

DON ROSS: It’s not like he can’t do anything.

AVIS BERMAN: I know.

DON ROSS: He’s still full of piss and vinegar.

AVIS BERMAN: Uh huh.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I still, you know, make drawings and some sculpture. But, you know, I just have to get up close.

AVIS BERMAN: Right.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And I almost do it instinctively. I don’t ever have to look. [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: What I want to do is start with the basics. I want to go back to your childhood.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t want to do that. No memories of it, there’s no. . . .

DON ROSS: Yes, you do. You just have to be. . . . You have to let people pick at you.

AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, that’s what I’m going to do. I know you were born in, you were from College Point, Long Island, and I’d like to know first of all your parents’ names and their occupations.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, my father’s name was George, and my mother’s name was Mary. And he was in a number of occupations. He used to be in embroidery and in weaving. Sort of business in this and that, I don’t know what. He used to change around.

AVIS BERMAN: And were you conscious of being Armenian when you were younger? Were you different?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, not. . . . I always felt American. It’s now the Armenians, they’re trying to come around and make an Armenian out of me, and I. . . . I don’t know the language. And I only saw a few of them when we were living in Jersey. And after that, I seldom saw an Armenian. I never think Armenian. I’m raised up on American and Greek history, and Walt Whitman, and Buffalo Bill, and cowboys and Indians, and I was never interested, even in reading Armenian history. I’ve never looked. . . . I’ve read French history, Roman and Greek, and everything. But Armenian is, I never. . . . I wasn’t excited about it, you know, not interested. And the Armenians know, you know, it’s a big history. They know all about it. I have no interest. They’re always saying, “Why don’t you make mythological Armenian sculpture?” What. . . . When you’ve got the Greek mythology, what the hell is the Armenian mythology? So I never felt Armenian.

AVIS BERMAN: But did you ever speak it at home, or anything? Did your parents speak it?

RUBEN NAKIAN: They used to speak a little bit. And we used to speak Turkish at home. And Turkish, the Armenian, and English—the three languages. And I used to. . . . I couldn’t speak it, but I remember a lot of Turkish words. And especially the funny curse words. They’re so funny, you know, it’s a belly laugh. It’s a beautiful language. Well, it’s the only other language I knew a little bit about, because they used to speak it at home, and I used to hear it. And I love it, you know, but I never hear anyone speak it anymore. But if anyone talks it, I can remember it, you know. It’s a strange language. Everything’s ass-backwards, you know. If they insult you, it’s ass-backwards insulting. It’s funny as hell. [chuckling]

AVIS BERMAN: Well, what was your father like?

RUBEN NAKIAN: He was a tall. . . . He was tall and he was bald. He was a nice fellow.

AVIS BERMAN: Were you close to him?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, you know. We were an old Christian family. Used to go to church. Not the Catholic church, but the Protestant, the Episcopal or Armenian church. It wasn’t the Catholic church. So I used to go to Sunday school. And, you know, they all went to church on Sunday. We had an Armenian church in Union City. It used to be called West Hoboken, and they changed it.

AVIS BERMAN: So you. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: I was there three or four years around that area, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: You moved to New Jersey when you were a kid?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Let’s see, what. . . . I had a brother named George, and he died at the age of twenty around 1905. And I had a sister who was beautiful. She was a, she looked like a German, she was so blond. She didn’t look Armenian, with blue eyes, yellow hair, and everything. And she married an Armenian. . . . He was in the roof business. So he brought the whole family from College Point after my brother died. A year later she married him, and we all moved to 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, around there. And it wasn’t colored then. There were no colored people around. Now, it’s a colored neighborhood. And we lived there for a year, and then we moved to Rutherford, New Jersey. In 1906 we were in Lenox and 116th Street, and I went to school there for a year on 117th Street. There was a school, and I went there for a year. Then we moved to Rutherford, which was nicer. It was in the country, right in the country. And the locomotives there had, you know, they had locomotives there. Boy, I used to love them, because I’d just sit down in the station and wait for the locomotives to come in, you know. Have you ever seen them?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yes. They don’t have them anymore. They were real works of art. I actually made two of them, around 1930, abstractions of locomotives, and I even had them on an abstract trestle, you know, a locomotive in an abstraction. I made two of them. That’s around 1930, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I have no pictures of them.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, that’s something I never knew, that you had anything to do making, anything to do with machines. That’s very interesting.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I actually went downtown, to the. . . . I got in touch with a locomotive magazine. They gave me pictures and I spent about a year, and made them out of great, big, and in plaster, you know, full of action.

DON ROSS: What happened to them?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I, you know, I break things up, move on, throw them away.

AVIS BERMAN: You’ve always destroyed things.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And that was around 1930. Yeah, I think. . . . That was before I got the Guggenheim. So it was 1929, I made that. And I made that at 55 Christopher Street. After the Whitney dropped me in 1928, I moved to 55. And I remember that room. I made them in there. Yeah, I made two of them. Everybody thought I was crazy. [laughter]

AVIS BERMAN: How did you get in the habit of destroying so much stuff?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, when you move, where are you going to put ‘em? Every time you move, you gotta. . . . You can’t take ‘em along. I had no huge house. We were poor, and where you gonna put ‘em? So I say screw it, smash ‘em up.

AVIS BERMAN: But even a lot of your small. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: I get bored with them. I’ve smashed up a lot of terra-cottas that were shown at the Egan Gallery around 1950. They were great big ones. When I moved out here in the country, they were in the way. Bingo, I wasn’t happy with them. Maybe they were swell things, they just at that time and the mood I was in, and no room, oh, screw ‘em, smash ‘em up.

AVIS BERMAN: And no one ever tried to keep you from destroying any of these pieces?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, no one was around. No one was around. My wife encouraged me. “You know, it’s junk anyway, so smash it.” You know, she, what, she once said that. [laughs]

DON ROSS: There were people who took things away from him.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I used to break ‘em up.

DON ROSS: A lot of the heads, Reuben, none of those heads would be around if Thor didn’t take them away from you. The head of Duchamp would have been smashed up.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. Well, they were down in the basement, and they were getting in that old little shack and throwing things, so I told them to take it. Well, afterwards I got them back. They saved ‘em for me for a couple years there.

AVIS BERMAN: Thank goodness. Who’s Thor?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, he’s an old friend of mine. Now he’s working for me downtown. He’s a photographer. He comes out a couple days a week. See, that big thing, it’s 22 feet long. It’s a great big whopper. Yeah, I’ve known him for years.

AVIS BERMAN: There were other children in the family. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, there were five altogether. Two died when they were young. My brother got hurt in a football game. He got kicked in the head, and he got spinal meningitis or something and died young. That was a great tragedy at that time. And then my sister Bessie married and she had three boys. They’re still living; they’re in their seventies now. [laughs] She died all of a sudden, I think around 1940. I don’t know why. That’s, that’s my family. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. Do you keep in contact with your nephews still?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Seldom, no.

AVIS BERMAN: Do they live around in this area?

RUBEN NAKIAN: One lives in Philadelphia, one lives in Rutherford, and one lives in Virginia. And I haven’t seen them for five years or so.

AVIS BERMAN: Do they know your work?

RUBEN NAKIAN: They’re not interested in it.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess I’d like to know what kind of a household your family was to grow up in.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hmm?

AVIS BERMAN: What kind of a household was the Nakian household to grow up in?

RUBEN NAKIAN: My parents?

AVIS BERMAN: Did you have a happy childhood?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, they were good. They were good parents, and when I wanted to be an artist, they didn’t stop it. I was still going to grammar school, and I wanted to be an artist, fine, you know. We were poor, you know. An artist in those days was crazy, you know. You’d starve to death in the garret. Everyone was sorry for you. [They’d] say “Oh my god! What’s going to happen to you? You’re going to starve to death.” “So all right, nice, but how you going to earn your living?” In those days, it was a struggle to earn a living. We were poor and everyone was poor, you know.
There was horses around, and a wagon would come with horses with [fish] in it and that. He’d blow a horn and everyone would run down the street and buy a piece of newspaper or fish, and there was horseshit in the streets. And you’d see runaway horses running down the streets, you know, and they, someone’d get up and stop ‘em. Iceman was there, he’d come with ice right with a pick, cut up, put it on his, with a pick and come up put it in your house. The coal man would come. . . .

DON ROSS: Tell ‘em the story about that strange little gypsy.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Huh?

DON ROSS: She’ll appreciate that.

AVIS BERMAN: The story about a gypsy?

DON ROSS: A gypsy. A guy who went around with a paper bag.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah, there was one, you know, they used to go around for rags and. . . . It was strange, in 1916, when I was at Manship’s, at Lexington Avenue and 24th Street, a man come around and asked for if we had any gelatin. Because, you know, sculptors used it. I guess, for the war or something. Nice-looking guy, you know, like he was in business. Having any gelatin, he wanted to buy it. I guess they needed it during the war. [chuckling] But this, this gypsy, I saw a little tiny fella in rags, and he had a bag, and he was going around in the streets and the side alleys and everything, and trying to find dog turd that was white, you know, dogs that ate bones, and he’d just collect that and put it in a bag. Maybe for medicinal or just, you know, someone wanted it. [laughter] Just, you know, picking up that. Actually, you know, picking up rags and bottles and anything, you know. People that would want dog turd. [laughter] That’s history. That’s ancient history!

AVIS BERMAN: That certainly is.

RUBEN NAKIAN: That goes back to Shakespeare’s days. [laughing] Going around picking up white dog turd. It’s hard to believe. [laughter]

AVIS BERMAN: Yes, what on earth could they have, could he have wanted it for?

RUBEN NAKIAN: In those days, every corner had a saloon, you know, and they’re all Germans out in Hoboken, West Hoboken, and Weehawken, you know. Every corner was a saloon, and they had German bands, you know, with the trumpets. About three or four would come. They’d go up to one place. They’d stand on the street corner, you know, and play their music. That was the only music we had, you know. And they played that band, and then they’d pass the hat around and they’d go in the saloon. And you used to hear that all the time, you know, the band, you don’t hear it anymore. And they had organ grinders with a monkey. You know, a guy with an organ grinder and a monkey?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, this was [another one] that had the monkey. Sometimes they didn’t have the monkey, but this one did—a small monkey with a red hat on a chain. Ah, that was wonderful. [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Sounds pretty European.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, it was real. . . . It was like Europe there then, you know. Now, Jesus, I mean, now everything is. . . . Wow, the change I’ve seen in my lifetime! And people used to die all the time. They weren’t clean; they were, people just died young, you know. Disease and. . . . That’s where you’d go in a butcher store, you’d get a bad piece of meat. Flies, and they had no screens, or nothing, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes, things are pretty antiseptic now. For good and for bad.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yes. Well, that’s, it’s mainly what’s keeping us alive. You read history, American or anything, they all died in their forties, fifties, and sixties. You know, the average, you know, everyone in those days.

AVIS BERMAN: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?

RUBEN NAKIAN: When I was still a kid in school. I don’t know. I used to look at the frame stores. They had a picture of a, two horses’ heads—Rosa Bonheur’s horses.

AVIS BERMAN: The Horse Fair.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, the horses. You know, that’s a wonderful job. Don’t you think so?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. Oh, at the Metropolitan? Tell me why you like it. Why do you like it?

RUBEN NAKIAN: It’s full of life, and it’s a great job. The horses are alive and sweating, and. . . . It’s a little academic. If she studied under Manet, she’d know how to put a little more style to it. But I think it’s a great job. And it’s a wonderful for a woman!

AVIS BERMAN: Well!

RUBEN NAKIAN: The horses are hefty and, man, it’s a great job! I’m glad they own it.

AVIS BERMAN: I just read a book about her.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know anything about her. It should be interesting. Have you read her book? Is it interesting?

AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, Dore Ashton just wrote a biography of her, and. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, good.

AVIS BERMAN: It is. Except she had very. . . . It’s very sad because she did have talent, and all she ever wanted to do was be a success at the Salon.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh yeah, she had. . . . Well, Cézanne wanted to be a success at the Salon.

AVIS BERMAN: That’s true.

RUBEN NAKIAN: They were all, even Manet was, you know, he would. . . . The Impressionists, they were even trying to get into the Salon.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: You know, they all. . . . They all had either a red ribbon, you know. That was a big thing. They all wanted that, you know. It was funny as hell. They all, they all wanted to impress somebody else in those days. You know, another laborer or shopkeeper and. . . . You know?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I think it was very important. They all took pride in their profession. You were a doctor, dressed well, and everything.

AVIS BERMAN: She did say. . . . However, eventually, she did speak very condescendingly of the Impressionists. This is Rosa Bonheur, and she really liked. . . . The Horse Fair owes a lot to Gericault. And that’s what’s so great about it—she took his very powerful example for inspiration, but then. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: I’ve never seen anything else of hers. What do you say, she had something to do with Gericault?

AVIS BERMAN: Well, The Horse Fair is sort of inspired by Gericault. But then she went to England.

RUBEN NAKIAN: It was inspired by that?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, he did horses didn’t he?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. And then, then she went to England, and she met Landseer, who did the animals, the stags.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: And then she decided that he was really the greatest artist, and she started imitating his very dull style.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yes, yes. Was she ever married or what’s that. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: No, she was a lesbian.

RUBEN NAKIAN: A lesbian! Imagine that!

DON ROSS: Who was the woman. . . . Now, how could I forget her name. She was a very important painter, Italian painter, very influential. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: She made pastels in the eighteenth century?

DON ROSS: Yeah, and Goethe was a friend of hers.

RUBEN NAKIAN: What’s her name? It starts with an R or something.

DON ROSS: She was. . . . They almost made her an ambassador, she was such an important person.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. She did good portraits in pastel.

DON ROSS: She was damn good, boy.

RUBEN NAKIAN: What was it?

DON ROSS: I just happened to catch part of a program on Channel 13, The Artist Was a Woman, or something like that.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, and she was famous, she got commissions and. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: I don’t know who you’re talking about, I’m embarrassed to say.

DON ROSS: Gee, we caught you in something you don’t know.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes, you did. There are many things. You just haven’t figured them all out yet.

DON ROSS: Well, we’ll catch them out. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: I’m controlling the conversation so I can look learned. [laughs]

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, she was Italian, but she traveled in all the courts, you know, Poland, Russia, and she was famous, and she did good. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: It was easier in the eighteenth century than the nineteenth century for women to do that, I think. When you were a kid, did you mostly draw, or were you working in clay?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, I didn’t work in clay. I had no talent for clay, or anything. I used to draw. I used to copy things. Around 1909 and 1910 there was a place in Jersey City, some German. . . . It was called the Academy, the something Drawing Academy, for children. And I used to go there, and there was a drawing board high up and there were stools. And he’d [the instructor—Ed.] give us old engravings and old woodcuts to copy and pieces of pink paper, you know, drawing or blue paper and crayon, and we used to put the picture there and copy it and make a bunch of roses or leaves or something, and we used to copy it. That was okay, and he used to come with a piece of rye bread that was baked at home and use that as an eraser. So he’d go all around where there were these little smudges and he’d erase it. Then he’d go and he had a stamp that was “Academy” and he’d put a stamp on the paper, and then we’d take it home and show it to papa and say “Look, see what I made.” [laughter] So I used to go there once a week for quite a while. [laughs] So that, that was the training. I was able to sit on my ass and copy something, you know. That was good.

AVIS BERMAN: I guess I’d like to know when you started to differentiate between, say, that you were going to be a sculptor as opposed to a painter?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, that was an accident. I wanted to be a painter. Peter Paul Rubens, they had some at the Met, and, you know, they’re good paintings. So I was at the Independent Art School. It used be the Robert Henri place, and I used to sketch from life in conte crayon, and the nude model in the evenings, once or twice a week or whatever it was. And after I had a bunch of drawings, I, you know, I’d get a job someplace. And so I made the rounds of all, of all the painters that I heard of, and there wasn’t anything doing. They said, “You know, it isn’t like the old days where you have a studio and an apprentice. They’d say, “We paint alone.” They said, “Why don’t you try the sculptors?” “Oh, yeah, okay.” So I looked in the phone book and people and I got addresses of the sculptors. I went to two or three, and they had nothing. Then I went to James Earle Fraser. You’ve heard of him?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. He created the Buffalo Nickel.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. He was a nice guy, and he was in MacDougal Alley. He had a big studio there. I went to see him. He was awfully nice. He said, “Why don’t you go and see Paul Manship, and if he doesn’t take you, come back in three weeks, and I will.” “Who’s Paul,” you know. . . . Well, I had known about him; I’d seen things in magazines. So I went to Paul Manship. And he was on Lexington Avenue and 24th. There was a low wooden rambling building there, and there was a funny-looking guy in the background with black eyes and long black hair, and that was Gaston Lachaise. He was working for him, you know. And there was Manship there. So I had some large charcoal drawings, and I had a little sketchbook, and I showed him the large charcoal drawing and put it down, and he wasn’t interested. But then he happened to pick up my little sketchbook, in conte crayon from the nude models. He looked through it, and he went through it again, and he looked at me, and he went through it three times. [laughs] He said, “I’ll write you a letter. See if I can use you.” So a week later I got a letter. I still got that letter somewhere in the house.

AVIS BERMAN: Terrific! Don’t throw it out!

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. So I went there. . . . Then I was with him for a long time. He said, “Reuben, for Christ’s sake, Jesus, you can draw, you can draw, but you can’t do any modeling. You’re lousy. What’s the matter with you?” So he sent me up to the Art Students League evening classes, and I was still lousy. It took a long time for me to get going with clay. It was because, I guess, the kind of work he was doing, you got to put eyes in, and, you know, I was under the influence, I guess naturally, of abstracting things, because as soon as I discovered Cézanne and Brancusi, I went with them like a ton of bricks. And you know, Manship’s stuff, detailed eyes, fingernails—that stuff bored me. [laughter] That’s the kind of stuff he was doing.

AVIS BERMAN: I think it might have bored Manship, too. Didn’t he make Lachaise do most of the carving of the fingertips and everything?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, well, in marble. There was a big slab, John Pierpont Morgan, they used to have it in the Met in the wall. They took it away. And that was carved in limestone. Lachaise had to carve it. He did all the carving—the ornament and the figures and everything, you know.

DON ROSS: Reuben, you’ve got to show Avis that sketchbook, you know.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know where it is. In the house somewheres? I don’t know where. . . .

DON ROSS: Well, we just had it. Remember, we had it? I hid it somewhere. Probably someplace we’ll never find it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s in the closet, in the closet in the bedroom, or something. [chuckles] Yeah, that’s one thing I saved. And it’s marked in there 1915, I think. Yeah. That’s when I went to the Independent Art School, yeah. 1915.

AVIS BERMAN: So just becoming a sculptor was completely accidental. Did you ever paint at all?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. No, I never painted. I guess I would have been a flop as a painter. I mean, I would have had to go into sculpture anyway. There was no choice about that. I didn’t think I had that kind of mentality, to paint. See, what saved me was my drawing talent. Going to that German Academy sitting on my ass and copying flowers. [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Well, it’s good discipline.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Going to the German Academy taught me something. [laughs] Aah, boy.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, when you started thinking of yourself as being an apprentice as a sculptor, did you think you were going to do large public commissions? I mean, is that what you. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, that was the only thing in those days. There wasn’t, you know. . . . Or like Manship—why he made a hit—he was the first one to make little statuettes in bronze, you know, to put on the table. Because everything in those days was for the state houses and the courthouses, and Abraham Lincoln, and all that kind of stuff.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: An Indian, you know, by Fraser, sitting on a horse, you know, it was the last roundup.

AVIS BERMAN: The End of the Trail.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, there was always a story. Something like that. And it was naturalistic, and that’s all the sculptors. They were all doing it, and that’s the jobs they were getting. And they all had helpers, you know, for these big monuments, three or four guys. They had plaster casters, bronze casters. They were getting the money then. They were the big shots. George Grey Barnard, that started the Cloisters. Oh, what a. . . . He had a statue of Abraham Lincoln about 400 feet high, or something. Oh, what a great man.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you visit his studio?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, no, I was too scared. I wasn’t the kind who could walk in. I met, I met a guy when, when I was in Washington making the New Deal heads, and he was up there, and he had a little publicity. He was making little crappy stuff. And he was from Georgia. He was a regular Southerner. So as I came back from Washington—we were living on 58th Street—someone knocked at the door in the evening and came in. I stared at him, and he stared at me. He says, “Are you Reuben Nakian?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “My name is. . . .” I forget it. He was a regular Southern guy, and he. . . . He was a Southerner, you know, everyone’s a pal. You know? You’d walk in, “Hi ya, pal!” And, you know, he goes around, he knocks at doors, and meets everybody. So he wanted to be a sculptor, he’d go and meet all the famous people. He’d walk in, “Hi!” and, you know, knock on doors, “Hi, I’m, my name is this,” and, you know, “Come on in,” and. . . . And then he used to hitchhike; he used to stand by the Holland Tunnel and hitchhike. He used to go to Georgia and come back, and he. . . . [laughs] What was I going to say about him? I don’t know, I had his. . . . [laughing]

AVIS BERMAN: You were, that he was. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, you know, he goes around. . . . Oh yeah, then he wanted to write. You know, so, well, he needed a typewriter, so he went to. . . . There’s a large typewriter company. What are they called?

AVIS BERMAN: Royal or Remington?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, Remington. So he went to the headquarters of Remington and introduced himself to the top man, the president. Says he’s going to write the great American novel, and he’d like a typewriter. So, “Oh great!” So they gave him one of his best typewriters free, and never saw him before, he walks out with a typewriter. [both laugh] Well, when you got a talent like that, you can go places.

AVIS BERMAN: Chutzpah.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Now I didn’t have that kind of talent. [chuckles] I wonder what happened to him?

DON ROSS: That wasn’t the guy you did the head of, was it?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Huh?

DON ROSS: That wasn’t the guy you did the head of?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, no, no, I. . . .

DON ROSS: That was another guy who was going to write the great American novel.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah, I made a. . . .

DON ROSS: Chuck Smith?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, Chuck Smith. Yeah, well, he was, he was into, you know, he was okay. But the other, you know, the Georgian, he was a character! And that’s marvelous, you know, you walk in and knocking on the door, and getting chummy with people. You take ‘em out to lunch, and friendly, and. . . . I know we were walking on Broadway and 50th downtown, he was talking to people. “Hi pal!” You know, anybody. [laughs] Gee, I wonder what happened to the poor son of a bitch.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you know Daniel Chester French?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I went to him for a job when I was looking for the sculptor job. Yeah, he was on Eighth Street, too, close to where the Whitneys were, and he was a sweet little and nice, kind man. I knocked on the door and asked if he wanted an apprentice, and he, in a sweet way, said no, and then, you know. . . . [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Did you see him?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I met him. He was a sweet guy.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you see him afterwards, when you were working for Manship?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, no, no, even Fraser, you know, I never even told Fraser I got on with Manship, or. . . . Yeah, you know, I have no manners, you know, no manners. Yeah, I don’t, you know, uneducated.

AVIS BERMAN: Now didn’t Gutzon Borglum have his studio right here in Stamford?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. [Jamie’s] father had it for about five years. He just sold it. I used to work for them. Yeah, he used to work there. Yeah, I made some of the pots in that studio. Did you ever see it? It’s a huge. . . . It would cost a million dollars to build now. It’s all out of this heavy granite. Tall. It’s like the Grand Central Station.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you know the Borglums at all?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. I knew his brother Solon Borglum. When I was at the Art Students League, he was the instructor there. I never met Gutzon, though.

AVIS BERMAN: What did you learn from Solon? Was he a good teacher?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know. Well, you know what they did. There was a nude model, and you made a clay model about two feet high, and when the model turned, you copied that silhouette, and when it turned, you copied that. There was no teaching there. I mean, it’s not how I see sculpture done nowadays, they all, you know, they don’t know how to teach. You know they turn. . . . Copy silhouettes. That’s, that’s not sculpture. That’s what they all do, you know, copy silhouettes. That doesn’t have anything to do with sculpture.

AVIS BERMAN: What is sculpture, then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know. And if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.

AVIS BERMAN: Why?

RUBEN NAKIAN: As Picasso said, “Someone who wants to know, you know, you don’t worry about then. If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t even tell you. I’d keep it to myself.” [laughs] No, sculpture is architecture.

AVIS BERMAN: You went to the Art Students League in 1912 or so, so you were only fifteen, right?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. And I checked on that. They had me on the jury last month, so I happened to mention [it] to the woman up there, and she went in the office, and then she came out with two cards. And there it was, 1912, August, my address where I lived in West Hoboken. And then 1917, there was another card. They had me right there. [laughs] I can’t get away from them. In 1912. How many years is that now?

AVIS BERMAN: Seventy years, seventy years ago, nearly.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t believe it. [laughter] You’re pulling my leg. [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Next year, August 1982, will be seventy years.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Aah, Jesus, you’re right! I don’t know. Terrible.

AVIS BERMAN: Um hmm. Who did you have as a teacher at either of those times?

RUBEN NAKIAN: With the League?

AVIS BERMAN: Yeah.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Solon Borglum was the, you know. . . . And the other school, there was no instr[uctor]. I’d just sit on the stool, they didn’t come around. But the other one, at the Independent Art School, there was a guy called Homer Boss. Did you ever hear that name?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He was a nice fella. I don’t know what he painted like or anything. A nice guy, very quiet. There was no, there was no criticism. I had a little sketch book, and made magazine things that were coming out, you know. But it was the only school in New York. You had to go to the Academy, you know. And that was the only free thing. You know, they had heard about Cézanne and Van Gogh.

AVIS BERMAN: Right. And then, then you also, you worked at The Century, under Will Bradley, right?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, not for The Century, but for Will Bradley, yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: Uh huh.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And he was the art editor at Century magazine for a while. I was with him for a year or two, before I got on with Manship. He was a nice. He was a nice fella. I was lucky. I met nice people when I was young, you know, that’s. . . . I didn’t go to grammar school. I was even let back twice. But that wasn’t my. . . . It wasn’t my fault. I used to know the answers, but because I stuttered, I didn’t raise my hand up. And then we were moving then, and I was left back another year, so I graduated a year late. [chuckles] And that’s it. I didn’t go to high school or college or anything, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Do you regret not going to high school?

RUBEN NAKIAN: It’s goddamn fortunate! I’d have been an idiot if I had gone to high school or. . . . If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have been a goddamn moron.

AVIS BERMAN: I want to know what you were doing for Will Bradley.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I was doing lettering, and hanging, and I was the office boy. I used to take the manuscripts to illustrators. I met John Sloan that way and James Montgomery Flagg. And I met Lionel Barrymore. You know, the brother, did you ever hear he had a brother, Lionel Barrymore? I met him. And afterwards I met John Barrymore. I got a good story about John Barrymore.

AVIS BERMAN: Why don’t you tell it?

RUBEN NAKIAN: This was around 1917 when we were down in Washington Mews. Manship had made a portrait of him, and I had to bring the plaster model up to his theater on 45th Street, and so I brought it in. He knew me, because he used to be in the studio. So I brought it up to him, and they were going out in the taxi. He wanted me to come along, and I was too shy. I said, “Oh, no, no,” and, you know. And then he gave me a two-dollar tip, and I didn’t want it, but he put it in my coat pocket up here, you know. So I went down and I watched him, and watched him work. There was Lachaise working there, you know, and Manship wasn’t there. And he was always broke. His wife nagged, you know, everything. So he said. . . . I remember his French accent. He said, “Roo-ban, can you loan me two dollar?” So I gave him the. . . . John Barrymore gave me two dollars. So I took it out this way and gave it to him [laughing]

AVIS BERMAN: So in five minutes the two dollars was gone.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, from John Barrymore to Gaston Lachaise.

AVIS BERMAN: He must have been astonished that you had it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs] Oh, boy! Yeah, he had it hard. He was always broke. You know, he used to hock his small bronzes in a hock shop to get five or ten dollars to keep going.

AVIS BERMAN: Was that because he had difficulty selling, or because his wife was so extravagant, or what?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, in those days it was tough, you know. Manship was successful, but he [Lachaise—AB] wasn’t. He was supposed to be modern, and he had a tough time. Well, he was getting along. But his wife lived in a hotel on Fifth Avenue, and money, and then she had a son I guess he had to support too, or something, and studio rent and. . . . He killed himself. He used to work. . . . I remember, he had to go up around 42nd Street and 10th Avenue, there was a place there, and he was copying a Greek plaque—one of the famous Greek statues of a couple of figures. He was carving it in granite or hard stone for some, you know, for some rich man, you know. Making a copy, you know. And that wasn’t his art. Just to make money with a jackhammer, you know, carving. You know, he was an artist on his own, but he was. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: He had to live.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. And it was tough. It was tough in the old days. Unless you had independent money, being an artist was a pain in the ass. Anyone that hasn’t got independent money is an idiot to become an artist. I didn’t say that loud enough.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, you stuck with it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, but I was an idiot. [both laugh] [sound of thunder] Hey, it’s going to rain again, huh?

AVIS BERMAN: Why did you quit your job working for Will Bradley?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I guess it was over. He only had so much work, and he was having it tough too, you know. I remember my salary was six dollars a week.

AVIS BERMAN: How far did that go?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, it kept me going. [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: Were you living at home?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. I used to ride the 42nd Street ferry, and the ferry was three cents, and from there. . . . I didn’t even take the trolley cars; I used to walk.

AVIS BERMAN: Also, you were going to the Beaux-Arts Academy, and you were studying there?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I went there for a, for a couple of months around 1915, when I was going to the other place. And it was clay modeling, so I got the hang of clay there, you know. I went there, ah, maybe six months. And these would be people, instructors come. I remember one was Jo Davidson—you’ve read of him. And there used to be about a half a dozen students. And there was a place there, and it was subsidized by the Beaux Arts, the Academy or something; it was free. And, you know, there was clay there, and I got to feel the clay, and it was. . . . You know, fool around a little bit. Got the smell of clay. That must have been around 1915.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you ever become, did you ever get to know Davidson better, say, or Jacob Epstein? During the period when you were doing portrait heads, did you ever get to know those sculptors who otherwise were doing portraits, like Epstein, or Jo Davidson, or some of these people?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I knew Jo Davidson. I’d see him when he was coming around to Manship. He was getting a lot of publicity. His picture, or, you know, photogenic, was always. . . . And he was a pusher, you know, making people that were in the public eye, and everything. I remember when I was in Washington, making the Washington heads, in the Commerce Building, where the NRA was situated, and Johnson’s office nearby—he gave me an office for a studio, and I had half a dozen heads there. And I’d see Jo Davidson just passing by, and the door was open. You’d think he’d walk in and say, “Hey, what’s this?” you know, “you know me.” Not a thing. Glances in there and. . . . That’s the kind of people, uh, you know. . . . That’s not being an artist. I guess he was pissed off I was making, you know, getting publicity and making heads. That was his racket. He just walked right past me. And I guess he went around Washington telling my stuff was junk. I don’t know. [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: Well, let me see. I guess I want to know, when you were at Manship’s studio, what sort of things did you learn, and if you felt the experience was valuable?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, it was a job, you know. I was paid, and it was all right. And Manship was awfully fond of me, you know. But they never used live models. They just used plasteline, and he was always doing thousands of things. He had thousands of photographs, reprints, and he used to look at them.

AVIS BERMAN: What kind of prints?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Alanario, these photographs that are for sale, you know. Sculpture. There were two: Anderson and Alanario. They’re still in business now. You know these photographs you buy. You know, like brown prints, paintings. He had stacks of those he bought in Italy, you know. You know, he used to look at those. So it was all, it was all archaeology, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He was a tech. . . . He was successful in that right time, you know. There was, we weren’t in a war, and there was a lot of money around, and he sold bronzes and was popular. He was successful and made some money, and he was able to hire two or three people to work for him. So I was lucky then to be working for him.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, I was wondering if the techniques that you learned there, since the craft was good, if that was helpful at all?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, and then sculpture was going on, plaster, casting. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Did he ever instruct you himself, or was it mostly Lachaise you were learning from?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, there was no instruction, and now that you mention it, he said, “You can’t, you know, you can’t teach. All we should know is keep the things simple, simple but rich.” That was, that’s the only art explanation I ever got out of him. Keep the thing simple but rich. But you can’t teach that. Nowadays, all the professors in schools are, Jesus, they can talk your ear off, you know, how to make art, you know. A whole vocabulary, you know. I read it, and I drop dead. And I can’t teach at all. I don’t know that. When I was teaching in the school in the Whitney place there—that’s gone—I’d say, “Come on, get hot! Step on it.” [slaps table or desk] “Come on, show some pep! What’s the matter with you?” But the other academics were on a dais, they were _____ _____. I don’t know anything about that. Just get them into it. [laughing] So as a teacher, I don’t know, I’m no teacher.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, I don’t know now, I’ll ask you about this. Now didn’t you teach at Pratt for a time?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I was the same way there too, you know, “Come on, get hot, do it.”

AVIS BERMAN: And you taught in Newark for a while too, I mean. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, well, it’s the same way there. Well, the students would say, “Look. . . .” They were smart enough, they used to say, “Don’t waste time on us,” because I was making some of my things there, and they said, “We’ll learn more from you, watching you work and how you change things. Every time you come, you change the composition.” They said, “We learn ten times more from that than. . . .” They said, “Don’t waste your time trying to come around teaching us. Just let us watch you when you work.”

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. So you were really giving demonstrations when you were teaching?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, I was making my own. . . . Yeah, when I’d go around.

[Tape 1, side B]
[Much of this tape side is fuzzy—Trans.]

RUBEN NAKIAN: . . . and it was an ideal position. It was a huge studio they had out there, and it was a lot of fun.

AVIS BERMAN: So you liked teaching?

RUBEN NAKIAN: It brought me back to life, you know, being with them, and they loved me cause I wasn’t like an instructor. They had painting classes on the top floor, and they had German professors, you know, and I was altogether different. I used to, you know, I used to throw clay around, and. . . . We were on the ground floor in the back, and there was a bar nearby so I used to sneak out with them and take them to the bar for an hour and drink and then come back and paint. So we had quite a lot of fun.

AVIS BERMAN: So you liked teaching then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, you know I liked being with people, you know. And it wasn’t teaching. I’d just go around, you know. I’m not the academic, “Do this, do that.” It was, “Yeah, fine. Yeah, pretty good.”

AVIS BERMAN: Did you give up the teaching for any reason in particular?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, just. . . . Well, the last one was at Pratt Institute, and that was in the evening, and it was only twenty dollars for a session. I had go all the way from here, all the way out to Pratt. Had to change subways three times, and go there at night and then come back, take the train, come back, for a lousy twenty dollars. And that was in 1950. Well, I did it because I needed the money, I guess. I made a lousy twenty dollars, all the way out there and all the way back. I was in my sixties then, too, you know. Aah, it’s a crazy world.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And then, you know, all the professors write about art. They don’t know what an artist had to suffer to make art, and yet they’ll go to a show and just slash and dash, and they can’t draw a straight line themselves, you know. They don’t know what I do, how an artist . . . struggles to live, and have a family and live, you need to do something. And they go around like they know it all, you know. The curators of museums, you know, they can’t even talk to ‘em. They won’t talk to an artist, whoever, it is. . . . You know, we’re slummy, you know, they have their own, their own circle, and they don’t even come. . . . But they’re living on us, and we suffer and had to fight without anyone giving a goddamn about us for years, and they get all the jobs. They get these grants from the conglomerates or corporations, and they even hang out with the millionaires, and they don’t give a goddamn, you know. The only artists they like are the ones that kiss their ass, and all that shit, terrible. The art world is disgusting. I don’t live with any of the artists of this age; I live with the great artists of the past. When I think of art, I think of Velázquez and Poussin, and Rubens and Titian and, you know, the ones I like. I don’t think of . . . anybody. There’s hardly anyone I respect in the art world that I’m entranced by or would love to meet or anything. Nobody. I don’t look up, I’m always looking down, and I don’t see anyone to really look up to. And that’s bad, you know. I don’t even have an artist to hang out with, you know, not. . . . I wish I had Lautrec, you know, go to the bars and get drunk with. Motherwell is living over here. He’s an asshole as a neighbor. Do you think he’d stop in and see me? You know. Stupid snobs, you know. I’m an old artist. Do you think anyone would stop in and see what I’m doing, talk to me? Or a curator, or a director, or a collector? No. Fine, it’s great that way. But it shows what they are. You know, I’m talking about humanity. [pauses] I’m talking about majesty, genius, nobility. It’s scarce in this age. It’s a great age for technology, which is marvelous. Which is great. Aesthetically it’s. . . . Aesthetically, it’s third class. Now, we’ve said enough, let’s have a drink. Come on. You got me. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Okay.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Stop making an asshole of myself again.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you know Louis Schanker, who recently died?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, yeah. Oh, he died?

AVIS BERMAN: Just about two or three weeks ago.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, he did, did he? Yeah, he used to live out here. He was married to some millionaire. He had a nice little studio, which I never saw. I met him on the art project before he was married, and then he used to be out here. Then when she died, he moved to New York. He died? A couple of weeks ago. How old was he? In his seventies?

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, he was about seventy-eight.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Seventy-eight, as old as that? Yeah, that’s right. He was close to me.

AVIS BERMAN: Um hmm.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Seventy-eight, I’m six years older than he is. So he died, huh?

AVIS BERMAN: I was just wondering because, since he also lived out here in Stamford.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, yeah, he used to live here. You know, I don’t read the papers or anything anymore, so I don’t know what’s going on. So Schanker died. Hmm. He was a nice fella.

AVIS BERMAN: Who were some of the other artists you knew while you were on the project?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, I don’t know. If you named the names, I. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Well, did you know Rothko, for example?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Who?

AVIS BERMAN: Rothko?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I met him a couple times. I didn’t meet him much. I used to be care. . . . Yeah, I was a sculptor, and everyone was a painter, and I was in, you know. . . . If I’d be in their circle, I’d be sitting by him. There’d be a Rothko or Gorky or, you know, all the others. They didn’t take me as. . . . They were painters, so they didn’t talk to me, you know, or take me seriously. You know, “That’s crazy Nakian,” you know. “He made Babe Ruth, or did this. He’s all right, but. . . .” “But they’re studying. . . .” You know, you know. They’re thinking about other things. So they had their own group. So I didn’t think much of them because I thought they were all copying Paris. I didn’t have much respect even for Gorky. I thought he was kissing the ass of the French, you know. I didn’t realize how good he was, because I didn’t see his work. I thought it was. . . . Being a sculptor, I had my own problems. I didn’t think of the problems they, of the painters. I had my own struggle, and it was all alone. [chuckling] Painters had company. They could talk and mix and, you know, and I didn’t have friends that would buy a painting. Sculpture no one ever wanted, you know. It was all, it was crazy.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you say you wanted to stop for a couple of minutes?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, let’s quit and have a drink.

AVIS BERMAN: Okay.
[Interruption in taping]

AVIS BERMAN: Let me put this on. Okay. You met Louis Eilshemius then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I met. . . . There’s a bronze head of his in existence somewheres. I made a head, cast in bronze. He posed for me. That was when I got back from Washington in 1936. And he, he used to live on 57th Street between Madison and Third in a brownstone. I think they owned the building. And he had an older brother, when they were living there, and they had a servant, a German woman, taking care of them. There was an art dealer, I forget his name.

AVIS BERMAN: Valentine Dudensing.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hmm?

AVIS BERMAN: Dudensing?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He was originally from Philadelphia; I just can’t think. That’s where I met Gorky. We got friendly; he was showing in his gallery.

DON ROSS: Boyer?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, [Philip—AB] Boyer. Yeah, did you ever hear of him?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: So he was a friend of [Dikran—AB] Kelekian, so he got the money from Kelekian. Eilshemius was famous in those days. A lot of publicity about him, you know. So he got the money. . . . A few hundred dollars, I should, I should make a head of him. . . . Which I never got a penny of, I don’t think. [chuckles] So I used to go there, you know, maybe half a dozen, ten times, and he was lying in a cot in the corner where his dog. . . . He was hit by a taxi, so he couldn’t walk. And I used to have to kneel and model him and everything, you know. And. . . . It still hurts when I touch it. And he had pain, I guess, so every now and then, he’d holler, “Ouch! I give up, life is rotten!” While I’m modeling he’s screaming. Five minutes later, again, “Ouch! I give up, life is rotten.” [both laugh] Oh, I had that. . . . I always repeat that phrase when someone. . . . “Ouch! I give up, life is rotten!” He was a character.

AVIS BERMAN: He let you, he didn’t mind you sculpting, though?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, no, he was posing for me, yeah. No, he loved it. He loved publicity. . . . He was even saying, “See, I wrote this. I sent it to the papers.” He said, “I’m smart. I know how to get publicity.”

DON ROSS: Well, didn’t he, wasn’t he, didn’t he have an article that he wrote, a weekly article or something?

RUBEN NAKIAN: He used to write on the editorial page of The Evening Sun. That was the, that was the paper then. That section, “Letters to the Editor.” And he used to write them, and they were famous. And he used to call himself Mahatma, you know the Hindu name.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He thought that he was a great composer, a great musician, and he was as good as Shakespeare, and this and that. And they used to be long articles that he used to write. And everyone used to read about him, and I used to read ‘em, before I knew who he was. So it got around, and I think also Marcel Duchamp and Lachaise got curious one day, and they visited his studio and they saw the stuff, and they said, “Hey, this stuff is good.” Yeah, and that’s one story. And then, you know, there have been shows of his in the fifties and sixties that, you know, almost every month.

DON ROSS: What was his favorite reading material?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hmm?

DON ROSS: What was his favorite reading matter?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah, he used to have girlie magazines right next to his table, that’s all he’d looked at, girlie magazines. [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Well, you could tell that from his art.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs] They were corny enough. They’re not like what you get now. [both laugh]

AVIS BERMAN: I guess what I should ask you, because before I really didn’t talk to you that much about your friendship and your working relationship with Lachaise and sharing that studio for two years.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. Well, after Manship went. . . . He closed his studio in 1920. Went to Paris, opened a studio there for a couple of years. So Lachaise. . . . Well, Lachaise used to have a studio on 14th Street. One of the old studio buildings, you know. But after Manship left, he got a studio on Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street—Eleventh or Twelfth, you know. It’s still there, you know. One of these two-story buildings. So I shared a studio with him. I used to help him out, so I would pay the rent. So I was there from 1922 to 19. . . . 1921 to 1923. And I carved a couple of things there in stone, and I used to help him out a little bit.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you like his work then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I was never too crazy about it. I’m classical Greek, and he was Hinduish, you know. It didn’t agree with me too much.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, but sometimes people write that you’re influenced by Lachaise. How do you feel about that?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, yeah, they all say that, and, well, I was fighting him. . . . I fought Manship, you know, and I’d fight anyone. And I fought Lachaise. I was, I was anti- his. . . . He had a one-woman concept of his work. You know, that one thing that’s sort of Hinduish, you know. It wasn’t modern at all, and in those days what was in the air was Picasso, Brancusi and this, and so he was. . . . He was looking backwards; he wasn’t up with his times at all. And I know when I was working there I was making things, and he looked at me and he said, “Hey, you’re an abstract artist,” and I didn’t even know the term then. [laughing] And he’d said, “Hey, you’re an abstract guy.” I didn’t even know I was being abstract.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, he recognized. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: To me it, to me, is a high class Manship, you know. I’m not [terribly worried]. It’s too naturalistic. You know, that Standing Woman there, that just, it’s all flesh, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Um hmm.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hindu sculpture is the same thing, even better, you know. I don’t know, he’s all right. He was great to me, you know. He liked me, he helped me, and everything was fine.
But I was always an independent. If I didn’t get inspired by it, I used to tell, tell people. When I was with Manship, he wanted me to go to the American Academy in Rome. I didn’t have to compete, because he was the president, and that was within the studio. I answered one word: “No!” And he jumped back. You know, he could have fired me. I needed the job there. I said no, because I knew the Roman Academy was no place for me. I’d known about Cézanne, vanGogh. I mean, you know that. And I knew what the Rome Academy was. It was Manship. I said, “No!” [both chuckle] He jumped back. Can you imagine anyone else saying no when you could go to Rome for a couple of years, when you’re taken care of—money and everything. I said no. He could never figure me out. And he respected me for it, I guess. Years later, when he came back, he came to Weehawken where I was carving stone animals. Wanted me to join him again, you know. And he was arguing, he said, “You know, this modern art stuff you are doing is all full of bunk.” Brancusi, Picasso are just a fad. How’re you going to earn your living? How’re you going to take care of your father?” He came back, and he wanted. . . . He was all alone. He wanted, he didn’t have Lachaise or anyone, he wanted me to come back with him. And I couldn’t answer him. I just stayed quiet, and let him talk. Two or three hours. And I was being patronized by the Whitneys then, so I didn’t a need job. And he was trying to get me back. And he never forgave me. I used to go and see him once in a while, but it was just like a little visit, you know. Strange, strange thing to have happened.

DON ROSS: Reuben knew Brancusi too.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, I was getting to that.

DON ROSS: Oh, you were, okay.

AVIS BERMAN: Right. I’m trying to go somewhat chronologically here, because I’ve asked, because also at that time, I guess when you were with Manship and sharing the studio with Lachaise that you were doing animals, of course.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hmm?

AVIS BERMAN: You were an animal sculptor during that point?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I started out, you know, I stayed away from the figure. I figured, I think I was smart. Animals are decorative, you know. I trained myself in animals, then I went to. . . . Then after that, then all of a sudden, I made heads, and I made a statue of Babe Ruth. And that’s without models, you know. When the, when the time came, I went to the figure. But I didn’t force myself.

AVIS BERMAN: So I was going to ask you why, why you did the animals first, you see. You felt it was easier or more professional?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, animals are very sculptural and, you know, very sculptural. . . . And it was the right thing for me to do to get step-by-step. And I think I was smart in doing it.

DON ROSS: Not to mention the fact that you were influenced by that book on the Altamira cave drawings.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, oh, that was a great influence.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, when did you see that?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, the 1920s. I bought it. It was in a bookstore called Weyhe’s—it was the only place where there were artbooks and exhibitions. He had it. And it was about a hundred bucks, so I asked him if he wanted to exchange a terra cotta for it. First time I made a terra cotta. So he says, “Sure.” So I gave him a terra cotta, and I got the book. And that was a great, you know, those things are marvelous, and especially the way they were drawn by the. . . .

DON ROSS: [Royal, Broyall].

RUBEN NAKIAN: [Royal, Broyall], the French, the archaeologist that wrote about them. He made these crayon drawings of them. They’re better than the originals. [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: So when you. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: I’ve got the book in the house somewheres. I ought to take it out and look at it once in a while. And that was a great influence.

AVIS BERMAN: Right, because you were doing the red chalk drawings with the bulls and all. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: . . . .and that was sort of some of that coming from there?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, inspired by those, I guess, yeah. That was a great influence.

AVIS BERMAN: Some of those ones that are in the Whitney that you did around ‘21 or so.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Someone came around a little while ago. Oh, yeah. I met a commercial artist at a party, and he said, “I own about twenty-five of your early drawings.” He said, “When Mrs. Force died, they were auctioned, and someone bought them and game them to me.” And I was into seeing ‘em. So he came around a few months ago with ‘em, and I got two or three he gave me. I exchanged the drawings, and he gave me two or three. But they were the ones I gave Mrs. Force. She gave a couple to the Whitney, and she kept the rest for herself. When she died, someone got them, and this guy contacted me and I saw the drawings. [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Did you like them?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Sure! I liked them. It’s all modern. You know, in 1922 they were, you know, they’re like modern art. I made ‘em in 19. . . . And who was doing modern art in 1922 here, you know what I mean? Hardly anybody.

DON ROSS: I’ll say one thing for them, Reuben. It’s one of the few times in the last fifty years you used decent paper.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, that was. . . .

DON ROSS: Well, that was on good paper, I’d say!

RUBEN NAKIAN: You know, that was handmade Chinese paper. That’s what Lachaise used. We used to go down to Chinatown in the stores, and we had to explain we wanted. . . . And they came in, they were sort of folded up, and some were single and some were folded up, you know. It was Chinese, Chinese paper. I had to go to Chinatown and try to explain what I want and buy this paper. So that’s good paper. I guess it’s handmade Chinese paper, Don?

DON ROSS: It’s gorgeous stuff, Reuben, gorgeous.

RUBEN NAKIAN: That’s fine. Yeah, 1922.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess I should ask you about how you got the stipend from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and how all that came about?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I’d heard about her through Lachaise and other ones, you know, and then, see, Mrs. Force. And then I had a picture in the Dial Magazine which Cynthia Jaffe [McCabe—AB] has, a picture of a jack rabbit, you know. And they even used it as a poster in those days, you know, to put around. So I took that and went to see her, and she said, “I would like to come to your studio.” Then a week or so later, she came with Forbes—Forbes Watson, the editor of The Arts magazine—you know, the two of them. And I was carving animals in Lachaise’s studio, and then she had me come and she suggested that. . . . She says, well, I should get my own studio and they’d give me money and it was fine. And they kept it up for five years. And then I had a studio in Weehawken Heights, and she said, “Well you’d better come and have a studio in New York,” so they found a place on Christopher Street, and then. . . . I know the rent was eighty-five dollars. That was a lot of money in those days. So I moved to Christopher Street.

AVIS BERMAN: How much did they used to give you?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know, $200 or $250 or something and they also paid the rent.

AVIS BERMAN: $250 a month, then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Every month, yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: Plus they paid the rent?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: Quite generous.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I think I got around fifteen, twenty thousand dollars, and that was a lot of money in those days.

AVIS BERMAN: Certainly was. Now did you have to give them anything or do anything for this?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, they didn’t want anything. I just gave them a few drawings. The sculpture I made I kept to myself. I never met Mrs. Whitney. She paid all the money, but she stayed in the background. All I saw was Mrs. Force. I don’t know whether she was shy or what.

AVIS BERMAN: And Mrs. Force would visit the studio periodically?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hardly ever. I had to. . . . I had a show at the Whitney Studio, had my first show in 1925, [1923. The second show was in 1926—AB] . . .you know. I had a show of sculpture there. I don’t know.

AVIS BERMAN: Now did you ask to have it?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I was sort of independent. I didn’t go around seeing much. Their club meetings I didn’t go to. I was a mean son-of-a-bitch.

AVIS BERMAN: [chuckles] Did you ask for the shows, or did they say. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, they came out. I know once I spent a week in Mrs. Force’s country place out in Jersey somewheres [Pennsylvania—AB]. She wanted me to spend a week there. I don’t know who, or who took care of me, or what. It must have been a servant, what was. . . . I don’t know. I have an awful memory.

DON ROSS: Did you write her a thank you note, Reuben?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, I didn’t thank them. I didn’t ever do anything.

DON ROSS: Ah, you’re rotten.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Even after they dropped me, I didn’t even thank ‘em. I’m a savage.

DON ROSS: No kidding.

AVIS BERMAN: When you had those shows, did you install the work yourself, or what?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. Well, they did.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you pick which ones you wanted in or did they?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I didn’t have many, just the few I had carved, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: During that time, in the twenties, were you ever interested in folk art? You know, a lot of the American artists were interested in the folk sculpture in the twenties, in the weather vanes and all that.

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, no, no. No, I never went for the folk stuff. I always had Michelangelo in the back of my head, and he, he wasn’t folksy.

AVIS BERMAN: Um hmm. Well, let me see. So, we were. . . . Don just mentioned the Brancusi before. So what, did you meet him through Joseph Brummer? Is that how you met him?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. I used to see pictures of his in the advanced magazines. I thought they were great, you know. Inspired by them. And so he came to America, and they all knew—it was through contacts—that I was like a disciple of his. So when he came, he used my studio to store his things. He was either at the Brummer or the _____. It was twice, at the _____ and Brummer. I think the first time was at Brummer. So he was in my studio for a while until he found another place. And I went, and when he was putting up a show, I went to the Brummer and gave him a little hand or something. And then some years later he had a show at Wildenstein. I was handy with him, you know. So when I had the Guggenheim in 1930-31, I went to Paris, I stopped in to see him, and he recognized me and embraced me. So he went out shopping. He bought some lamb; he made a shishkabob and some [peasant] rolls, and we sat down and eat. And I saw that, the marvelous studio he had, you know. He couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak French, so he’d just [gesture]. . . . I don’t know, we got along. [laughs] He was a little tiny fellow. So I saw him twice when I was in Paris. Oh, yeah, now, you know, then when I went there in 1930, anticipating, you know, the experience of seeing what he was doing, and I was disappointed. I saw what he was doing was like Arp’s sculpture. He had a few ideas of. . . . That head of Mlle. Pogany and a few ideas. There are lots of, you know, know, he had three or four concepts and. . . . Simplicity, he did that, and then that got worn out, and he was making lumps and bumps, which Henry Moore and Arp and all those are doing, just like a bag of potatoes, you know, nothing. . . . You know, doughnut thing. And I saw that right away. I didn’t say anything, but. . . . So I thought, “Oh, hell, that’s out the window. The Brancusi business is. . . . It’s finished.” He had something and, you know. . . . Its like a mine. You know, you dig a mine, and you come to the bottom and there’s no more nuggets. And I was smart. . . . You know, I must of had some intelligence, I was smart enough to. . . . I had some friends that were, that were in Italy. I went down to Italy, and I spent time at the Naples Museum looking at the Pompeiian frescoes and sculpture, looking at that stuff. I spent a half a day in Rome, and I never went back. And then I got sick of Italy, and I was supposed to have the Guggenheim for two years, but I sent a cablegram to Henry Allen Moe, who was the head of it, saying, “I’m an American artist. I’m sick of, sick of Europe, and I’m coming back.” And that was the end. I didn’t get a second year. So I came back. I made Babe Ruth, I made heads, and, you know, Americana.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs] Went to Washington.

AVIS BERMAN: Right.

RUBEN NAKIAN: NRA. [chuckles] Ah, Jesus Christ.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, what, what did you like when you were in Europe?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I was a young guy. I went to the Louvre, you know, and all the sculpture they got, the millions of sculptures, paintings, and, you know, a young guy, looking around. I didn’t see much modern sculpture, just looking at modern paintings around. And then hanging around the cafes, and oh, you know, a young guy. I was crazy about Paris when I first went there. After three months, I got bored with it. And so we went to Sorrento and lived there, and I used to go to Naples once in a while. I got bored there. Just dying to wait for the day so I could wait for a boat to take me back. When I came back to America, I went to Fourteenth Street, the Fourteenth Street Park. I kissed the ground. “Hooray, I’m back in America.” So I began making heads of artists and Babe Ruth. You know, Americana was in the air then.

AVIS BERMAN: Of course. But you didn’t go to Greece or the Aegean or any of those?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No I didn’t. No I didn’t go to Greece. I didn’t even go back to Rome. I’ve never been to Florence, of which I’m glad. We were in Rome for one or two days. I didn’t see much. I’ve even forgotten. I didn’t even. . . . I saw the Sistine Chapel, but I didn’t see the, I didn’t see the Raphael rooms, which I’d like to see before I die. You know, the Raphael frescoes. But I might go back some day.

AVIS BERMAN: Have you been back to Europe since then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, in. . . . When was it? Five, six, seven years ago, we, we had to go to Verona. We had some of our sculpture there, and The Goddess of the Golden Thighs was cast, so we had to go there and complete it. So we spent a month in Verona, and that was an interesting place. Then we took a train ride to Padua, and I saw the Giotto church, which is one of the greatest things in the world. And. . . . And where else have I been? I’ve been to Venice—there was a Biennale in 1968.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I spent a month in Venice, but I didn’t even go the churches to see what the painting were. That was the time of the exhibition, the student riots. We had enough trouble with our sculpture, and I. . . . I was disgusted. I came back quick. The Italians are just as bad as Americans, a bunch of shitheads.

AVIS BERMAN: So you’ve never been to Greece or the Aegean?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, everyone was saying, “Go to Greece.” And I had no desire. Greece, I see it when Pericles, when they were building the Parthenon. That’s the way I see it. Now it’s, now it’s a greasy restaurant. [all chuckle]

AVIS BERMAN: So you just needed the. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t have to see it. All the things are in fragments. I’ve seen ‘em all. I know what they look like.

DON ROSS: And he doesn’t like mosquitoes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And I hate mosquitoes. See, we went to a place last week, a friend of ours, just eaten up. I got my hands scratched and my arms eaten up. The hell with the country. That’s out, too.

AVIS BERMAN: I understand completely.

DON ROSS: From now on, huh, Reuben?

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs] I’m staying right here. [pounding for emphasis]

AVIS BERMAN: But you just needed the idea of Greece to inspire you, really?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I’m more Greek that the goddamn Greeks! I don’t have to go there.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, I guess, I guess I should ask you about that. When did you realize that, I guess the, you know, the idea of Greek art and what Greece stands for was so important to you?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Let’s see, when I was a young kid, I found a book called Bullfinch’s Greek Mythology, and that was my Bible, and they were all corny old, corny woodcuts, and the stories about, they’re all of that. I went for that like a ton of bricks.

DON ROSS: And that’s not the full version?

RUBEN NAKIAN: And that was bowdlerized, yeah. It was a corny thing. I don’t know what happened to it. Geez, I guess it’s gone. But then the only thing on Greek Mythology was Bullfinch’s. [laughs] Now they have such marvelous, you know, books that really _____ _____. But gee, I went for those stories. You know, then the. . . . And the Metropolitan Museum was all full of plaster. You know, the main floor, it was all plaster casts, the Michelangelos, Greeks, the Parthenon, everything. And so I saw original casts of all the great sculptures. They didn’t have to be in marble, because they were, they’re actually copied from the marble. There was Donatello, the Italians, the Greeks, the French. You know, there was a Parthenon sculpture up inside—and everything. So that, my training was with the Metropolitan Museum, and then I used to go the Museum of Natural History, go to look at that. And I used to go to the public library, Forty-second Street in the art room. I think it was Room 315. And they had old-fashioned books, engravings. I used to go try to hunt up things. They were all corny engravings of the masters. So these were three places that were free. Did I tell you how I first. . . .? This is a cute story. It was around 1910, I heard that there’s a place in New York called an art museum. Somebody mentioned it. “My god, yeah, what’s that? An art museum. I’ll have to go and see it.” So I talked to another schoolmate of mine, who didn’t give a damn. His father had a milk route, with cows and everything. You know, he was selling milk, and he was Scot, he was a Scotsman, a tall lanky, young guy. I said, “Come on, come with me.” “Ah, I’ll go with you.” So we walked on Weehawken’s, you know, the mountainous steps, you walk down the steps. Forty-second Street Ferry was three cents in those days, so it cost us. . . . And we stopped at Eleventh Avenue, so we’re walking from Eleventh to Fifth, and then from Fifth up to Eighty-second Street. And I saw a beautiful marble building, so I started running up. But then in the door there was a sign saying, “Mondays and Fridays, 25 Cents. The rest of the week free.” We happened to be on a Monday or a Friday. And my friend got mad, “Goddammit, you got me to come up here. We can’t even go in.” Twenty-five cents was like twenty. . . . You know. It was unthinkable for us. But I didn’t give a damn. Next week, all by myself, I got down there, spent three cents on the ferry, walked up, went in the place with all these sculptures, Michelangelo. . . . And I felt I had known ‘em all my life. I didn’t have to learn ‘em. Before all I used to see were cartoons, Mutt and Jeff. I thought that was art, and I saw Michelangelo and Rubens, you know. I felt I had known ‘em all my life. It was just like that. Then, gee, I used to go there all the time, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Once you found it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And the place used to be empty, only half a dozen people wandering around. Now you can’t get in the place. I hate it now. All these people moaning. What the fuck have they got to do with art? Why don’t they stay home and get drunk?

DON ROSS: After all, if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough them, right?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. [laughter]

AVIS BERMAN: We were just talking about the Greeks. I was just wondering if you, when you got to the point when you really started thinking about approaching major themes in your work? I mean, when did you realize that, “Hey, you just don’t do this or.”

RUBEN NAKIAN: I realized years ago, you know, looking at the Venus de Milo. It’s a great masterpiece. Well, even when I was young, I realized it’s been done. You can’t do it again. You have to find a way how to, how to make another kind of Venus. I even realized that when I was young. You know, it’s there, it’s been done. Once a statement is great. . . . When Shakespeare wrote Henry IV or Hamlet, that’s it. You can’t improve on it, you know. You’re stupid if you try to imitate it. I realized that years ago. So a man like the French sculptor. . . . What’s his name, who made things in Greek fashion, you know, as well as. . . . After Rodin, what’s his name? You know, after Rodin. A French sculptor, really. Greek naturalistic moods.

AVIS BERMAN: Maillol?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh.

RUBEN NAKIAN: It’s almost something like Lachaise, you know.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I think they’re better, I’d rather be Maillol than Lachaise. But it’s, it’s imitation Greek. See, when I. . . . See these late things I made there? Did you see ‘em?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: These are real Greek, and it’s the first time since the Greek that I did the same thing but made an advance, so I made a synthesis of the synthesis of Greek sculpture. But yet they’re pure Greek. They’ve got the innocence and the vitality of the way the Greeks made them. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: They’re very personal.

RUBEN NAKIAN: . . . and I synthesized them. Is that the word? Yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: But they’re real Greek. They’ve got the. . . . The passion and the inspiration were Greek, I think. So other sculpture is nice copies of them. You know, imitations. You know, there’s thousands of wonderful sculptures done, but historically they’d be classified as a. . . . If you were to classify Cézanne, as [opposed to the junk]. There’s a few paintings, a few sculptures. But. . . . I think the sculpture, even the ones I made in the Sixties, are. . . . It isn’t going to be realized until a couple hundred years after I’m gone that, I took classic sculpture and made it alive, and yet it followed the tree. You know, the real thing, but yet it isn’t imitation, you know. I made a new variation, you know, a new. . . . Well, I advanced it. These are advancements. I think of the old. . . . If Phidias saw those little things there, he’d appreciate it. He’d see it. You see, all the others. . . . You can take Michelangelo or any of the Greeks. It’s stuff done by genius, but it is, but it is not a technical advancement in sculpture—which I think I’ve, fortunately, I think I’ve done. Michelangelo is great, but it’s, but it’s imitation. It’s all muscles and flesh and, you know, great elements of _____ _____ and Donatello. But sculpturally, how to take pure sculpture and push it, squeeze the essence out of it, and yet still make it alive, and yet let it have a simpler. . . . And yet it isn’t like a Brancusi, with just. . . . You see, Brancusi sculpture is like a foot. It’s a fragment. I got a composition. I’ve got a story there. Three figures there. There’s a male sex with a big instrument, and a female, and there’s a spirit going up, it’s a spirituality. It’s a composition. It’s got a story. It isn’t a fragment. . . . Rodin, most of Rodin’s things are so fragmented. His Walking Man, the composition in sculpture. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Well, what I should ask you about Rodin, is when you came across him first and. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, I’d seen him at the Metropolitan Museum. They had all his marbles in the, in the court there. And, oh, that was, they were brilliant works. I was inspired by it. Now they’ve got most of them down in the basement.

AVIS BERMAN: What did you like best about Rodin?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, the man’s a genius. . . . You know, the things he handled in clay, I like his touch. You know, he’s got passion and sex and stuff. He goes, he comes out of Michelangelo and Greece and everything, but he had juice. He’s not a dry fag.

DON ROSS: Who’s this?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Rodin.

DON ROSS: I didn’t know there were any around who. . . . Who you thought of that way.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs]

AVIS BERMAN: Well, we were talking before about meeting Brancusi and helping him with his show at the Brummer Gallery. Is that when you met Duchamp? Or did you know him before?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, I used to see Duchamp in restaurants, in an Italian restaurant in the Village, but I never spoke to him. So I’m, when I was making these heads. . . . Well, I was in Staten Island and married and out of the picture. After the Washington show, nothing happened. Came back broke, no sales, no nothing. I was out there all alone. Felt I had to come back to New York, get in the swing again, and took some play, with a wife and two kids, had no money. So I got a seventeen-dollar-a-month studio in MacDougal Street. “What shall I do? Well, the best thing is make heads.” So I called up people, and I was making heads of friends of mine and maybe they’d buy it. I got two or three hundred dollars for ‘em. I was in New York; they’d take me out to dinner, my friends. So, you know, I got famous people. So I called up Marcel Duchamp. He said, “Sure, I’ll pose for you.” He happened to live on. . . . That was in ‘43, during the war, and all the Jews in Germany were being taken to the gas chambers, and we didn’t know anything about it. We were sitting here, and I was on Fourteenth Street and you know, there was a war but we, we were away from it, we didn’t know anything about it, and I was thinking about art, and here’s a man posing for me, and can you imagine what was going on? I’m so lucky I wasn’t in Europe. I’m here trying to do art. So I used to see him in the morning, and we used to go across the street to a restaurant, have some eggs, eggs and coffee, and then come up and talk to me.

AVIS BERMAN: How long did it take to do that head?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, you know, I’d do things in three or four, five sittings.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: An hour and a half or two. So when, so when I was making. . . . He was a nice fellow. He had a marvelous studio, you know, a cheap place. So I asked him, “Why aren’t you doing art anymore?” and he said, “Well,” he said, “an artist has four or five ideas and you make ‘em. I had four or five ideas and I made them.” Then he said, “Besides that, I don’t want to get in the hands of the art dealers. I want to be free. So I play chess. I’m free.”

AVIS BERMAN: What did you think of that when you heard that?

RUBEN NAKIAN: What he thought of it?

AVIS BERMAN: No, what did you think of what he said?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I thought it was logical. I thought he was limited. He just, he wasn’t a true artist. He was a smart, intelligent guy, and he used modern art and he, he made half-a-dozen things that are good, but. . . . But he couldn’t fight Picasso, so he was smart enough to quit. Picasso was a genius. He had talent.

AVIS BERMAN: Picasso is a great favorite of yours?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Huh?

AVIS BERMAN: Picasso is a great favorite of yours?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. I mean, he’s very important. I don’t look at his things. I don’t look at his late things. You know, six eyes on one side of the face is. . . . But you know he was influenced by American cartoons like the Katzenjammer Kids. When I was a kid, we were too poor to get the Sunday paper, and I used to go to a friends house and get the Sunday paper so I could see the Katzenjammer Kids—which was drawn by a man called Rudolph Dirks, and, in his last years, during Prohibition, there was a club in MacDougal where the artists used to go. . . .

Tape 2, side A

AVIS BERMAN: When you made that portrait of Duchamp, did you realize that that was a real breakthrough?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. You know what it is? When I made the head, I made it, I copied him close, and he has a head like an Egyptian mummy, you know, a Pharaoic mummy, you know his type? And I had a. . . . The modeling was. . . . It was damn. . . . It was like a Rodin. It was damn good. But I had to go haywire, and after he posed, when I took a. . . . I had a studio on Thirteenth Street and Seventh Avenue, and I worked there. I zinged, banged, bipped, and abstracted it, you know. Then I had it for years. No one looked at it, no one thought about it. It was in the cellar, and I gave it to my students as a loan. They thought I gave it to ‘em [laughs] but later on, I got it back.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And I don’t know, you know, they were all, been cast in bronze, edition of seven or nine, and they were all fighting for ‘em. And when I made that thing, you know, Gorky saw that; he didn’t say anything about it. So that was done in ‘43. Then after that I made a head of Kelekian. See the bronze?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I think that’s, that’s even a greater head. That’s, I made that head, and that was made on 57th Street in an office room, an empty office room, _____ _____. [laughing] And that was done in ‘44, maybe, a year later after the Duchamp heads. [laughs] Yeah, maybe. . . .
I made heads, I thought I could earn a living from it. But to make heads, you have to be academic, and you have to be on the right side of the street. You’ve gotta be in with the socialites, and even that’s a pain in the ass. Even they don’t go for it anymore, because photography has taken over; they can sit for a photograph. You know, it was a William Penn, or. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Irving Penn.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And you get ten thousand dollars for it. You sit on your ass, and he takes, it takes twenty minutes to make a photograph. The sculptor is passé. So I wasted years. Instead of doing abstraction. Well, you know, I was thinking about art, and I was trying to make. . . . You know, the. . . . My whole damn life was a fight for a living. And I don’t know how I reached this stage. I’m still living, and I’m making art. Trying to make a living copying someone’s mug, you know. I’m glad I did it. I think I made three or four very good heads. But it was a waste of time, because I used to make ‘em, they wouldn’t buy em, and I had to wait for them, they wouldn’t show up, and. . . . Instead of being smart like Henry Moore, sitting down making lumps and bumps and getting in with the racket. Pushing himself. He wasn’t, he didn’t make any heads, or anything. He was just smart enough to make what the supply of the market wants, and he made it. You don’t have to have genius for what he did. You need a smart talent, you know, be a businessman. I was trying to make, you know, art and. . . . The heads were good. They were too good for the market to sell. The society people won’t take ‘em. It was a little bit like van Gogh making art. So they didn’t click. I used to make ‘em, you know, and. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Yeah, they weren’t quite Expressionist.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, expression, that’s the word for it. And, you know, no money. So I spent, you know, fighting how to make a fuckin’ living.

AVIS BERMAN: Just before you did the Duchamp heads, you said that you’d asked some of your friends to pose. Now who were some of the people you. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, the people I knew. You know, I knew a lot of the people who wanted to sit for me. People I’d meet. I think if they sat three times I had a head done. I couldn’t do it now. I haven’t made a head in twenty-five years. If I tried making a head now, geez, I’d have to start like an amateur. I wouldn’t know what I’d do. But, make a nose, I was into it and, you know, people would come fast in the evening, and, you know, I’d sit down and throw out a head. And I made a lot of. . . . They’re gone or smashed up or, you know, I don’t know where. I even made a head of a grocery—vegetable store—man on Sixth Avenue when I had my studio on MacDougal Street. I used to go there to buy an apple or a fruit or something. And he was a nice Italian guy. He looked like Mussolini or somebody. So he found out I was an artist, so he said, “Hey, could you make a picture of me? Could you make a sculpture of me?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “How much?” I looked at him, and I said, “Seventy-five dollars.” He said, “Okay.” Can you imagine this? He had a fruit stand, you know. He was a serious-looking Italian, a nice little fruit stand. He wanted a sculpture of him made. Fine. So he used to come to my MacDougal place—right where the coffee shops are, you know, on the top floor, fourth floor up. And he used to come and. . . . And then he used to fall asleep, so after a while I was smart, and I made coffee. So he came three or four or five times, and I made a goddamn good head of his, and I cast it in plaster and I gave it to him. So there’s another head around. I don’t know who or who he was or what I. . . . That was in, when I came to New York in ‘42 or ‘43, something like that. [laughs] Imagine. Oh, yeah! And that seventy-five dollars paid the rent for—it was around fifteen, sixteen dollars a month—four or five months. And that was important for me. So it wasn’t Rockefeller or the Modern Museum or Alfred Barr or anyone that kept me that going. It was a poor peddler that enabled me to stay in New York and have a studio for six months. And all this bullshit about the art establishment, screw it. It’s unknown innocent people that keep artists going. It isn’t the goddamn corporations or establishments. Did you get that down on this thing?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: All right, keep it alive. That’s from the horse’s mouth. Or the horse’s ass. Whichever way you want it. [laughter]

AVIS BERMAN: Speaking of collectors, did you ever meet John Quinn?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No. He was, he in the nineteen-teens and twenties. Maybe Lachaise could have met him. No, I was the innocent little. . . . I was a young guy then, you know, running around.

AVIS BERMAN: How. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Gaston Lachaise. . . . But I don’t think he ever bought a Gaston Lachaise. There was another collector that used to come around for Lachaise. It’s on the tip of my tongue. And then he began collecting a lot of Greek vases. Let’s see, what was his name? He was a, he was famous. His grandfather was the Secretary of State during the Lincoln administration, or something. It’s on the tip of my tongue. He was a powerful, important guy. I saw him a couple of times in Lachaise’s studio. I don’t know if I can think of his name. French descent. He was a big millionnaire, and I didn’t know that he collected a lot of Greek vases. I’ll bet the Metropolitan Museum got most of them, and I think he bought a couple of them. He was very powerful. He bought a couple of Lachaises. I can’t think of his name. Maybe later on, it might come back to me.

AVIS BERMAN: Okay. I want to know how you got Edith Halpert as a dealer.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, she opened a gallery down on Thirteenth Street, you know, American art, and I was with the Whitneys and one of the artists doing things, and she got anyone she knew that, to come into it, you know. And I, when I, well, I was with her before. . . . I used to make these seals.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: She had a show, and animals. I had a show of them at the Guggenheim, and went to Europe, and after I came back I made these heads, the ten artists, and she showed that.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And then she happened to meet someone, one of the Strauses, the Macy family that was working with Hugh Johnson in the NRA, and he said make a head of Johnson, so I got the commission. So I went to Washington to make the head of Johnson. He liked me, I liked him, and so I said, “Hey, what do you think of the idea that I make the whole cabinet?” He said, “God, it’s a great idea!” So he got on the phone and he called up Cordell Hull—Secretary of State—Henry Wallace, everything, and said, “Hey, you got, we got an idea, we got to make portraits of the Cabinet, and you’ll all pose.” They said, “Okay.” So all of a sudden. . . . Then my name got in the paper, a writeup in the paper, and I began saying that Hugh Johnson looks like Caesar, and the other one looks like Alexander Hamilton, all the bullshit and running around for a year. I had six pedestals. Actually three pedestals in their offices, and I think I was even using clay. I had to keep ‘em wet. I used to go around. In their office there’d be a stand, and they were too busy. I used to go there, and they’d walk away. I’d go to another one, and, they, you know, they were doing their business, and, well, I’m the dumb artist. And I was able to walk in and out of their offices, and there used to be senators sitting out in the anteroom, and they used to look at me “Who’s this guy walkin’ in and out with his dirty clothes?” They couldn’t figure who this. . . . They’d think that I was a janitor, or. . . . They’d look at me in amazement. They had to wait until they got called in. I used to walk into Johnson’s place. To hell, once I even helped him put his pants on, or something; he was shaving. Whoo!
I know once they had a luncheon, a private luncheon, or secret luncheon, that Harry Hopkins, Bernard Baruch, Hugh Johnson, and the secretary, and someone else had a dinner. So I acted as a helper at the table, as a waiter. But Barney Baruch asked me, “Oh, I hear that you just got married.” I’d just married Rose [St. John—AB]. So I said, “Yeah, I got married. I got tired of eating in cafeterias.” So they all laughed. Then after it was all over, you know, they had the luncheon, talking business, and I’m around, you know, they had no fear of what they said to me, ‘cause they knew I didn’t give a goddamn. You know, no speaka da the English. [laughter] So after they went, I found on the table a penny, you know. They all left me one penny tip. [laughs] Aaah, boy.

AVIS BERMAN: So that came out of Edith.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, Edith Halpert, yeah, got this through Robert Straus, the Macy’s family, you know, and I went there. I spent a year in Washington. I mean, I was running all around. Then we had a show at the Corcoran Gallery, and it was a big thing, no money. It was all over, no money. And I had to come back, throw a show in the Downtown Gallery, and collectors came, and they all hated the New Deal so they offered to Edith Halpert, how much, fifty dollars if they could throw rocks at the heads. That’s what she told me. Said that they hated Roosevelt and the New Deal, and all the collectors buying art instead of buying it, they wanted, they’d go for the money if they could throw rocks at it. So Edith Halpert got so scared that she dropped me. I was making more publicity for her, with Babe Ruth, and this, and everything. She dropped me like a hot potato. Strange world, huh?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. How come none of those cabinet members bought their own heads?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Let’s see, one of them did. I forgot his name. He took Johnson’s job. Nice fella. He bought it, you know, $250, or something, a plaster head. Let’s see, the Modern Museum owns a bronze head of. . . . Oh, I just mentioned the name, and, you know, my mind goes blank. And they own the plaster cast of one of the heads.

AVIS BERMAN: It’s okay.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And we even have a bronze cast down in the basement of it. I made two heads of General Johnson. I got one, which I made at the Walter Reed Hospital when he was sick there, and I went there and made a second one when he was lying down on his bed. And it was awful funny—you know we mentioned about the Altamira cave drawings?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He happened to mention something about the Altamira cave drawings. I looked at him in amazement and so surprised. He said, “My god, what the hell do you know about the Altamira cave drawings?” then looked at me in a sort of guilty manner. “I. . . . I know about it.” [laughter] He apologized. It was pleasant, like, “How the hell do you know about that?” Isn’t it funny, we were just talking about the Altamira Cave drawings.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He was cute. He liked me, and I liked him. He was a nice fella. Straight. You know, no monkey business. Yeah, I met a lot of interesting personalities, you know. John Graham, and Gorky, Lachaise, and Manship, John Barrymore. . . . A couple nights ago, I just happened to turn on television. I was just going to go to bed, and I turned it on, and it was the life of Sarah Bernhardt, and some actress. . . . I asked my wife, and she said. . . .

AVIS BERMAN: Lilly Palmer.

RUBEN NAKIAN: . . . her name is Palmer. I had never seen her and she. . . . I saw the last performance of Sarah Bernhardt at the Palace, and they mentioned the date, 1916. All the hooplah about this, so I bought a ticket way up on the top floor of the balcony, and I saw her and she had a leg. . . . She was in a wheelchair, her leg was cut off. Heard her emote in French. Oh, great thing, Sarah Bernhardt. And I always mention that, you know, to show how old I am, that when I meet people, I brag. I said, “You know, I even saw Sarah Bernhardt when she was alive. They don’t even know who the hell. . . . Here, I’m bragging, and they don’t even, never even heard of Sarah Bernhardt. Even when I mention about John Barrymore, they go, “Who?” Oh yeah, I mentioned something about Caruso, you know. I was working in the Met, and he was watching me copy a sculpture, standing there watching me for ten, fifteen minutes, and I mentioned that to somebody, and then, “Who was Caruso?” The younger generation—so I’m going to shut up after this. You know, what they were, I’m not going to talk.

AVIS BERMAN: That’s terrific. You said Caruso was there watching you copy? Did you know, at the time, did you know he was Caruso? Did you recognize. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I was scared. Manship made me go there, you know, to copy. . . . He said, “Reuben, you can draw like hell, but you’re a lousy sculptor. Go up there and. . . .” you know. So I had to, and I hated having the audience and people; I had to do it. And I was making a thing about two feet high, a Greek sculpture in plaster cast. A lot of people around me. So I happened to turn around, and there was Caruso with a grin. He saw I was nervous as hell. He was telling me [that he would stay there]. Give me the. . . . I got so scared, I turned back right away. And after five minutes, I turned again, and he was gone. So I don’t know how long he was watching me. But he was smart, but he must have noticed I was pissed off. I had to copy, and I turned around and I got scared. See, these are stories I mention to people. I mention this to someone, and nobody even knew who I was, who Caruso was, so, geez, I’m not going to talk any more. It’s just hopeless.

AVIS BERMAN: That’s wonderful, that he would stand there and look.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: I wonder if the other people who were watching you were watching him?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, I don’t know. There was, you know, a lot of people there, you know. Wow!

AVIS BERMAN: But you could still go to the Metropolitan today and you see people copying paintings and stuff, art students.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, that’s good, great! You should go there and copy. Cézanne used to go in his old age to the Louvre and copy paintings. Can you imagine that? He was a shy guy. Can you imagine a shy guy going to the Louvre with people around copying? I can’t figure it, can’t figure it. He was so shy. But he used to do it.

AVIS BERMAN: Now did Edith ever pay you any kind of monthly stipend, or anything, that you remember?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No.

AVIS BERMAN: Now, were you friendly at all with the Stieglitz group, like O’Keeffe, or Marin?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I never met O’Keeffe. I met Marin at a friend’s place. We had luncheon together, I met him once, yeah. But I was a young sculptor. Everything was painting, you know. I’m on the outside. See, like we have a Thursday Club. They’re all commercial artists, and they write for Hollywood and, you know, portrait paintings. We have the Thursday Club every two weeks. I stopped going there. But when I’d go, they really wanted me to go there, but they don’t talk to me. They talk about Hollywood, or about business, or about this. . . . And so I sit there like a. . . . I don’t fit! Like in the old days, you know, sculptors didn’t fit in. Everyone was a painter.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, maybe I’m not naming the right people. You must have known the Zorachs, of course?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah, we, yeah, we were good friends. I used to, I lived right nearby, and I actually carved. . . . He had a daughter. I carved an alabaster of her sitting down with a cat, or something. And they used to invite me to dinner at least twice a week, and his wife Marguerite was very sweet, and we were friends. But after a while, when I got publicity for Washington and Babe Ruth, he got jealous, and I didn’t like him for it. We didn’t see much of each other. But he was a good guy. I don’t think much of him as a sculptor.

AVIS BERMAN: So you’re saying probably after the mid-thirties you didn’t see him anymore that much?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I don’t know. I know it was after I came back from Washington, and he looked at me in anger. I was getting all this publicity about the New Deal. And then, then Halpert dropped me and she moved uptown, and she had Zorach again, and he was in, and I was out. So I stayed away. I moved to Staten Island. I don’t give a damn. If people don’t want me, screw ‘em. I’ve never kissed anyone’s ass in my life. I’ve insulted people, you know, I’ve never kissed their ass. I take after my wife, who’s ferocious. She says I’m. . . . I’m mild compared to her. [laughs] She’s like a wild tiger.

AVIS BERMAN: What did you and Zorach use to talk about? You were interested in direct carving for a while, and of course he was into that, and I was wondering if you talked about that?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, we never talked much. He was friendly. When I was with Gorky, we didn’t talk much art. We’d just go down, you know, eat and sit down and have a little company. We were bored, you know, lonely. There was no society taking us up, no curators of museums asking us for advice or coming around. All the poor artists got together to kill an afternoon and have a cheap meal at the Automat. That’s all it was. The Modern Museum was kissing the ass of Picasso, Matisse, and everything. All the money that was going to them; it wasn’t coming to us struggling here. And all of a sudden, after Jackson Pollock, they were taking up American art as a gimmick. Madison Avenue saw they could make some money on it or something. But there’s no real comprehension of art, it was just a, it’s a new trick. They landed on a new. . . . And then in the sixties, all the art are tricks. Larry Poons makes a dot. This guy makes a zigzag. This guy makes a zoom-zoom. This man makes a red and a blue. It’s all gimmicks. It’s not art. Is there a Velázquez? Is there a Goya? Is there a van Gogh, a Michelangelo? No. Just goddamn decorations. That’s all the art we’ve had in the last thirty years. It’s all bullshit.

AVIS BERMAN: I haven’t asked you yet how you met your wife and how you got married?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I met her on Eighth Street. At a party. And she came to Washington and I was making the New Deal heads there and we had an apartment. I think it was called “K” Street. It just comes back. Isn’t it funny? I don’t know. [laughing] It just comes back, “K” Street. [whistling]

AVIS BERMAN: Do you want to quit for today?

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, I’m fine. You want to keep on yakking, go ahead? I have nothing to do.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, a little bit more. Just, we. . . .

DON ROSS: Yeah, you have time.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I’ve got my gin, and I got my pipe.

DON ROSS: You’re set.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, was I drunk last night! I staggered home.

DON ROSS: When? Last night?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, God, Jesus, this goddamn stuff. Every man has to have a vice. I stay away from women—they’re dangerous. But gin is a great protection.

AVIS BERMAN: Just another thing about Edith Halpert is, at the time when you had her, there are a lot of people who had commissions for Radio City and Rockefeller Center.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I didn’t get ‘em. What’s his name got ‘em—Zorach.

AVIS BERMAN: But were you, were you competing for that or anything?

RUBEN NAKIAN: I wasn’t competing with anybody. But I. . . . I didn’t meet people. I didn’t go after anything. I’m just Rube the Boob. That’s all. And I’m proud of it. I’m not apologizing.

AVIS BERMAN: And were you ever up in Woodstock, or go to any of the. . . .

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I went there once, and I was anti-Woodstock. It was an art colony, and I didn’t like that idea either, that they all moved there and bought land and everything. But I stayed away from there. Even. . . . See, I can’t even think of the name. Mrs. Whitney’s secretary, what’s her name?

AVIS BERMAN: Juliana Force.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Even Juliana Force used to go there, you know. George Bellows, who was alive then, I think, and he had a place there, and all the famous artists used to live out there then. And that was the place to go. But I didn’t like it. Raoul Hague liked it. He moved out there and got a shack out there. Living all by himself. But I didn’t like it.

AVIS BERMAN: Well, when did, and how did you meet Raoul Hague. You were friends, right?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, I met him years ago, yeah, in his studio, you know. He had just come from Egypt or Asia, and I recognized him as an Armenian immigrant, you know, a young guy and we’d hang around. He was a nice fella.

AVIS BERMAN: Was he doing those monumental wood trunks then?

RUBEN NAKIAN: He started that later. Before, he was making little things for years. I think he began doing that when he moved out to Woodstock.

AVIS BERMAN: Did you ever visit him in his shack there?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I went there once or twice, yeah. Yeah, he got me smoking again. I had quit smoking for five years. We went there and I was nervous about something, and he shoved a cigar in my face, said, “Come on, smoke this.” I began smoking, and I got back to smoking again. He’s a. . . .

DON ROSS: I thought you used to go up to Woodstock to see Joe Pollet.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, a couple of times, once or twice, we went to see. . . . Did you ever hear of Joe Pollet?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I hear he died too, didn’t he?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes, a year or two ago.

RUBEN NAKIAN: A year or two ago. He was my exact age. You know, we were born around the same time. Yeah, he was a strange character. Yeah, he was supposed to be the white hope of, the van Gogh of America, according to John Sloan, in those days.

AVIS BERMAN: When you were visiting Raoul, did he have all the clocks up in his little shack?

RUBEN NAKIAN: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. I wish I had one of them. We have no clock here, and I was just talking to Don, “We ought to have a clock.”

DON ROSS: Oh, we can’t afford a clock, Reuben!

RUBEN NAKIAN: He used to pick ‘em up for twenty, thirty cents, they used to give ‘em away for him, you know. You know, all the school houses. His house is tick-tock, tick-tock, all that. If you’ve never been there at the house, every room has a great big clock going tick-tock.

AVIS BERMAN: It’s not just one. No, the living room area, it’s every single wall space has nothing but clocks. There are about forty clocks.

RUBEN NAKIAN: No, he has as many as those?

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, I visited him a couple years ago.

RUBEN NAKIAN: He’s a clock collector.

AVIS BERMAN: And they’re all hand-wound cuckoo-type clocks, and they’re all up, and then there’s just, you know, there’s just nothing but noise because they’re all going at once.

RUBEN NAKIAN: [chuckles]

AVIS BERMAN: And he still doesn’t have any electricity or anything.

RUBEN NAKIAN: No?

AVIS BERMAN: Yes and no. He’s got a big Quonset hut for his sculpture, and he keeps them, you know, humidity-controlled, because they’re wood.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Oh, yeah, uh huh.

AVIS BERMAN: He’s got it for the sculpture, but not for himself.

RUBEN NAKIAN: I hear he had some kind of heart attack or something, or what was it?

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, I don’t know that. I saw him a couple of years ago when he was very robust.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah.

AVIS BERMAN: And you know he still chops all his own wood and all that.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah.

DON ROSS: And he’s not so young.

RUBEN NAKIAN: And he still shoots a raccoon for meat.

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, yeah?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, that’s what they, years ago, [I think]. [laughs] He’s a character, yeah, Jesus Christ. Well, he’s smart. He went up there and lived all alone. I remember we were on the art project. He said, “I’m getting out of New York.” And he knew these people in Woodstock, and there was, there was writer up there called White, Hervey White, or something, and he got friendly with him and Hervey gave him his place when he died, you know. So he was living up there all alone.

AVIS BERMAN: Yes. It’s up on a hill, it’s hard to find it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Yeah. Happy. . . . [So am I. It’s real nice.] But look, he’s getting old. When was he born? Around 1905, I think.

AVIS BERMAN: I think so.

RUBEN NAKIAN: So he’s eight years younger than I am, the son-of-a-bitch. I hate younger people. Aaah.

DON ROSS: Well, [sorry about that]. Nothing I can do about it.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Well, you can change places, can’t ya?

AVIS BERMAN: I guess also you were doing those artists, first you were doing those artists’ portrait heads, but I guess. . . . When did the Depression really begin to hit you?

RUBEN NAKIAN: Hmm, when did what?

AVIS BERMAN: When did the Depression really begin to hit you?

DON ROSS: He was always depressed.

RUBEN NAKIAN: In 1929, at the, the day of the big crash, I was at 55 Christopher Street, and I was working on a life-size nude plaster model, and what’s-his-name came round to see me. Dorothy Miller’s husband, what was his name?

AVIS BERMAN: Oh, Holger Cahill.

RUBEN NAKIAN: Holger Cahill. We were friends, and he came round to see me in the afternoon. And it happened to be the day of the crash. October ‘29, was when it was. I’d known him. . . . And he was a tall, lanky guy in a business suit and his face was all in a rash. He was nervous. He had a paper in his hand, folding it, walking up and down. So I said to him, “What the hell, what’s the matter with you? You got ants in your pants? Sit down and have a drink.” So he looked at me in disgust, opened up the paper, and shoved it in my face, said, “You dumb artists don’t know what’s going to hit you.” And there was a big headline about the crash, stock market, and “I don’t know, I didn’t give a damn about it,” I said. “You stupid [artists], you don’t know what’s going to hit you.” [chuckles] You know who he was? The editor of the Wall Street J