Interview with Raimonds Staprans
Conducted by Paul Karlsrom
At the Interviewer's home in San Francisco, California
August 14, 1997

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Raimonds Staprans on August 14, 1997. The interview took place in San Francisco, California, and was conducted by Paul Karlstrom for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

[Tape 1, side A]

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, conducting an interview with painter and playwright, Raimonds Staprans. It's session one. The interview is being conducted by Paul Karlstrom at his home in San Francisco. The date is August 14, 1997, and this is tape one, side A.

Okay, we've dispatched that now, Raimonds, and what I'm looking forward to doing, over the course of these interviews, two or three sessions, whatever they may be, is get a better understanding of you, your own story, and your multifaceted talents, I guess I should say. We think of you around here as a painter, but I know that there's going to be more to your activity than that. We'll get into that a little bit later. You have been in this country since, I believe, the late forties.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, '47, to be exact. I think I was one of the first immigrants to arrive after the war, and before the DP Program, Displaced Persons Program, even started. That was because my uncle was here from, say, 1905. He was a revolutionary, and he had to face either, let's say, being imprisoned by the Czar, or to emigrate to the United States, and so he did it illegally, and worked at various places, and finally became a chiropractor, and acquired some property and some money, and so he sponsored a trip to the United States, so I arrived here fairly early.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you have, then, an established family connection.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, I had an established family connection, definitely, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I would be real interested in hearing more about your background before you came to this country, going back as far, perhaps, as you want, in terms of what you think is relevant, but trying to paint a picture, if you will, of really where you come from, what you come from, what was your family background, and your early experience, before coming here.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, that's probably, it's very difficult to say, and, you know, I've been trying to write it down myself, occasionally. The first experience, as a child, probably what I have, it is--no, I think first experience is that I saw a blimp, and that was one of those German zeppelins, coming to the country, and I saw it and I tried to draw it, and that's my first drawing, and I think it was preserved by my family. Now that they are dead, I still somewhere have this drawing. They brought it all the way over to the United States. My second impression is, since my father, he was a doctor, a physician, and we lived next to a hospital. Next to the hospital was also the local mortuary, hospital's mortuary, so all the patients who died, they were deposited there. From there on, there was a funeral procession, so they walked exactly past my window, and that's what I draw. So these were my subjects.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Where was this? We actually haven't determined where we are.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Ah, that's right, yeah. Well, I have to be simple. I was born in '26, in Riga, Latvia, and at that time it was an independent nation. We lived in the city, and my father, like I said before, he was a physician. He was a surgeon. My mother, she graduated and got a master's in German literature, and what she did, she taught in school, and mostly she did reviews of poetry and also some other literature. So that's what was happening during those days. I don't know, there are so many images from which--how to start? It's very difficult to say which are relevant.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I think that is a good way to go about it. Before that, so that we don't forget, but going back further, who were your ancestors, to the extent you know about them--grandparents, and then their parents? Who was the family?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, actually, probably, the family tree, if you go back, goes probably back several centuries, and they were all peasants, so to speak, peasants, or working on their farms, or their farms were owned by the Germans, and so there was an animosity. In a way, in the early nineteenth century, they were serfs. And then like all over Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, they were released, and they could farm independently, so they acquired the freedom to move wherever they wanted.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But did they stay pretty much in the same area, in Riga?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Around, yeah, I would say, Latvia. Really, as it is, it is a small country, compared to the United States. You could cross the country, let's say, four hours, at most, either way. Of course, it's about the size, it's larger than Belgium or Holland, but not that much larger, so it's really a small place. Most of the people worked on the farms, and that was also true for my grandparents, on both sides, my mother's and my father's side. On my father's side, I would say his grand-grandparents were farmers, and then my grandfather on my father's side, he became a schoolteacher, and then, of course, he was also a conductor of a choir or a chorus in the local Orthodox church. Then the story gets again involved. Why in the Greek Orthodox Church? Because the country was occupied by the Russian czars, and they want to eliminate all the minorities, so, in order to be able to work as a teacher or in some official capacity, you had to switch to Orthodox religion, you had to speak Russian and many kinds of official institutions are Russian, was the language to be, and all the local languages had to be eliminated. So it was things like the Russification. So he became a teacher and working also in the local church. Then Latvia acquired independence in 1918. That was the First World War. He entered into politics. He was a Social Democrat.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is still your paternal grandfather?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, that's my paternal grandfather. I'm trying to carry this line.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, this is good.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: There's just one line and then the other line, since we are going back. Then he moved to a small town called Talsi, and what happened was, then he became, I would say, also the principal of the local school, and then after a while was the mayor of the town. So he really had what you would call a political career, and he remained the mayor of the town until his retirement.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What was the name of that town again?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: It was Talsi.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Will you spell that?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: T-A-L-S-I. Talsi.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So he had this political career. This is quite a move, then, from his background, peasant or serf background.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right, yeah.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Really quite upwardly mobile.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, I think it was really true of all the Latvians. Everyone has their roots in the farm, but in the nineteenth century, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was an upward movement, out of the farms, towards the city, toward education, toward culture, toward, I would say, political influence, economic influence, and, in a way, it's still continuing today. But like everyone, actually in any kind of a circle, there isn't a single Latvian who does not have his roots in the country, and, of course, it's been reflected in literature, and probably in poetry, etc. This is, I would say, this was about my grandfather, and how it was.

About my mother, in a way, it was a simpler way. Of course, her father was, I would say, a peasant, worked on a farm. He moved to the city, became a carpenter, worked in a factory. That was before World War I. And worked for six days, and twelve hours a day, and even sometimes on Sunday. So, that was a capitalist way to do it, and, of course, it resulted in some ways in the revolution of 1905. He had to work for very low wages.

Then came the war. As the Germans came in, Latvia was really like a corridor, where it was sort of a highway, where either the Western and the Eastern powers were moving back and forth, and that seems to be the Latvian history, which is probably, if you study history, it's very important, because I would say Napoleon went through Latvia and went back, and the Swedes, if they wanted to go, let's say, to attack Russians, they had to go through Latvia because that's the only way. Because south of it there are, I would say, woods and forests, and in the north of it there is water, and the Finnish, the Baltic Sea. So that's probably the only passable area. But that's entirely probably a different story.

So, during the First World War, as the Germans came in here, he had to flee to Russia, stayed there as a refugee, came back as Latvia gained independence, worked for a while in a farm, then went back to work as a carpenter in the factory, joined the Social Democrat party and took active part in it, in demonstrations, and he gave some speeches, etc. During the independence, as a carpenter, at the age of sixty-one, contracted cancer of the stomach, which was very usual in those times, and died at the age of sixty-one. So that was probably a little bit too early.

So these are the two lines of my grandparents, either on my mother's and my father's side. Now, would you like to hear anything about my father, as he developed, and the mother?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, please, yes.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's relevant.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What about your grandmothers? Are their stories the same?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: The grandmothers are very similar. It is probably very involved. On my grandfather's side, the grandmother, she came actually from an extinct Finnish group that was living somewhere in Latvia. So, actually, so I am, I would say, three-fourths Latvian myself, and one-fourth Finnish, in origin. She also spoke both languages. When she married my grandfather, she was a simple country woman, and he was sort of educated, like he was a schoolteacher, and as he later became the principal of the school, he taught probably the Russian language, he taught history, he taught mathematics, etc.

So there was a marriage, but, I don't know, it was a marriage, there was really a great disparity between the educations, because she was a completely uneducated woman, and she bore him four children. But during the Second World War, when he went, he was fleeing as a refugee from the German invasion to Russia. He left his wife behind. After four years, when he returned to Latvia, he had already remarried, and came out with a younger, more beautiful, I would say, a different wife. So, I would say, there was really kind of a conflict, because he was still married to one woman and then he was married to another woman.

PAUL KARLSTROM: He married this woman in Russia?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, he married this woman in Russia, and they came back. When he was around sixty, she was about thirty years younger than he was, of course. Then when they met, there back at their homes, there was this old, weathered peasant woman with teeth missing in the front, and withered, wrinkled face and white hair, which was falling out, and the wrinkled skin and the worked red hands. And there was this man with a very young woman in her thirties, being married, and behaving in really a romantic fashion. And that really lasted, probably, this conflict, until I left this country, and I was really impressed. Maybe that was one of the reasons, seeing them and all the family relations, why I really started writing, or became aware of writing, as such. So I think that was about on my father's side.

Now, on my mother's side. My grandmother, also, she came from a farm. She came into the city, she raised her family, and that's all she did. She raised two daughters, one of them which was my mother. What I would say, she had a quite unremarkable, and, I would say, by and large, an uneventful and absolutely uninteresting and unremarkable life.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, no.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: She was a great and warm person, but when you would really think of it, she really had nothing to say, except that she raised daughters, and she did the housekeeping, cooking, which is probably a lot. That's what, probably, my mother always reminded me, she said, "I wish I had a mother that was at least something or somebody, but she wasn't."

Now, how far are we? We've covered probably the--

PAUL KARLSTROM: We're to your parents.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Ah, now it's our parents. Since we are on my mother's side, probably my mother. All right. She was born in 1903, and she was in a family that was in Riga, and in the family of a carpenter and a carpenter's housewife. She also has a kid sister, and from then on, she went to the local school, and, of course, it was a Russian school, because there were hardly any Latvian schools available, because at that time there was this rule which was instituted by what you would call the Russian government, Monaheim, in the 1890s. Now, I am digressing into history. Latvian history is really complex. Which was proclaimed that all those minorities and that goes not for Baltic peoples, but for any minorities, they had to be Russified within fifty years. The local languages had to be eradicated, and everyone had to speak Russian.

So she spoke Latvian at home, and went to a Russian school, and, actually, I would say the regime was very strict, what she remembers. All the subjects were all in Russian, and even during the intermissions, if teachers caught somebody speaking Latvian, they were punished. They were punished with three slaps with a ruler on the finger. Always three slaps with a ruler on the finger, if they were caught speaking Latvian with other Latvian children.

From then on, the Germans came in. She went with her parents. I would say she was fleeing as a refugee, deep into Russia, actually was evacuated, like the factories were evacuated. She had no choice, and so she was evacuated to St. Petersburg, and stayed there during the war, suffered terrible famine, and then after the war, returned back, in a provincial town which was called Cesis, and it was sort of like a Latvian minor cultural center, I would say. Quite a few of the Latvian, I would say, intelligentsia writers or painters came from that region. It was just coincidence. And there she entered, for the first time, a Latvian, I would say, high school.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What was the name of this town?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: It was called Cesis, and it is C-E-Z-I-S.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Thank you.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: It's certainly, I would say, in the way we're talking, it's really an unimportant place; it was just another place. From then on, and, of course, what she liked, she really excelled in most subjects. I must say she was very talented with most anything. She was talented in music, she was talented in literature, she even was talented in math, and she was talented and played in the school theater.

By graduating, she really didn't know what she was trying to do, but she wanted to study, so she went to Riga, the capital, where we had the only university at that time, and she finally decided to study German literature, and she got her bachelor's there and then she got her master's in German literature. Of course, probably her work, as she graduated, her thesis was on [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, and the two plays, what he had played, which he had written about, I would say, about sixteenth, seventeenth century Spain. I must admit that at this point I can't remember those plays, what those plays were, and very few people remember. They know that Goethe wrote poetry, but nobody remembers that he wrote also a score of plays, which are, by this time, they are all largely forgotten, and only probably scholars remember them. In those plays, there were names like Raimondo and Armando, and so, for one reason that my name is Raimonds and the name of my other brother is Armando, or Armands. So it comes from this play, when she was doing her master's thesis in school.

PAUL KARLSTROM: When was she in school then? When was she in the university?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, in the university, starting in her early twenties, and off and on, and she graduated sometime in the early thirties. She got her master's in '31.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So she was going to school while she was raising you children?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right. She was going to school while she was raising us, and my father was practicing medicine. Then later, my mother, of course, like she was really probably interested in poetry, she started writing, first reviews and discussions of poetry in the local magazines. She did that up to the point, in a way, until the day she died, here in the United States. I think probably she died in 199--just a few years ago, I think it was 1993. I think the last review she wrote was somewhere around the mid-eighties.

When she decided that she still could write, she said, "It is time, like a carpenter." Like my father. "It's time to hang up your hammer, so it's time to hang up my pen on the wall and it's time to quit." I think that she was around eighty-four or eighty-five, and so she stopped writing altogether, which she had really followed all my career, and probably all my knowledge about literature, or interest, I really got from her.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So, in fact, simply put, you reaped the benefit of the family upward mobility in terms of education and opportunities, familiarity with art and culture, music and literature.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Which has served you very well. Of course, during this time, your father obviously, as a doctor, who was cultivated and well educated. Where do visual arts fit into this? Was there interest in your home in painting, in the visual?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: In the visual arts, probably the only interest was--well, actually, it probably concerned my mother, but then you had to go back to my father, which is probably a completely different line, and he's an entirely different person. But probably, whatever I would say, my interest and talent in arts and my concern with arts, it really comes from my mother's side. I would say, definitely, from my mother's side only, because it's strange enough, now I know of my relatives from my mother's side. One of them, I would say, is probably a designer of [unclear], and another, probably one of my cousins, and they're all on my mother's side, now he's in television. Then, another cousin, which had come, he's in music and then another cousin that I have, he's in theater. So, strangely enough, on my mother's side, every one of my cousins and my aunts or my uncles are somehow connected in some way with arts, in general. I would say whatever concern I get, it's from that, from the mother's side.

Now you ask this question, how do I come in contact with painting? Probably it was for the reason that my mother, she collected paintings. When she could, I would say, afford it, from an early age, she collected art. Of course, it was Latvian art, of course. I would say, our apartment, or the place where we lived, as far as I remember, there were paintings on every wall, like the wall spaces were really full.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Was this traditional art, folk art?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no, no, it was traditional. It was traditional art, done by the local painters who had graduated from art schools.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Really? Basically contemporary artists?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I would say 100 percent contemporary. No, she wasn't interested like in nineteenth century, or collecting antique art. No, she was collecting contemporary art which was painted at that time, in Latvia. She really bought art at every occasion. I don't know, is it proper to make a digression?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sure. Of course.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Okay. The digression is this, is that even now, as I went to Latvia, and it was about two months ago, it was the last time I was in Riga, I spent some of my time reclaiming two of the canvases, which was one of the huge canvases, about the size of the one you have behind you. It was even larger. A huge ornate frame. And it was, I would say--

PAUL KARLSTROM: Four by four, are you saying?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, something--

[Tape 1, side B]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Continuing the interview with Raimonds Staprans, this is tape one, side B. You were talking about your recent trip to Latvia, and actually reclaiming some--well, I guess you said some tools, but paintings.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I was claiming some paintings, and one was probably, I would say, a huge canvas of a seascape, which was done by a Latvian painter, what was called a "diploma" work. As you graduate from art school, then you, let's say, paint a certain painting, and it was called like diploma work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Like academic.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, sort of. In a way, academic, but at that time I think it was fashionable to paint like what one would call realistic impressionism. It was impressionistic in the realistic vein, which was really popular in Europe, probably in around the teen, nineteen, I would say, nineteenth century teen years, and the twenties. Of course, since there was also another canvas, and so reclaimed it, you know, a collection. So that's a digression.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is important, because these were the kinds of works with which you were surrounded as you were growing up.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right, yeah. And the thing is, that anywhere where I looked, on the walls, there was always a painting. Not that I was really interested in painting, but there was no choice. Either I looked at one painting or I looked at the other. [laughter]

PAUL KARLSTROM: [laughter] Did you like them?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Very early, really, I determined that I liked some and I disliked others, and I don't know why, for some reason, but I found some more interesting, and then even at a very early age, I saw that I determined, I decided that some painters, I thought they were kind of clumsy and that some others were a little bit more elegant. I would say it was when I was about the age of eight, nine, or ten.

So I think we have probably exhausted anything that goes with the mother and I. Take it all together, comparing it, I got probably interest in painting, interest in literature, interest, I would say, in poetry, or in arts in general. And probably the second thing it was that probably my mother mostly associated also with artists and writers or poets at that time, and invited them to dinners. As a child, I was listening, of course, like in Europe, not like the children here, who think that at the age of three, they should be listened to. I could sit at the table, but I was told not to speak, just to listen, and I think just by listening I really gained quite a lot, and really absorbed quite a lot of information which served me later, a little bit. So that was probably all I can say about my mother.

Now, from my mother, there's an entirely different line, lineage, and it's almost like night and day. Like my father--to start this, my other interest is in politics, in general, and that comes from my father. Coming from a father, I would say, he was also born in Talsi, in 1900, at the turn of the century, and like in the family of his teacher father and his peasant, very simple, I would say, very plain, maybe I would say, even ugly-looking housewife mother.

He went there to his grammar school, then he went to high school in a larger city, and at the age of fifteen, as he graduated probably from high school, he was also evacuated during the First World War, in Russia, where he became, in a way, sort of a revolutionary. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Socialist party, and went through all this turmoil in Russia, and gave Socialist speeches at the age of fifteen. He said he felt at the time, at the age of fifteen, you should be a grown-up man. You should have, at the age of fifteen--and that's what he said--a completely developed view of the world, like the Germans say, "[German phrase]," and you should know, at the age of fifteen, what you want. At the age of fifteen, you should know in which direction you should be going, which is, of course, completely different from what we think of today. Very easily, you add another fifteen years, when we look at our children.

So, at fifteen, he was travelling, a Socialist, around Russia and giving speeches and he would give speeches. He had such a conviction, as if he was a grown man, on any subject. Like he was giving speeches on marriage, he was giving lectures on marriage, on free love, and then he remembers one thing, that at one point, when he was giving a lecture on free love, and all the women were saying, "But my dear lecturer, don't you think you should wait another couple of years before you should lecture on free love?" And then he said, "I cannot imagine how insulted I felt." So he said, "That's really terrible," and that's really the kind of a man he was.

And then, of course, then when in all the turmoil in Russia, like the Social Democrats, they were also, at that time, in ways, they were arch enemies of the Communists, so also they joined, in a way, what they called more towards the [Leon] Trotsky movement. But that's probably an experience in itself which would probably fill a book. Really, his brother has already written about it, and there is a book on these experiences, and that's an entirely different matter.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is that so? There's a book already published?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, yes. It was published. My father has a brother who's a journalist and he wrote a book.

PAUL KARLSTROM: In Latvia?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, in Latvia. He wrote those experiences. But again, I'm digressing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, I think that's interesting. This is part of your background.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that's part of the background. As you go along, you sort of digress in many directions. So he returned, probably at the age of nineteen, eighteen, he returned to Latvia. He joined, in a way, the Latvian Army, and then he fought the Germans in 1918, and then he volunteered, also, to the Eastern Front and fought the Communists, and he got kind of a cross for it, for the bravery. I don't know how brave he was, but apparently, in a way, he was brave. He had very few anxieties, compared to me.

Then when he was demobilized, of course, he was already sort of a member of the Socialist party. He was an acting member. He went around giving speeches, political speeches, on social democracy. He was elected to the City Council and, also, to probably the City Council of the capital, Riga, on the Social Democrat ticket, and then he was also elected, I would say, chairman of the Association of Physicians, and has a lot of other, probably, political posts, off and on.

Of course, as elections came, he was one of the main speakers, and he has really a gift for speaking. He can speak without notes, very coherently, for hours on end, has really probably a talent for which I really have great admiration, because I'm just the opposite. I have to have things written out, and unless they are written out, I cannot speak publicly at all.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you didn't inherit that particular--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that particular--and probably I found it very fascinating, because on his election speeches, he took me along. Again, I was listening to the way he was giving speeches and the crowds were clapping and admiring and yelling. Among his compatriots and the party members, I'm not ashamed to say, really, he was regarded, he was said, "Now hear this man with a golden tongue." And of all the speakers, yes, he had, I would say, a golden tongue. He would speak on any subject, mostly political, and all the women would just cry and break out in tears.

I know the last speech he gave, it's an emigré group, and I think that was about five years, before he contracted Alzheimer's. That was in '75. The last speech he gave is a group of emigré gatherings in San Francisco, to an audience of several hundred people. Somebody rose up and he said, "My God, hear this man with the golden tongue, and he still hasn't lost it." So, then my other line, from the arts, I was also connected, from my father's side, to politics, which I still have today. I don't know. Am I doing it too slowly?

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, no.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Too much detail?

PAUL KARLSTROM: No.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Maybe you can prompt me along.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I'll tell you if I think that it's not interesting. It seems to me that this gives a very good, full picture of the environment in which you, the eventual artist, were coming up. When did your father have time to go to medical school? When did he become a doctor?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, he did that at the same time. He did his politics and the medicine--like he said, "The politics is my hobby, but my real occupation, it's the medical school." So he had been to medical school in '25, he finished in five years. Then he had his residence in surgery, and he also became a surgeon. He was a man, really, of immense energy, which I don't have and none of the others have.

What he did, he got up at six o'clock, he started operating at six o'clock in the morning. He did his operations 'til noon, he came home at noon, he had a nap, fifteen-minute nap, he fell deeply asleep for fifteen minutes, he got up, then he worked 'til about six o'clock, seven, then from seven 'til twelve, he did his politics. Either he did the party work, he went to bed at twelve. He never slept more than five hours, most of his younger years, I would say. Again, he had this energy level, which I really admired, and I wonder how come that I never got it. Although at certain times, my wife, Ilona, like she says, "Look at you. At certain times, you are indestructible." Indestructible, that I still can go for about two nights without sleep, and go for a couple of days before I collapse, and then I see most of my friends collapse a little bit sooner than I do. So I probably inherited some of it, although not all of it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: How many siblings do you have? How many children?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Children? I have two.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, no--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Siblings, you mean?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Your brothers, sisters.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, I just have one brother.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Just one brother. So there are two.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, there are two.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Maybe your brother got all that energy.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. Some of it, some of it, yes. Coming back to it, he got some--actually, both of us got some of it, and some of it not. Also, his wife says he's, in a way, indestructible. He can get by in a few hours and work and--

PAUL KARLSTROM: What does he do? Is he into the arts?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, he's not in arts. He's in engineering and physics. Actually, I would say he has a very illustrious, in a way, an illustrious career. Can we digress, I would say, to his profession?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sure. Is he here in this country?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: He's here now, and if you're around, you're probably--if you have a party, you'll probably meet him. Well, he really got, in a way, an international name, because he devised, with another, an American, they devised the first radar that could shoot to the moon and back. That was in the fifties, you know, when they had the radar. But you could shoot only that far. Then at the University of California, where he was as a graduate student, in a way, he and those both two fellows, he and this Alan, all of sudden could develop, increase the range tenfold. It was just pure luck. Then increased tenfold, then in a way, as a publicity stunt, they aimed it at the moon, and it bounced back, back to Earth. So it was in all the papers. So, on the grounds of that, he quit. He got his Ph.D. in physics, and he was immediately gobbled up by Varian Associates, which is probably the largest radar manufacturer in the world, I would say. His radars are installed all over Europe. Actually, he produces radars, I would say, for the missiles, missile tracking and etc., and the radars are in probably every military establishment in NATO. So, in short, it's the largest manufacturing. And there he worked as a chief engineer, and as a manager, and now they're getting an associate. They are split up, and now the president and general manager of the split-off company, which is called Communications Company, which employs several thousand people here in the Silicon Valley.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What was the first company called?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Varian Associates. So, compared to us artists, now he's, I would say, a really well-to-do person, with an income much larger than six figures, and dying to retire, but he's not retiring. He says, "As long as I'm making all this money, I hate to retire."

PAUL KARLSTROM: Seems reasonable.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Seems reasonable. So that's my brother, but again, I'm probably digressing and leaving out the father somewhere.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, I don't think so. I suppose we ought to then take it back to prior to the emigration, prior to their coming over, those years. I seem to remember that even within Europe then, your family did some moving. You began a pattern of moving that eventually got you over here.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, that's true, yes. Well, I would say, I would still probably continue with my father and his political career, to know why I still have interest. As a sideline, I take some active interest in the Latvian politics, for politics in general.

Well, from then on, in 1934, then when putsch, I would say, and a dictatorship evolved in Latvia in 1934 and it was a momentous event. It used to be a democracy, but like in many of the European countries, it was taken over by some local dictator. So, since he was a Social Democrat, of course, in a way, he was persecuted. He wasn't thrown exactly in the jail, although he should have, but he had some influential friends, and then he didn't, but he was probably thrown out of all his posts, and he was thrown out of his hospital.

So what he did, he founded a private clinic of his own, and, strangely enough, I would say, from the economic point of view, monetary point of view, he did very well. Then the Soviets came in and then, of course, his clinic was nationalized. We had sort of a beach house; it was taken over by the Soviets. So he worked as a physician at a hospital, simple physician. Then after a while, like during Hitler's offensive into Russia, the Germans came in. As a Social Democrat, in a way, he was slightly persecuted, and he really should have been arrested, but he also had some influential friends among the local Germans, which kept him out of the jail. So he worked quietly and privately as a physician until '44, when the Russians came back in and we decided it was time to move to the West.

There was this western movement of all the Eastern Bloc peoples, including Ukrainians, the Baltic people, the Poles, the Romanians, the Czechs, and the Hungarians and everyone, and the Eastern Germans, too. So we all landed in Germany, and then he landed in the United States and got his license and worked as a doctor, first as a surgeon, and then we really coaxed him into switching his fields, so he became a psychiatrist, for the reason is, he said, "Surgery, it is really a very consuming profession, physically speaking." And at that time, he said very few surgeons live longer than fifty, fifty-five. They get heart attacks or high blood pressure, or something. And when you look back, it's really true. So we really coaxed him into changing his fields, and he started studying psychiatry, and went into psychiatry. He became, rather, I would say, so on a small scale, a rather reputable psychiatrist, which went just fine.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That was, what, in the fifties?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that was in the fifties and in the sixties. At the same time, he was also instrumental in the local Latvian politics and he was also in Social Democrat politics in Germany. So from his side, I acquired the interest in politics. And what about arts? I would say I always said that he had no feeling for arts in general, absolutely none whatsoever. He wanted to be associated with arts, but he didn't have the eye. Like he would say, he was a-musical, a-artistic, nonartistic. I don't know, there must be a proper word for it. He really just knew it really wasn't in him.

It was really a strange combination, really a great contrast between my mother and my father. But in a way, they got along reasonably well, because in a way, they complemented each other. But also because my father wanted always to associate with artists, and he always said that he had a very low opinion of his profession. He says, "When you really talk to doctors, they are limited. Most of them, they are stupid." And I quote him directly. To become a doctor, all you have to have, what he has, a really, a well-padded behind. You sit, and you memorize, you work in a very narrow field, you really don't have to have any imagination at all, and you have to have--let's say, they are very dull people.

So what he did in his spare time, he really didn't associate too much with his colleagues. He also associated with artists, with actors. He liked actors. And with writers and poets and so, actually, like I said, because my mother and my father really went along, in our house probably there were not too many medical people, but mostly people connected with arts.

PAUL KARLSTROM: At what point did you begin to notice, to really pay attention to the fact that these were the kinds of people that your parents generally were having over to the home? Or did you just take this for granted, or did you notice that these were creative people--writers and artists, and these sorts?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, what I noticed probably was that they were more interesting to listen to. Definitely, they were more interesting than some of the doctors. Of course, my father, he had to also throw some parties for his colleagues, and then I would always sit in and listen to them. I would say, at that time, I would say, I also, probably a good thing I acquired, somehow absorbed some medical knowledge and interest in medicine. Being hypochondriac by nature, I even probably read some medical literature, and I'm reading it now, so to see what kind of terrible sicknesses I could contract in the future, and I have contracted. So I have, probably, a fairly good--I don't want to brag about it, but I have a fairly good, for a layman, a fairly good knowledge, let's say, as layman knowing medicine. All my friends call me the "bogus doctor," so whenever they have problems, they don't want to go the doctor's, they come to me and I say, what you should do, this or that, you should see that kind of a specialist, and maybe you have this or that.

And from then on, I really realized what my father said, that to be really a regular doctor, you don't really have to be very smart, and even you don't have to know very much. And as a thing, it turns out, of all the professions that you have, be it, let's say, engineering or being a lawyer, if you know something about medicine, you can hang out a shingle, and you can treat patients and it will really take some time, a long time, before you will get caught. A lot of people have done it and have gotten along famously. As a joke, I always thought, you know, up to a point, I could do it, and it would really take a little while for me to catch it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But I hope you wouldn't practice surgery. [Laughter]

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, I wouldn't practice surgery, but internal medicine, definitely.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What about psychiatry?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Psychiatry. Oh, that's even easier. Absolutely, absolutely. Psychiatry, it's really very easy. All you have to do is, really, you have to listen to the patient, just to listen and be compassionate and to ask some questions, and you will never get caught.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Let's go back again. I keep wanting to take us back to prior to the family coming to the United States. I know that you moved, the family moved to Germany.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Basically escaping the return of the Russians, is that right?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right, the return of the Russians.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So where was it? Remind me what city you moved to. Was it Berlin? Is that right?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, again, it is a story. And then again, probably, I have to thank my father. First, we moved to Berlin. There was a shortage of doctors and he was also working as a surgeon, and before that, he was working for a while as a surgeon in a--

[Session 1, tape 2, side A]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Continuing the first interview session with Raimonds Staprans. The date is 14 August 1997, and this is tape two, side A.

Raimonds, we were moving with you and your family from Latvia to Germany, and your father setting up, somehow, a medical practice, I guess, in Berlin. Is that right?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, in a way, he was--now, like in a German hospital, he was sort of promised the post of a director of the hospital in Berlin, so it was quite a good post, but he turned it down. He said, "Well, the Germans have lost the war. Berlin would be bombed. It would be ordered by the Russians, probably, at the war's end. Let's move to someplace else, and I'll work just as a simple, low-level physician, to tide over the war."

So he got a job assignment to a remote hospital, in, of all the places, the Austrian Alps. It's part of what you would call, it's now really a prime, today it's a prime, it was always a prime tourist spot for Europeans. Probably there were, let's say, Alpine lakes and meadows and mountains, snow-capped mountains. It's in the Austrian Alps, in one of the small towns called Badausee, and that's where we, let's say, stayed, and expected and met the American army, the American Occupation Army. Because of him, for this reason I'm helpful, and I'm always, let's say, have this great admiration for him, because he had a really great practical, what you would call "horse sense." He had horse sense, and he had sort of an innate knowledge, which all his friends say, knowledge of people, or what the Germans say, "[German phrase.]" He knew people, and that's why he could so easily switch to psychiatry, and was really a successful psychiatrist, because he could evaluate and look for, talk to someone for five minutes and then he would say, "He's that kind of a person," and it turns right. I say, "How do you do it?" He says, "I have this intuition."

PAUL KARLSTROM: You, yourself, though, seem to me to be very interested in emotional life and mental states and these kinds of traits, personality traits and so forth.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. Yes, I would say I'm interested in, I would say, in psychiatry, for the same reason, and mostly to help myself. This interest I probably got from my father, in a way, I got from my father, in a way. Also, I must really admit, neither I nor my brother, and my wife says it and my brother's wife says it, that that's probably one trait we did not inherit from him, neither one of us really are what I would say are "[German phrase.]" We make mistakes. We really don't know people.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you are interested in their interactions?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, I'm interested in their interactions. And what I am saying, why I'm digressing about this, and then he came to the United States, then he has a chance to go, let's say, as we emigrated, he had a brother living in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, who offered him probably to become a partner in some business and to go and really work, had his work laid out, and then he had a chance to go to the United States, where things weren't sure at all, and also he had an uncle there, but it really seemed like a gamble, and he really determined that it's better to take this gamble, and it was his decision to come to the United States, and as it turned out, it was the right one.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This was an uncle of yours, a brother of your father's?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, it was a brother of my grandfather, who was living in Salem, Oregon. He was, I would say--

PAUL KARLSTROM: A great-uncle to you.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, yeah. He was a chiropractor.

PAUL KARLSTROM: In Salem, Oregon.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Right. Salem, Oregon. And he practiced there, I would say, 'til the mid-fifties, about '55, when he retired.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, let's see now. This was '47, right?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah. In '47, March '47, we came to the United States.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And what led up to that? It sounds to me like you had a very nice situation, your family, there in this resort town of, what is it, Bad--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Badausee.

PAUL KARLSTROM: How do you spell that?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: B-A-D-A-U-S-E-E. That is Austrian.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Anyway, it sounds like that that was a very nice place to be. What was, then, the impetus that led to this decision to move still again? And this is a big trip all the way over to the West Coast.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, actually, because there was really no future in it. In a way, and at the same time, Austria was destroyed and you were probably an emigré. Of course, you could stay in Germany, but the times were very hard, and then, of course, Germany is a nationalistic country and then, of course, everyone knows about the United States. Everyone wants to get in, even now.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Sometimes you wonder why.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, but you only have to be an emigrant to know why, and now you realize why. If you are an exile, if you are an emigrant, like you would say, this is the only country to be free, one and only one.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And so your father determined--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, my father determined that--

PAUL KARLSTROM: He was sponsored by--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah. Well, in a way, he was sponsored by his uncle, and, of course, a lot of people went out in what you would call, two, three years later, because of the Displaced Persons Act, when a lot of the displaced persons, who had, let's say, migrated, fleeing from the Communists, from Eastern Europe, or some also from the Nazis, they were let into the United States. There were several hundred thousand people, I think. It was half a million or something like that, and it was a special Displaced Persons Act. I think it was in '48, passed by the Congress. A lot of people were let in. They were carried in some of those, I would say, old Liberty ships, which used to carry troops, in the old troop ships.

For me, again, it was somehow easier because, before that, we came on the independent visa of Latvia, because we had an affidavit from the uncle. We travelled as regular passengers on a passenger ship, with all the amenities, and also because of my father.

So, I would say, coming back to my father, he was a person, just because he was, in a way, so wise and he had such a horse sense, he always levelled, or made the easiest road possible for the family, under very trying circumstances.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Can you remember what it was like coming here, coming to America? Did you go immediately, then, across the continent to Salem, to Oregon?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right, yeah. We landed--

PAUL KARLSTROM: What are your recollections of coming here?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, there are some recollections. One, we landed in New York, and, all of a sudden, coming from a destroyed German small town, from a displaced persons' camp, you lived in a displaced persons camp for a while, and how to be there, it's a story in itself. Probably one could write a small volume on that alone, but let's bypass that. That would take time.

Then we landed in New York and we were placed. In a way, we were sponsored by Uncle, but in a way, we were supervised by this Social Democratic organization of the United States. So we were placed in a seedy hotel, and it was just right opposite the Rockefeller Center. Of course, all those seedy hotels have been torn down by now. They are all gone. They were torn down sometime in the sixties. But at that time, it was still there, and it was just opposite on Sixth Avenue. Actually, it was Sixth and 58th Street. That I remember.

After a few days, then, on train, we crossed the continent, stayed a day in Chicago, and about three days later, arrived in Salem, Oregon, where my uncle and aunt were expecting us, and we were put up in an attic he had built up for us. It was a very nice attic.

PAUL KARLSTROM: There were four of you?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, there were four of us, my father, my mother and my brother, of course.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is your brother older or younger?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: He's younger. He's four years younger. And then, of course, it was sort of a vacuum. My uncle gave us $1,500 and he said, "That's all I can give you. You'll have to make do." And so my father, what he did, he went out, he had English lessons. For a time being, he got a job at a local psychiatric hospital. He started out as a male nurse, in a way, and then in a couple of months, he was promoted as a resident doctor, when he learned his English a little bit better.

PAUL KARLSTROM: In a couple of months?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: In a couple of months.

PAUL KARLSTROM: He learned enough English, or did he have English already?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, he had some English lessons, but he knew very little. But, like I would say, even at the age, in his late forties, he was a fast learner, and he had to. He has this boundless energy, like he would say, he would put in a full day's work, then he would study English from, let's say, nine o'clock 'til midnight, three hours every day, and then get up at six, like he did before.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So he became a doctor, a staff physician, in a short time.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, in a very short time. But he didn't have the license. At that time, if you worked at a state hospital or at a prison hospital, you didn't have to have a license. And it's still true today. You only have to have graduated from a school, from a certain school, let's say, from an accredited university. The university accredited, you don't have to have. But still, that's another story. Later on, he took his exams and he got his license, his specialist degree and everything, first in medicine, then also in psychiatry, etc.

And the mother, she stayed at home, and she went through menopause, and she had a fit of depression, and she was very neurotic. But then, going back, she went through a very emotionally and through a very difficult time, like one would say, I would say, really a depressing neurosis, complicated by what one calls early menopause. She had anxiety attacks, and etc. I would say, from a psychiatric point of view, she was ill.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Manic depressive, maybe?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, not manic depressive. Not manically depressive, no.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Clinical depression.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Clinical, yeah. It was just clinical depression, I would say, combined with, in psychiatric terms, with anxiety, neuroses--anxiety, neuroses, mostly.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So to be direct, you feel that that's the genetic source for some of your own--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, definitely. Yes, yes, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Something that I'll know we'll talk about later on.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Definitely, and it has really influenced my development quite a lot, because from the earlier days, and this I probably acquired it from my mother's side. Probably what you would call this "floating anxiety," my grandmother on the mother's side had it, my mother had it, and I have it. I always, even when I was younger, I had one prayer in life, you would say. "Take away my anxiety, God. If you do that, I don't want from you anything else."

But I see signs, know that anxiety is really genetically inherited, the level of anxiety each person has, and apparently there is nothing you can do about it. There is no treatment, like you treat schizophrenia, you can treat manic depression and psychosis, but you cannot treat the person's anxiety level. It remains constant, and you have to learn to deal with it. Usually, it's general floating anxiety.

At that time, I would say, I have this anxiety and neurosis, and of course, which probably blossoms into what I would call fear of various illnesses--making oneself a hypochondriac. I would say I'm definitely a hypochondriac. From an early age, I've been suffering seemingly from one ailment to another, real or imagined. I mean, dying from TB from the age I was fifteen, and then I had several imaginary bouts of cancer, until I got the real one a year ago. So that probably aspect has really influenced my life, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: It will be interesting to pursue this a little later. Especially I think it would be useful in connection with, maybe not your paintings so much, although there are a few works I can think of that might fit, but maybe I'll learn that in some of your writing, in some of your plays, perhaps that this might--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Definitely, yes. Definitely, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay. Finally, we've got you to the U.S. I'm very proud of you.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's right. You're proud, yeah. [laughter]

PAUL KARLSTROM: And you're how old?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, I'm twenty.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You're twenty.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I entered the United States at the age of twenty, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So what happened to you then? You presumably had to start learning some English as well.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I had to learn some English, and I had absolutely hardly any knowledge of English at all. At that time, I spoke Latvian, I spoke definitely fluent German, which I had learned in childhood. Hardly any English.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And Russian?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Russian--very, very little. I knew some Russian, but actually very little, and the Russian is almost completely gone and the German is about, say, 80 percent gone, since I don't use it. And then I had to learn English, and the first way I learned English, it was, I went to the movies. I went to the movies and I really got fascinated, first time I was exposed to all those serials, which you had in movies in the early--see, like in television, you see the next installment next week, and that's how I learned my English, just by going to the movies. At first, I didn't understand anything, then I began to understand some things, then I understood some more. So, really, I hardly didn't have any, at the beginning, really any formal education in English whatever. In a way, I had picked up by reading and by going to the movies.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You had already, presumably, completed the equivalent of high school?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, I was a high school graduate, like at that time, what they called "classical gymnasium," where I had really studied Latin and Greek, quite useless languages. French and German. So these were the languages. I knew some French.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you really had completed a course of study that really was more demanding than what an American high school--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, definitely, yes. Definitely, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And did it include literature and art, any art history?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, some art history, some literature. Like in the European high schools, there was a lot of history, I would say, and I was exposed to history. Probably one of my, I would say, pet fields, if one could call it that, is also history. In a way, I consider myself a history buff, and I feel like I have some sense of the history and I can relate things historically. Even today, I read history books, any kind of history.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You said earlier, when we were having lunch, you were telling me the main themes, subjects of your plays, and you said, "history and sex."

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that's right, yeah. History and sex.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And maybe sometimes together.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: And sometimes together. That's exactly it. Which means they are the two concerns I have. It's history, and then of course, also, sex, and maybe sexual problems, if you would call it. Anxieties, which probably all males have. Probably I have them more than some people. And then, of course, in a way, to get to terms with it, you have to write about it. But, of course, but now again we are digressing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, I don't think so. I think this is a very productive line.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Do you want to pursue this line?

PAUL KARLSTROM: But I think we'll save it, if we may. I think it could be very productive. I still don't have a sense of how much involvement you actually had with art up to this point, if you had actually taken classes in painting or drawing, if this was part of your experience. Where, at this point, did you stand in terms of seeing art as a part of your life and something that you wanted maybe to pursue?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: All right. Well, then, we really have to go back from the very beginning, because we have discussed, I think, probably, our parents and the physical moments.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay. Let's get to Raimonds the artist.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that's right. Actually, we really discussed my parents on both sides, and I'm here somewhere in the middle, so we really have to start from the way back.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Okay, let's do it then.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: It's myself and my art. Probably, like you'd say, I've been drawing, in a way, doing art all my life, like starting from, I think as I mentioned, doing the funeral processions, doing the others. I would say, only just for pure enjoyment, I've been sketching. I was really just destined, like everyone is in my family, like I say, on my father's side, were physicians, so it's a European custom, you follow in your father's footsteps. So I was determined to be a doctor, and, really, I thought I would study medicine. That's why I went to classical school.

But always, at the same time, something was drawing me back to drawing and painting and watercolors, painted in watercolors and maybe also a little oils. Of course, my parents considered and I considered, it was a very pleasant pastime. And really, I would say, I was doing it most of my free time. Then I went to school, of course. In primary, I would say, in grade school and then in high school, all through this high school, we had art classes, and I was really very interested. I thought I was doing very well. I'm not ashamed to admit that in most of those classes, I really was the best student. Somehow it figured out I always got A's. It came easy, but I never thought, really, at that time that I would become an artist. I really thought that I didn't have what it takes, I didn't have the talent.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Am I right in this, you did see it as an attractive career for somebody?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, I saw it as an attractive--I definitely saw it as an attractive career for somebody, but it definitely wasn't me. I was supposed to be a doctor, and that's what I thought. I went to the proper school where they taught Latin. Naturally, it was a school that prepared for the medical faculties in university, the medical departments of the universities. But at the same time, and all through the high school, I painted, I was doing watercolors. I think I still have a couple of them here. Maybe I can dig them out. I took them over from the old country.

But then it was in Germany, in the displaced persons' camp, and there was really nothing to do, and there, next to this displaced persons' camp, there was this art school, school of art. I think that I've mentioned it in my biography, in art school in Esslingen, Stuttgart, and it was really a traditional academic school of art.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This was in Stuttgart?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that was in Esslingen. It's sort of a suburb of Stuttgart. A small town, it's a vicinity. Like you have Stuttgart in the middle, and you have those little towns around it, like Esslingen, Luttingen, Geislingen, Mundelfingen, etc. All those crazy-sounding names, all ending with "fingen" or "lingen." It's particular in this area.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I want to make sure I have this right. You say you were, in effect, in a displaced persons' camp.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I was in a displaced persons' camp, and then we were just waiting. We were just waiting to get to the United States.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But there was an art school there?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. By chance, there was an art school there, and I just went to the art school, and my God, I liked--I would say the education was very academic. We were drawing from plaster casts. Somebody put up a still life, and you really had to paint the way it looked, and I would say it really gave me some grounding in art.

You know, I think I probably have written down, and went to one of the teachers, I was really fighting, I could say, "Yes, these are plaster casts," and the teacher came along, he says, "No, you're all wrong." And he said, "You're all wrong." And I said, "Well, that's the way I see it," and he says, "You see nothing yet. It will take you five years of drawing those plaster casts and still lifes before you can even begin to see." And, of course, I was upset, but then I began thinking. And now looking back, I think, my God, in a way, the man was right. So I really have a--I don't know if I can digress--no, I shouldn't digress. So I studied in this school, which was probably not quite a year, and that was before coming, and then I came to the United States.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You didn't have, probably at that level, life classes?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, yes, I had life classes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You got to work from the nude figure?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Also from the nude figure. Started working still-life nude figures and everything, but mostly it was drawing and less painting, but you have to be really, I would say, very accurate. And in a way, it helped me quite a lot.

Then I came to the United States. Now the thing it was, what to do? You had to go to the college, try to go to the medical school. Then I think I would have to thank my father. Then I remember his words. He said, "I know you really like art." I said, "Yes, of course." And then he said, "Well, and what do you think about medicine?" Well, I said, "Probably I should study medicine." Then he said, "Well, let me tell you. You know, medicine is really a dull profession, and if you don't mind being poor all your life, I would recommend art. Everyone (and I've told that before), everyone can become a doctor, but only a few people can become artists. So, why don't you try to go that way. I'll support you." And I said, "No, no. I wouldn't do it." "No," he said, "I'll support you. Study art."

[Tape 2, side B]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Continuing this first session, interview with Raimonds Staprans. This is tape two, side B.

We just learned something interesting and rather unusual for a parent, I think. Your father, in effect, as you said, talked you out of what others would say would be the more practical move, the career of being a doctor.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And, of course, my mother definitely concurred, and she thought, "Why not try it." And then he said--well, he mentioned before I probably left for art school, he said that, and said, "I really probably do it for very selfish reasons, mainly because if you have someone who does art in the family, our own life probably will be enriched in some way."

PAUL KARLSTROM: Wow, that's very enlightened, isn't it?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, I would say it was--listening to other parents of the emigrés, who all went to the practical side, and he said, "You'll be enlightened," and he says, "I don't really want another doctor in the family. I'm a doctor, and I'm kind of bored with my colleagues, because they are so narrow-minded, in a way, and so, I would say, in a way, very narrowly educated, and I want to expand my own education." And also he said, which was very open and kind of him, he says, "I know you realize that I really have no knowledge of either literature or of arts, and I really don't see art, and I don't really feel it. Maybe with you around, you will help me to acquire some knowledge, some feeling for the arts in general, more." So these were exactly his words, which, in a way, I myself found it strange at the time. But that's the kind of a man he was.

And so I entered--where would I go? I could go to the University of Oregon. In the meantime, I think it was probably for about a year and a half, or two years, I did odd jobs, like every emigrant will do, and I worked at--first, I started out as a dishwasher. Terrible profession. Like everyone, then I worked in sewers, where they paid well, cleaning sewers. It was a well-paying job. So I would say, what I acquired, my shit level is very high these days, my tolerance for shit.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That must have been lovely.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I think the first week is hard. After that, you get used to it. You even don't smell it. But that smells awful, yeah. But like I said, you develop a tolerance for shit. Others [unclear], I don't, even now.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So after you did those interesting temporary jobs?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, temporary jobs. As a housepainter, I worked as a housepainter. I almost got a union card, as a housepainter. Let's say, I was sort of assigned to paint a six-story house. I had to go up first on the stepladder up, and I looked down, and with my anxiety level, I said, "That's not the job for me." So I went from job to job, working in probably some sort of a--then I worked in a cannery. I would say I had about a dozen odd jobs, as a gardener, and everything else. Then I went to, I would say, to University of Washington, to the art school. That's where I started my studies.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So, the University of Washington. This must have been in what, '48?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That was in '48. I started in--

PAUL KARLSTROM: Fall of '48?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Fall of '48, after having probably been through a dozen odd jobs, one probably better than the other. I started in, and I sort of worked part time, at the same time I took school, and my father supported me just a little bit. Let's say I lived very frugally, in a way, in a boardinghouse with some other people, with a lot of other friends, people. And to get me some studies, I went to a dance school, and strangely enough, I supplemented my income by teaching ballroom dancing to some old ladies in the school. That's the way I supplemented my income.

PAUL KARLSTROM: How did you know how to dance that well?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, it was strangely enough, what I did, I already, in a way, danced in Latvia, actually, as a teenager, and actually ballroom dancing, it was, in a way, it was very popular, so I danced from age twelve on. I did some ballroom. And then I went just to take some lessons, and I wasn't really too bad, and then after a few lessons, like I said, "We need, for very low pay, some people who would teach, let's say, the basic steps to people who are coming in. And, of course, if you are willing to work for, I would say, for close to minimum wage, then of course you are on." And usually, like there are people who are coming in, who had no dancing and then they go through the first course, which, basically, you teach them the basic steps and how to walk, and how to walk yourself properly, and etc., and etc., and etc. And this I did after all school. The only bad thing it is, is that there's a policy in dance school, if you are a young man, in your twenties, you are assigned to an old lady. If you are an old lady dance teacher, you are assigned to a young man. It's never, never a young man is being assigned to--

PAUL KARLSTROM: To a younger woman.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: To a younger woman. They say that's trouble, and it's true. It's still true today, and if you see this picture of this--Japanese picture of the dancing we talked about, apparently it's still true in Japan today. [Laughter]

PAUL KARLSTROM: So that brought back memories for you.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, that movie really brought back memories. The way the first steps are taught, I said, "My God, it was exactly the way I did it."

During the way, I took full course in art, in art and painting and art history, and I also took courses in drama, like I would say, a few courses in drama. So drama was my minor.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you remember much about the departments, especially the art department there?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Who were some of the people that you came into contact with?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, I would say, most of the time, they were--I probably shouldn't say this--they were local nobodies. And when I consider it, they are still nobodies, and I didn't learn from them anything.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, really.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Strangely enough. [laughter] At that time, well, there were some regional people, even from the northwest, like Graves. Then the only person who was there who joined a little bit later, from whom I learned, it was Mark Toby.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Toby was actually teaching there? I didn't know that I knew that.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. He was teaching for a little while. Among the teachers, the only classes I took from him, and I would say he was not very good as a teacher.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Toby?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, not--he was always mumbling something. And the thing, it was, you met him on the street, after the classes, and he went down University Avenue. He was only mumbling something. He was talking to himself, and in a way, it was true, when he went into the classes, in a way, he was talking to himself. Then, of course, I liked his work, and then, of course, he was famous, the only person who was internationally known at that time, but I didn't really know from that. But then there was another person who showed up and it was George Lebruin, or LeBrune, or Lebruin, and it was, in a way, a contemporary, a sidekick of Kokoshka. And it is strangely enough--

PAUL KARLSTROM: He was on the faculty at Washington?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah. He was in the faculty of Washington.

PAUL KARLSTROM: George Lebruin.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, George Lebruin. Nothing to do with famous R____ Lebruin.

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, no, no, no. But spelled the same.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Spelled the same.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What kind of an artist was he? What was his work like? Figurative artist?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: He was figurative. In a way, impressionistic. He was painting very much like Kokoshka. They were really close friends. There were three friends--Kokoshka, when he moved; then there was Ensor; and George Lebruin. And they were in a way--

PAUL KARLSTROM: Was he a friend of Ensor, too?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, he was, yes, acquaintance of Ensor, too, yes. Ensor, yeah. Later, because of him, later, I wrote a couple of term papers on Ensor, and in way, through him, I got introduced to Ensor.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Very interesting choice.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, it was an interesting choice. And he painted, and I would say he was really a strict taskmaster, and whatever I learned about basic painting, about the color, about like the cool colors, about the light colors, about the local color, about deflected color, I learned from him, in about two years. I took classes from him for two years.

PAUL KARLSTROM: There is a fellow, Ambrose Patterson, who I think was on the faculty. I'm not absolutely sure. Does that ring a bell?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, that doesn't ring a bell. No, I think he must have come, or she must have come after that. Like I would say that when I really now look back, the rest of the faculty, they remained, I would say, they were all local painters, at that time.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Let me try one more name. I'm not going to go down the list, because--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, there's one more person, of course, yeah, who was teaching. Okay. I took those classes from George Lebruin, and he taught for two years, and then he was fired, and he was fired for the reason that he went around telling everybody that all this colleague painters and the professors of the faculty were really nobodies. And course, it wasn't tolerated. So he said he had to leave. And of course, he was right; they were nobodies. But we didn't know it, we didn't say it, but he said it openly, and he said it in his classes. He says, "Oh! Don't go to those classes. He's nobody. You will not learn anything from him." So that was interesting, for a teacher.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Did you ever run into, at the university there, a Japanese American sculptor, George Sudakawa?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah, Sudakawa.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I know him. He's actually a friend, and would we--and this is a little digression on my part--but have been documenting him for the archives as well. He, I know, was many years on the faculty. I don't know if he was teaching yet at the university.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, he was teaching at the time.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Because he was a good friend of Toby.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yeah. You know, I never took sculpture, but I went to listen to his classes, and I think he was an inspiring teacher. In some way, he was an inspiring teacher, because he not only taught sculpture, he taught art. He taught about art. So I attended now and then. On my free time, I just went to his classes, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Really.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: But then, probably the most influential person, like after the war, some of those luminaries showed up, like all of a sudden in my second year, Alexander Archipenko showed up. He taught for about two years at the school, mostly sculptor and he taught art also. He taught painting, in general. And there was a man with absolutely boundless energy, and whatever he said was absolutely inspiring. So, from him, I went to his lectures and he sort of--he didn't lecture. He was so emotional. He struggles, the way he lectures, with his hands, with emotions, and he really made you feel that what you are doing, that art is important.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That it matters.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That it matters. Art matters. And before that, I really felt that, "Okay, you are doing art, but it's a sideline; it doesn't matter." But, really, when you left your classes, you really left with a conviction that what you did matters, that what you did is important, and could become important. But he was also, like I say, a person, he was really very strict, and, in a way, he really taught you that you really had to be absolutely serious, absolutely committed. He says, "Unless you are not really committed, don't be in my class, and don't study art unless you are committed."

PAUL KARLSTROM: You took that to heart, I gather?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely, yes, I took it to heart, yeah, and I committed. So I really have a low opinion of those Sunday painters and those housewife painters and the painters who paint occasionally, because from him I really learned that you really have to do it, and you try to do it well. Like he would say, to paint with your blood, that's what he said. You have to paint with your blood and with your sweat, with your intestines and everything else. And he says, "If you are lucky, if you are lucky, maybe, maybe you will become a painter. But only maybe. No promises, no promises made."

PAUL KARLSTROM: What was your work like at that time? What were your subjects? What was your style? Obviously student work.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, definitely. Whenever I looked, it looked strictly like student work. Also, at that time, I could do a decent portrait. It's a fairly good likeness when now I look. Otherwise, there was life class, portrait classes, there were what you would say landscape painting, and the school was mostly sort of traditional. The abstract expressionism really wasn't in at that time. You could paint in sort of an impressionistic manner, or you could paint, in a way, in an expressionist manner. It was sort of like abstracted realism, in a way. It's very difficult to explain, but when you see paintings of that time, you would see that, well, the way most American painters painted, let's say, between '35 and '45, there was a subject matter, but there was some experimentation, abstract experimentation with the form, if you felt like it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Was there interest in cubism?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no, not at that time, no. None of the cubists and definitely not abstract expressionism, as such. Strangely enough, it wasn't even up to the time of 1952, when I graduated. Of course, there was Toby, Mark Toby, he was doing those abstract things, but he was sort of, I would say, in a way, he was an outsider. But he was famous, so everybody forgave whatever he did. I don't think he really left any kind of a mark on the students there.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you graduated. You completed the course of study, for what would that have been? An MFA?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no. It's a bachelor's, fine arts. I was bachelor of fine arts with, I would say, with a major in art and minor in, I would say, in drama. Minor in drama.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you did this in the regular four-year course?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I did a regular four-year course, yeah. I worked summers half the time, and I did the four years, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you got out in '52.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I got out in '52.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Then what?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: And then I thought, "Well, what to do? What to do next?" And I really wasn't satisfied with what I was doing. And then what happened? Well, then I decided I would go to University of California, to Berkeley. That's what I heard, that it was a really progressive school. At that time, it was abstract expressionism, and there were all those important people, like probably Hofmann had been teaching there, and there was Felix Willow, whose work I had seen. Like I say, I entered the graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, and then, of course, it's one of the abstractionist strongholds of the West Coast.

Upon admission, I entered the art department and I was informed by, I think, probably it's one vice chairman, I can't remember, and, of course, the quote to us was, he said, "Of course, you well know our school has the highest standards on the coast, and while the other schools, the one where you have been, produce only graduates in painting, we, on the graduate level, produce, on the other hand, produce competent artists, who, after graduation, are able to hold their own in any New York show." So that explains the atmosphere of Berkeley.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Now, isn't that interesting. Nothing changes. You were attracted to Cal. Your family's still there.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: In Salem, Oregon. My family still stayed in Salem, Oregon.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You were attracted to Berkeley because of the reputation of the department, but it strikes me as interesting that you're interested in abstraction, but you didn't consider the San Francisco Art Institute, is that right? California School of Fine Arts Institute?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, I didn't, and I didn't for the reasons that I really didn't know it existed at that time. And then of course, I thought, my God, an additional university degree might come in handy at that time. So that was my other consideration, and then, of course, you have this famous name like University of California-Berkeley, and that was one of those things. Even if I had known about the Art Institute, at that time I probably wouldn't have attended, for, say, like a master's degree in fine arts in Berkeley. Well, it's better than fine arts, let's say, from like Spokane State College or the University of Oregon or something like it. Then, of course, I started there. It was a 100 percent nonobjective school, and it was sort of impressed upon us that you have to paint in an abstract fashion.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is this the legacy of Hans Hofmann?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: That's exactly the legacy of Hans Hofmann, that if you want to stay in the school, you have to do abstractionist, or nonobjective painting. At that time, I would say, they were quite adamant. Now, of course, it gradually changed and went through different phases, but that's what they said. He said, "If you don't really want to do this, you'll have to go somewhere else. If you want to learn the abstract painting, or nonobjective painting, this is the place."

And then what? At the beginning, I thought, "My God, I am not really into abstraction." So in one of my classes, what I did--and this was a class of, and probably you know, I had one of my first classes of this gentleman of Earl Loran.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes, Earl.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Earl. I guess you know him. And anyway, later became quite good friends. Now I visit his lectures. The last time I saw him, Carl Kasten was giving the lecture. He was old and frail, so we talk about art in general. But my first confrontation, or meeting, was when, in one of his nonobjective classes, the students had an assignment to do a still life. I said, "Well, I'll do something different, just as a joke." And I sort of painted a very conventional vase, with red roses and sort of a slightly pinkish background, and put it in a very ornate frame, and I put it on the walls with nonobjective works. So he went by and looked this way and that way, and didn't mention it. And then he said, "Who painted that?" and so I got up, and he said, "Of course, of course. I know you are trying to make a statement. What's your statement? But of course, you can paint like this and of course your work will be accepted as far as all the architectural requirements of a painting are being met." So that's what he said. I think probably he graded it. He gave me a C on that, which was quite all right.

Then I painted some other things in other classes, but they were, in a way, kind of representational. Then a teacher approached me and then he says, "Probably you've painted here for about three months, but I think this is not really the right place for you. You see, we have a certain, I would say, policy, our policy to do abstract painting, to do nonobjective painting. At this point, you see, if you want to do some kind of realism, or representational painting, you probably would have to go somewhere else."

So, confronted with that, I said, "All right." In a way, I wasn't there. I have no feel for abstraction. Okay, I'll do the abstract paintings. I got out my big canvases, my big pieces of paper, I started splashing away. All those paintings looked like, something like [Robert] Motherwell's, I think, like Franz Kline. Some looked like Hofmann's. I would say I wasn't doing so badly. It was kind of easy. I found it was easy, and I ultimately found out it was fun. It was fun to do.

And probably the good thing, doing abstraction, what I really learned was, I would say, sort of what you would call to become acquainted, or to get the feel of the basic architecture of painting and how a painting is being constructed, even if it is the most representational. And the structure, how you really, I would say, even if you are very representational or realistic, you have to have a feel that the painting should stand up as a building, as a piece of architecture, and this is one thing that you learn from abstract expressionism, which really has helped me later on. So really, actually, the year and a half spent there was not really a complete loss. As far as color went and, of course, I really felt that color-wise, I didn't learn anything, and from the teachers, as themselves, I learned very little. Of course, Carl Kasten was my pet teacher. We are very good friends today.

PAUL KARLSTROM: He's a nice man. I know him.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely a nice man, and we meet socially, even now, and compare notes. [Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]

Carl Kasten, yes. And probably I learned from him something about color, but that's about all. I left really the school, I got my master's, but I, really, looking back, I felt that my art schooling, I'd really learned relatively little, and just a bit here and there. So I really, to conclude the tape, I left the school with a conviction that art schools, such as they are, it's really a big fraud, in a way, because--

[Break in Taping]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, continuing an interview with Raimonds Staprans, the painter and writer. This is second session. The date is 25 August 1997. The interview is being conducted at the interviewer's home, Paul Karlstrom, in San Francisco. This is tape one, side A.

Last time, a couple of weeks ago, I guess it was, we spent a real productive about two hours talking about your background, and you went back to family in Latvia, and traced each side of the family. It was very good, and certainly, I think, have that all, that important family history, well recorded. Then we managed, actually, to get you here to the U.S. and actually even got you through school. We really ended up, I think, talking about your experience at art school and your experience at Berkeley, at UC-Berkeley. We certainly don't have to go into it any further, but if I recall correctly, if my notes serve me well here, you described the experience as a big fraud.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, that's absolutely true.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And you stick by that?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I stick by that, yeah, and I really thought it over several times. Art school at a university level, it is a problem. I think it should be eliminated.

PAUL KARLSTROM: That's a pretty strong statement, and you're not the only one that has that view, but why don't you explain specifically what you mean by that, why you feel it should be eliminated at the university level.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, at the university level, it is because, in a way, you are really fighting for grades, and if you want to graduate, grades are important. This you really can do. Then, of course, there is another matter, that you have a teacher, and what he can really teach you, it is his vision. And you go to university, you really don't have a choice of a teacher. I really realized that it's really absolutely important to find the right teacher for you. If you go to a university, you have to take whatever classes you get, and very often you wind up with a man you really don't like, and you really realize that you don't learn much.

Then, secondly, people who are teaching, very few are simply good painters, when you really think of it, because they really can't devote much time to painting. I could probably say an example. Well, I have a very good friend, and it is Boyd Allen of UC. We were in the same class. Eventually he returned to the UC and then he climbed up the ladder and he became chairman of a department. So we were in contact. What he had to do, he really had to spend all his time in administration, and he did very little painting himself. He taught a lot of art classes, but he has very little experience. I think he's probably dead right now; he was drinking too much, unfortunately. When he probably was up for the chairmanship, then people objected that in all his career and all his life, he had had only one one-man show in a very unimportant gallery, and that's just about all. So I thought he was really doing probably nice abstract expressionist work while we were in the same class. I really didn't think that he really in his life, he really got very good experience as a painter. So that's another reason for it, because very few painters who really work professionally, in a way, they don't teach or they teach relatively little.

So I don't know if it answers your question, but I think it's for those two reasons. Usually when I go to a class and, really, I would say I've been to a lot of art classes, and then I look what the person does. Then you really find out you don't like it. You really see he really isn't a very good painter himself. So you wonder what can he teach you. So I'm a believer that at least I feel that whatever I've taught, I've taught it myself by experience and mainly by looking at other people's work, and that's all I need. You go to a show, you look at the painting. I think all painters are sort of scavengers, and they steal from each other. That's the way it should be. If you get a good painterly idea, you take it. The words really don't mean much.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you feel, then, that the teachers within the university, or maybe any art school, that the teachers, even if the teacher isn't attempting to do that, that the teacher's vision, as you say, or point of view, or attitudes about art are inevitably imposed to some degree on the students? In other words, that it works, for the most part, counter to the goal of liberating one's own vision of the artist.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Definitely. Definitely. I would say it's very constricting, and especially if you are an academic on a university level, then what you have to do, you have to realize pretty soon, if you want to graduate, if you want to get a good grade, you have to do your work. Your work has to really, let's say, be done within the vision or the framework of the teacher's vision, of the vision of the teacher. This I really found out it's important, and once you do that, then you can sail along rather smoothly. Then you are a good student and even become a teacher's pet up to the point. I would say if you really are an artist, you have your own vision, stubbornly. I would say you stick to it, to this vision, and that's really a good thing, because if you have a certain vision and if you have certain, I would say, needs, then you really like the painters that paint like you. I really wouldn't deny it; I like the painters that paint like me.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Digressing just a little, but I think it fits, in a general sense, in what you're talking about right now, which seems to me to be an acknowledgement that it's useful and inevitable for artists to look around them, to find the work of the other artists with whom they feel a connection and respond to the work. At any rate, what about you? Going way back to art school days, who were those artists, whether they were dead artists or contemporary? Who were the ones where you felt this kind of vibration?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, yes, definitely. I would say that one of the painters was when we went starting probably with early fifties, I think it was DeStael, in a way, the way he simplified his things. Then, of course, I will always admire Matisse, and then I've always been also an admirer of [Pierre] Bonnard, and also an admirer of [Edouard] Vuillard. Bonnard, how he got, let's say, sunlight in his painting, and then the French painter Vuillard, how he really juxtaposed gray against colors. He had beautiful grays and then the certain color accents. So these were some painters.

Then probably also there was this French painter, very popular in the early sixties, since the late forties, French painter Soulages.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Soulages was more of an abstractionist.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, abstractionist, but I don't separate one from the other. You can be abstractionist, if the painting has something ...

PAUL KARLSTROM: Pretty much gestural.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: In a way, gestural. What I really like, the painting is simple, uncluttered. It really goes deep into my own nature. I really like simple things, uncluttered, uncluttered things, and I'm always trying to work towards that. It really probably affects all the other aspects of my life. I really fight with my wife, like I said, in our room, "You clutter it up with too many things, pots and pans and pottery and knick-knacks." I said, "My idea is like, what I would like really is to have a studio or room with nothing in it, a few paintings, maybe a few pieces of pottery, one piece of furniture, and a lot of empty space." And I know it's very deeply--it's my nature, because I come back to it in every other aspect in my life.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you feel that--I'm sorry.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no, I just wanted to mention probably another painter, an American painter like [Thomas] Eakins. I really was a great admirer of his clarity, of his color and with his simplicity, and how he could very simply depict very complicated subject matter.

PAUL KARLSTROM: A master of composing, of arranging elements and architectural--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Architecturally arranging elements. I would say that's mainly important. So I would say, I always say probably in my second incarnation I probably would choose architecture. Really, I would say deep down, very deeply, to be quite honest, what really turns me on, I would say really more than painting, or a good painting, it is interesting architecture. If I see it and I really--

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, of course, that's not too much of a surprise if one looks at your work, because it's not just the fact that you often, certainly not always, but often incorporate structures, buildings, or boats, maybe, docks. This is a form of architecture; it's a built environment. Then, secondly, your paintings themselves are very carefully constructed.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, that's absolutely right.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So you've got architecture in the way you approach the composition and then often reference to, or inclusion, in terms of imagery, architecture. So that's not too surprising at all. Your list, as far as it's gone, brings up several questions. Eakins, I can understand that enthusiasm or interest of yours in Eakins, not so much from the color standpoint, because Eakins, not always, but in many of the works, a much more subdued palate, pretty brownish.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Sometimes even, in a way, digressing towards a cheap side, but yet I would say he really opted for a very simple structure. Of all American painters of that time, I really got a resonance from him.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Beyond that, beyond Eakins, it seems to me most of your feeling of connection with artists were French. That seemed to take place in France. And around the turn of the century, at least the people you mention here, and, I don't know, maybe you've explained why that is, for some reason they embody these qualities that you feel you're after in your work, certainly they're not the only ones, though.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, I would say there are probably others--no, actually, when I really think back, at least it's limited. Then, of course, you know, I got, let's say, exposed to the abstract expressionists. Now we come to another aspect. And the abstract expressionists, I become in a way like the works of [Franz] Kline and initially of [Robert] Motherwell, but then again, at that time, who didn't?

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you remember when this was and how it was? Often artists talk about encountering these works in reproductions. Was that the case with you, too?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Probably reproductions and also seeing the paintings themselves in shows, in traveling. I would say mostly it's in reproductions.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Are we talking about the mid-fifties at this point?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. I'd say probably it would be early fifties. It is probably early fifties. I probably found those people mostly when I was in Cal, at University of California. You had to do it. Unless you didn't do abstract expressionist work, you were out at that time. It's strange. It probably isn't that way these days, but people at that time were very dramatic about it. It was either, like I say, abstract expressionist, or it was out. I don't know, it was probably--I've written something about it. I had notes and I've retyped the notes from hand. I said, "Discussions always revolve. There are moving planes, interlocking shapes, surface tensions, and other imponderables. Everything had to be flat, flat, flat. So [Hans] Hofmann, Motherwell, and Kline were heroes, and Edward Hopper. At that time, I remember, he really signified the primitive commercial provincialism." That's a direct quote. That's a direct quote. Which American art had outgrown since the last war. Hopper was definitely out at that time, at UC at that time.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you, yourself, did you like Hopper?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, I liked some of his work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Certainly a simplification.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely. I liked some of his landscapes. I think some of his work, when I saw his last show, together with Peter Mendenhall, I felt that some of his things were really bad and amateurish, like he really didn't know how to paint trees, never got around to it. But some of his buildings and his simpler things, I really liked them at first sight, and I still think he's one of the--even I would say popular as he is, he's still a little bit underestimated. If you look at his architecture, you wonder how he did it. "Then, of course, works of [Thomas Hart] Benton and the WPA School were regarded as representing the dark ages of American painting." That's also a direct quote from some of the teachers.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So what you're conveying here, you have a text which will be in your papers, I hope.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is recalling favorite artists and attitudes during your time in school at Berkeley.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: What about abstract expressionism? It would seem to me that with some of the abstract expressionists, certainly Jackson Pollock, this would not necessarily be the kind of work that would be most attractive to you. You consistently talk about a sense of simplification, structure, lack of clutter. I don't want to say lack of a certain kind of unleashed energy, but if the energy is there, it would seem to me, in Staprans, the goal would be to bring it under control.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Under control, within an architectural framework.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Certainly you are familiar with the work of Pollock and [Willem] De Kooning, eventually.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: At UC, and even afterwards, I used to do a lot of imitation of Pollock paintings.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Oh, you did?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, of course.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Everybody had to do that?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. I really tried them all. I tried them all. Really, I found that I really felt that most of the Pollocks, even within his vision, were pretty bad. What I saw of his work, they were at the Museum of Modern Art. They have one really big Pollock, called "Black and White" ["One (Number 31, 1950)"] sort of a silvery all-over feel. Then I thought, my God, that man had something to it, but it's only one painting. Then I've seen probably reproductions and I've seen dozens of others, and they left me just cold. I said, "I can do one. I can do one." But that one painting, I probably said I couldn't do it. And it's the same with Kline; some of his was a gesture. I really say, "How the hell did he do it?" Then you look at others' work, work of others, and then it really didn't work.

So what I got about from the abstract expressionists, really, their work was very inconsistent within the architecture and stability of the painting. But at one time I painted like Motherwell and I painted like Kline. Of course, I had some Pollocks. Then I get into the minimalist.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Like who? Which minimalists? That doesn't surprise me.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, it doesn't surprise me either.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is this the talk you gave at one time?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: These are just notes in a way I typed. I typed up sort of like a sequence of notes, which I have it all around.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You mean just for yourself?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: For myself. I typed it up last week, actually, for our discussion, in a way, so I could really remember what I wanted to say.

Well, I would say Carl Morris. I kind of liked some of his work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Carl Morris?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You mean up in Portland?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: One up in Portland, yes, and I also liked the other Morris.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Louis.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Louis Morris, yes. I also liked his work. Sort of floating acrylic, bands of color floating down, and very simple, just pure color.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is it Morris Louis or Louis Morris?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Louis Morris. Louis Morris, I think.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Isn't that funny. Anyway, we'll check on that.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, we'll check on that.

PAUL KARLSTROM: In other words, the color field painters.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, the color field painters.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And [Mark] Rothko, maybe, or not?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I like some of the Rothkos, but then again, of probably ten Rothkos, there's one which I really felt were good, and then I felt that they were miserable.

PAUL KARLSTROM: It seems to me--and again I have to think that we're going back now to your art school days, and I guess we're also, though, talking about the years immediately thereafter, as you were beginning to form your own vision or style, whatever you want to call it--it sounds to me as if you were looking all over the place.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely.

PAUL KARLSTROM: All over the place.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: All over the place. All over the place. And definitely I would say I had a vision, but I really didn't know how to express it at that time.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This may be jumping ahead a little bit, but this really begs the issue, and it's an important one in connection with you and in connection with coming to a better understanding of your art. I know that we're going to pursue this a little bit later, but I have to introduce it at this point. You sort of came up in a regional situation that came to be marked by the Bay Area School, Bay Area Figurative School painters, especially up here.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. I think it was a little bit before the Figurative School, since the Figurative School started around the mid-fifties.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Right. We're not being tied right to even a decade; it's general, an earlier part of your career, because that's when David Park and company began their experiment. At any rate, you were in the Bay Area. This movement--and it became to be seen, finally, as these things that were going on with some of the people that you knew or certainly knew about, most of them had been abstract painters, gestural painters. I don't want to get into this too much right now, but in a sense, like it or not, because of where your career has developed, you are included with, or compared to--you can't get away from some of these other people. I have to ask you about--I want to begin to dispatch this issue of two very important artists who have been cited as influential, in fact, perhaps too influential, so outsiders would say, on your work, and that is, of course, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud.

Having said that, I would rephrase the question. Were you aware, or how did you come to see, or at what point did you, or did you at all, see you and your work as sharing some kinds of sensibility and pictorial interest with the Bay Area Figurative, particularly these people?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, definitely yes. I'm a great admirer of Diebenkorn, probably first because of his structure, and some of the Wayne Thiebauds. I would say the work which he did, I would say, in his sixties, in the sixties, his still lifes, again because they were structurally very simple, and what he did, he developed a luminosity of color, and I've been always after that, luminosity of color. Then, of course, you realize that he has a certain way of approach, like he really had the object and then he surrounds it with bands of rainbow colors.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You're talking Thiebaud.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I'm talking Thiebaud. A pictorial device. Then, of course, I like Diebenkorn's figurative, the way he did the very simple figures, which I really felt that were really architectural. And then, of course, the same with color. Then again, I looked at some of his really large canvases which he painted in the sixties, like the "Ocean Bark" series. Some of them seem to be fairly thin, but yet what I really admired of Diebenkorn and why probably, in a way, spiritually I am associated, I felt that, good or bad, he was probably one of the more consistent painters of [unclear] and not interior. A scale of Western painting, American Western art, but...

[Break in taping]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Second session, interview with Raimonds Staprans. This is tape one, side B. We, unfortunately, were cut off at a very important point. You were discussing your own views--I won't say relationship--views on the work of two painters with whom you are invariably compared in an interesting way. It sometimes has not been to your advantage.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: It has been to my disadvantage.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And this is something that we can pursue a little more, but just to finish up the thought, you were talking, on the other side of the tape, about Diebenkorn and your admiration of his consistency.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely, yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And also you were saying that not only as a Californian or American artist, but beyond that, you feel--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, definitely beyond that. In his later years, when he was too ill to do large oil canvases, he did, I would say, not watercolors, but he did some works on paper, up to the very last. I think I saw reproductions of a painting he did, probably he did a few months before he died, and they were just as consistent and just as good as his earlier work. So I would say I held him in front of me as an example, that if you are a painter, you should produce work on a certain level of consistency, like he would say, you should be consistent. You really shouldn't let out of your studio works that are really incomplete, that are bad, that you feel yourself that are not up to your level. This I saw in Diebenkorn. So, in this respect, definitely I'm a great admirer of his.

With Wayne Thiebaud, it's an entirely different thing, I think. Probably his work of the sixties--I didn't like his work of the fifties. It was really, I would say, busy and cluttered. He did some landscapes. Then I really admire some of his still lifes, which I've said. I think they are just marvelous. And where he made his white background, just almost white, how he made it shine. But then later on I looked at his landscapes and I saw he really wasn't a landscape painter either. I really found his landscape work rather cheap, unimpressive, and incomplete. He really hadn't resolved the problem. He really wasn't a landscape painter, so he finally came to that conclusion. With every year, I think, his work became cheaper and cheaper, and I think critics have discussed it. But whenever I paint, I always fall back on this period, I think between '63 and '70. So that's probably the connection with those two painters.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Earlier.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, earlier Wayne Thiebauds and, of course, Diebenkorn.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you remember when and perhaps where you first came into contact with their work--Diebenkorn and/or Thiebaud? Does it come to memory?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I think probably that first work, I think that he had a comprehensive first show. He was at the San Francisco Art Museum, and I think it was around '55. Then, of course, there was a Wayne Thiebaud show at the Oakland Art Museum, I think it was in the seventies, sometime in the seventies, really a comprehensive show, a good show. But, of course, I had seen some of his work here and there, in reproductions, and it was the same with Diebenkorn.

What I would say, in a way, I would say I learned from him and I've stolen certain ideas from him. But then again, I've stolen certain ideas from a lot of other painters. It's openly, like I said. A painter is really a scavenger; he scavenges whatever he can. If I see, let's see, a good relationship with something, a thing that works, then, of course, you use it in your painting. I would say this is no crime to admit it. If I see a good piece of architecture, like I learned a lot from advertisements, color advertisements in journals and magazines, if I see an interesting relationship, I use it in my work. I guess that's the way it goes. Probably, I would say, like Diebenkorn, he's been very much influenced by Matisse.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Yes.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: When you really look at some of the Diebenkorns that have been done, let's say, between '55 and '60, and you put Matisse next to it, you will see. You compare especially one painting with a chair in the corner and some houses in the background, and then you put it next to a certain Matisse, you couldn't really tell which is which. In a way, I like both of them.

So, in a way, to put this matter at rest, I would say I always use, I would say, this quotation by the sculptor Smith, there really isn't an artist in the world whose work doesn't look like somebody else's, more or less. I think Malraux and his book, The Voices of Silence, which I think was published in the late forties, clearly wrote an entire chapter, that as far as painting goes, amateur or the dilettante learns from nature, and the true painter learns from the paintings of other painters. That's the difference.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you mean to say by that, that art, then, is really about art, or about other art and not about nature to the same degree?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, definitely not.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Can you expand on that a bit more? Because that's interesting.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Especially for your figurative/realist artist who incorporates.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, definitely. I would take one example. For a painter, the most difficult thing to do is how to paint a tree. How do you paint a tree? You can do it, and you really can't paint a tree. Probably if you can be the most pictorial, I would say the most detail, if you do it the most detailed, "realist" painting, you really cannot paint a tree. So how to paint a tree? You have to learn from other painters, and then probably expand on it. Most other painters have done it. For example, I've attempted to make a tree, and even at my ripe old age, I would say I have not learned in my own way how to paint a tree, so I don't paint trees.

Then I've looked at other painters. Probably the most instructive tree painter of all has been [Piet] Mondrian. You see from his early works, he stopped painting trees. And when you really look at the work of Mondrian, how he graduated from a fairly realistic tree and then gets more and more abstract, then you see how he tried to get to the essence of the tree.

Then I went to this Hopper show, and I was really interested, how he paints, how he paints his trees. I realize he really didn't know how to paint a tree. He never should have painted a green tree in his life. In every painting where there was a tree, it really was a lousy painting.

So it goes for everything else. I think a painter really learns from other painters and then he really has this really deep and very rich history going back for hundreds of years, maybe starting with the renaissance and with the primitive painters, and you can go on from there. You learn from them how they did things. Probably if you don't know how to do anything, if you have a composition or a color problem, you have to fall back on some of those people. How did they do it? How did they make it work? How did they breathe some life into a painting? Mostly what you would say, it's the life. So that's the way I work.

PAUL KARLSTROM: This is very interesting. It brings to mind a number of questions that have to do with art and reality, art and nature, and, I guess, specifically your position on that issue, which you've begun to explain. Certainly the tree anecdote is useful. You're talking about Mondrian as a more or less successful tree painter.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I think he progressed and gradually solved--it ended with, in a way, it was almost an abstraction, but the way he did it, like you would say in his own way, with his own framework, his vision, he solved it up to a point, what I was wondering. I have attempted to paint several trees, and none of them have been successful. But where I feel that contrast, as far as architectural forms, probably some structured architectural paintings from nature, I felt I solved them within my own framework.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You talk about this process, image-making, I guess you'd have to say, painting and image-making, as something that is turning back on itself all the time, is one way to describe it. What I mean to say by that, I guess what I want to ask you, is this: the question is, was Mondrian really seeking the essence of the tree that is essential nature, but specifically, in this case, embodied in the tree, a form of nature, or was his experimentation, his progress, about the abstraction of the form, and it just happens to be this true tree. You see what I mean? There's the essential tree, seeking the essence of a thing, or is it much more than an inside the art activity project of how do you move this object to abstraction, the essence being really a visual or perceptual? It has to do with seeing the world, so it's entirely about us. I'm making this complicated, but do you see what I mean? The goal then becomes art, possibly, and different ways of doing it and moving into the realm of abstraction, but it comes back to art, that art is the subject, not the essence of the tree.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Definitely art is the subject. Definitely.

PAUL KARLSTROM: And not the essence of a tree. Even though people write about that all the time.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. Well, I would say essence of the tree, for you, it would be something else for some other painter. For example, like [Vincent] Van Gogh, he painted a lot of trees. Actually, when you see his paintings, he has probably painted more trees than anybody else. Then again, when you paint a tree, you have really very few choices. Am I going to paint my tree like Van Gogh? Then I would say, what is my tree? What is my tree?

PAUL KARLSTROM: You don't have one, because-- [laughter]

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: I think before I die, I hope I come to it, because I'm always painting trees and then I'm painting them out.

PAUL KARLSTROM: But you see what you're saying, which I think is very interesting, it's not about the tree.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: You say "my tree." It's about me. You're describing a very self-reverential activity.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Absolutely.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Which is the making of art. Surprise, surprise. I guess we know this anyway, but it's useful, I think, to make sure that I understand that this is your thinking, because as we try to understand your approach to your art, we need to understand this. If I have listened to you carefully and following you, the elements that you depict in your paintings have much more to do with how well, how effectively, can Raimonds address this subject he has chosen. The success is measured entirely, of course, in pictorial, a sense of getting it right, would you say?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Getting it right in pictorial terms. But the rightness is sort of a mysterious kind of thing. What are the standards of judgment? They certainly are operating within the realm of looking at art.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes.

PAUL KARLSTROM: So, do you feel, for instance, those boats that are Raimonds' boats, specifically, they're not intended to be--they may look like the boats, but it's not your intention or major interest to create a portrait of a particular boat?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, absolutely not. I would say I think probably it's a subject matter I think the late Alfred Frankenstein--and he said it really best than anybody else--is that the subject matters. Like you said, at first he compared the viewing public, especially the buyers, like those mad, hungry dogs, and he says so you throw the subject matter to them like a piece of meat, to make them satisfied. [laughter] I found that it was really an excellent quote. That's what you really do. You throw the subject matter, but the subject matter, I would say you have absolutely no emotional attachment to it, to the subject matter. It could be just as well an old shoe, but you feel you can express some of your painterly ideas through that kind of shape and through that kind of an object. There is no emotion attached to the object itself. Of course, you cannot say to the onlooker or to the person, or to the buyer of a painting, this person who looks at your work. For example, people would say, "You really must like water. You really must like boats. You probably go to a marina every so often." I say, "I don't do it. I hate boats and I really don't like it." [laughter]

PAUL KARLSTROM: Is that true?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes. It isn't that I dislike it, but there is no emotion attached to it.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you go sailing on the boat?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no. I have no particular interest. But I like painting some boats. This is for someone probably who is another painter or not really not [unclear], it's difficult to understand, that the subject, in a way, if you use a subject, it's probably a double bonus. Like, for example, you have a round piece of--a glob of orange paint. You have a glob of orange paint. Of course, it's abstract. You have a glob of orange paint that looks like an orange. Okay? They both have orange and they look very similar, but one you recognize the object. The orange acquires an entirely different quality. So in a way, the way I see it, it becomes more important. Of course, all the abstract relationships, they all apply. It's a relationship of structure, it's a juxtaposition of the color, how one color influences another, and this is all abstract. For me, a recognizable object adds another dimension to the painting, so it's probably more important to me.

Coming back to the boats, like I said, I have painted a lot of boats, and probably to my discomfort. At one time somebody said, "He's a boat painter." It's not entirely true, because probably I've painted more paintings of everything else except the boats. But you go to the gallery and the people immediately see the boats. So, in a way, I have a very simple view of the people who go to the galleries and look at the paintings, or buy the paintings. But that comes probably later. I'm digressing.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Well, so am I. It's my fault.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no, no, it's not your fault. But it's good.

PAUL KARLSTROM: I do want to make sure, of course, that we get back to some of this. I'm going to go ahead and keep us off our chronology just for a moment, if I may. It seems to me that you see yourself as an abstract painter who has chosen to allow recognizable subject matter into these, in effect, constructed abstract compositions. Is that too strong?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: No, no, it's not strong. No, no. I think you probably put it correctly. Definitely I am an abstract painter whose objects are really recognizable and sometimes quite realistic, but one has to really realize that they are all, everything, even if the object in the painting looks quite realistic, they are really constructed from the ground up in absolutely abstract terms. But when you really look at it closely, even if I paint the glass, there is very little truth in it. It looks realistic, but when you compare it to the real thing, it really isn't there. It's like the reflections on such, the shadows are quite different, so it's an illusion. It's an illusion. But the paintings themselves are quite abstract, and that's why I really take a joy in it.

Again we come back to the architecture. I never paint from nature. I construct things from the ground up, and I'm always a believer that nature in itself is in chaos, chaotic. Nature is chaotic. It's busy. A painter has to come in and bring some order to nature, an architectural order. Any kind of a landscape has to be reconstructed from the ground up.

PAUL KARLSTROM: We'll get back to that idea in just a minute, because I think that's very interesting. But stepping back again to the idea of realist painting, that carries with it an illusion, the fiction of the real object. Do you see this as an explanation for the work, or operating in the work, again, of Thiebaud especially, but also Diebenkorn? Do you feel that this is the territory where you join them or, at least in some of their works, some of the periods? Did I make that clear, or should I--

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Well, what Diebenkorn did it, I would say, in his figurative work. When it comes to abstract work, I don't quite--

PAUL KARLSTROM: No, I mean specifically figurative.

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, probably that's where we come together at a point. When you really analyze his work, as far as nature goes, there really isn't, I would say, a bit of truth. There really isn't an ounce of truth in them, although they look really quite realistic, but you have to analyze it. It's the same thing with Thiebaud's painting, his still lifes of the sixties.

PAUL KARLSTROM: Do you mean by that, for instance, like the "Desserts" and the so-called pop art, where he would take, for instance--well, we know about the candy ball, jawbreakers, whatever they are, machine like that, or are these kinds of things the cafeteria display case with pies or cakes?

RAIMONDS STAPRANS: Yes, I would say some of the, especially probably the displays of the deli counter, you analyze them and you see there are a lot of abstract elements in them. You see some of them are rather carefully constructed. Of course, when you comes to those pies and then you eat one pie and have another, it's slightly probably a different thing. But then again, like