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AN ARTIST 'C LIFE AMD TRA^'ELS
••!yron C. Hutting
Intervlev;ed by Donald J. Schlppers
VOLUME II

Complstsd uni8i' the 2.us'~i-Css

of the

Oral History ProfcraT.

University of California

Los Angeles

This manuscriot is hereby made available for research
Durnoses only. All literary rights in the manuscript,
includlno; the riB;ht to publication, are reserved to the
University Library of the University of California at
Los Angeles. Mo part of the manuscript may be quoted
for publication v;ithout the -written permission of the
University Librarian of the University of California
at Los Angeles .

TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME II

TAPE NU^fBER: IX, Side One (December 27, 1965). ... 425

Meeting Janes Joyce — Descrintlon of Joyce —
The Joyce family — Giorgio and Lucia Joyce —
Joyce's taste in wine — Anecdotes of Joyce —
Grov.'th of Montparnasse--Cafes and conversa-
tion — Anericans in Paris — Joyce as Dedalus —
Evenings at home — Nora Joyce

TAPE NUrffiER: IX, Side Two (January 5, 19^6) 453

Wyndham Lewis — Joycean superstition — Joyce's
notes — Hork habits--Style in Ulvsses — Picking
up Phrases — Nora Joyce — f^amlly life — Drawings
of Joyce — Portrait of Nora — Influences on Joyce

TAPE NUMBER: X, Side One (January 10, 1966)

478

The Louvre — Travel to Snain — Jaloux and good
advice — Velasquez and Goya in the Prado--El
Greco — Patinier — Toledo — Greco masterpieces —
Spanish painting — The Escorial — Paris friends,
the Gordons — Writers and travelers--?.aymond
Duncan and the dance — Isadora Duncan — Saxe
Cummin gs

TAPE NUMBER: X, Side Two (January 10, 1966) 502

The Gordons' trip to the United States — Ad-
vantages of life abroad — Living as an art —
Maurice Lambert — Paul Burlin — Travels with
Burlin — Holland and Amsterdam — Adolf Dehn —
Lithography--Outing to Chevreuse — Car accident
and a new notoriety — First trip home, v;ith
Burlin — Staying at the Harvard Club

TAPE NUf4BER: XI, Side One (January 31, 1966) 526

Jewish friends--Burlin — Shipboard drama and
its aftermath--Charleston, South Carolina--
About Paul Burlin — Seeing Dr. Collins In New
York--Change3 in the city — Return voyage —
Jean de Bouchere

TAPE NUriBER:

XI, Side Two (February 6, 1966) 552

De Bouchere, book Illustrator — Weetinpc Paul
Robeson at the Lewlsohns' — Epinhanies and
metaohors — Education — Youth and nhllosoohy —
Experiencing art — Study for understanding —
Children and syr.bolism — Destruction of crea-
tivity — Inspirations for creativity

TAPE NUMBER: XII, Side One (February Ih , 1966). ,

.575

American Art Association — Alexander Harrison —
Frederick Frieseke — H. 0. Tanner — Eusiene Ullman —
Association of Paris-American Painters and Sculn-
tors — Gatherings of intellectuals — Meeting people
in Paris — ■Pord Madox Ford — Edith Sitwell — Enter-
taining at home — At the Joyces' — The Hambourgs —
The Wallaces — Bourdelle and the Salon de Tuilieries--
Jo Davidson

TAPE NUMBER: XII, Side Two (February 21, I966). .

The Luards — Puoils of Lowes Luard — Methods
of teaching drav;ing — Dravfing and draftsman-
ship — Daumier — Rupert Bunny — American artists
Russell, Remington, Sargent — Developing as an
artist — Influences

TAPE NUr^ER: XIII, Side One (February 28, I966).

Atm.osphere of Paris — Teachers helping young
painters — Seeing Despiau — Art atm.osohere in
Munich and Rome — Lhote as teacher — Art of
Renoir — Monet — Denis and Serusler — Jacovlev
and Shoukaiev--Russians in Paris — Prix de
Rome --Frieseke — Aman-Jean — Dufy contributes
to Atys

.598

619

TAPE NUMBER: XIII, Side Two (March 7, 1966)

GHH

Art as a function of cultural growth — Role of
the artist in society — Adventurous, dangerous
life of the artist — Daumier — Goya — Chagall —
Balancing scientific and intuitive mental pro-
cesses — Meeting Durand-Ruel — Comjnercial art
by fine artists — Toulouse-Lautrec — Holbein,
Influence of Vasquez Diaz

TAPE NUrffiER: XTV, Side One (March 21, 1966) 667

American attitudes towards art — Benjamin
West — Chester Harding — F-''ural paintinc; — Puvis
de Chavannes — Rivera, Orozco, Siquieros —
Easel naintings — Profession of portrait paint-
er — Murals and religious painting — Tiepolo —
Art schools in Eurooe — Art and environment —
Department store salon

TAPE NUI4BER: XIV, Side Two (March 28, 1966) 692

Leo Stein — Discoverer of Matisse — ^riend of
Paul Burlin — Earning a living: portraiture
or illustration — Invited to teach in Milwau-
k:ee--Layton School of Art — Teaching methods —
Contrast to Paris — Teaching art history — Learn-
ing to teach — Students

TAPE NUMBER

XV, Side One (April i* , 1966) 7l8

Floyd Pauly, student — Layton School and Art
Gallery — The Atelier ooens in a bookstore —
Life class grows — Teaching anatomy — Sculnture--
Fresco painting — Atelier, antidote to art
school instruction

TAPE NUr^BER:

XV, Side Two (Aoril 11, I966) 7^1

Life in Milwaukee — Wisconsin Players — Art for
theater — The VJalrus Club — Performing at the
Walrus Ball — The Depression — Social signifi-
cance in American oainting — V/isconsin Painters
and Sculptors — Federal Art Project — American
Index of Design — Historical murals

TAPE NUMBER: XVI, Side One (April I8 , I966)

766

Mural at the Milvfaukee Museum of Natural
History — American Index of Design — Encour-
aging individuality in teaching — Lithographic
printing — United States revisited — Attitudes
toward competitiveness--Teaching art anorecia-
tion — The Mymans--Anecdotes on nature apprecia-
tion--California trip

TAPE NUroER:

Wlscon;

desisn

IMl, Side Two (April 25, 1°66)

783

In Players: Boris Glas:olin--Set
for The Gardener's Dop; — Lev/lsohn's

visit — Carl Rohnen — Helen Nutting's illness
and accident — Flannina; move to California —
Chooslne; a olace to live

TAPE NW'BER:

XVII, Side One (^^ay 2, 1966) 803

Milv/aukee Art Comnisslon — Civic monument to
Llncoln--Milles ' desi?^n rejected — Feted on
leaving" Mllv;aukee — Visiting San ^rancisco —
Cambria — Settling in Hollywood--Helen Nutting's
writings recalled — Meeting the Russian colony —
Lorser Feitelson and S. P'acDonald-Wright —
Writing for Script — Rob Wagner — Collector Edward
G. Robinson — Art Center course in Industrial
illustration — Riveter at Lockheed

TAPE NUMBER: XVII, Side Two (May 9, 1966) 829

Air warden in V/orld War Two — Learning first
aid — Attraction to medical profession — Invi-
ted to teach at Art Center — Head drav.-ing —
Father in Alhambra — Art Center moves — Other
teachers: Reckless, Kaminskl — Feitelson —
MacDonald-Wright and Synchromism.

TAPE NUIvBER; IX, SIDE ONE
December 2?, 1965

NUTTING: If I remember rightly, v;e got to Paris in February
1919^ on a snov/y day and eventually got ourselves settled
in a studio right near Gare Montparnasse. In the mean-
time, the Wallaces had settled in Paris, too. Of course,
before his marriage he had been a resident of Paris and
had made his career and his living in Paris. So, of course,
we got together.

Dr. Joseph Collins had a way of going back and forth
between Nev; York and Paris, He used to go to one of those
spas in Germany for a vacation to get rested up. He was
always complaining of his digestion (he was very particu-
lar about his eating), so I imagine it had something to do
with that. Anyway, I met Wallace one day, and he said he
had a letter from Dr. Collins and that Collins thought
that James Joyce vjas one of the really top contemporary
writers, that he'd v;ritten a book called A Portrait of
the Artist as a_ Young Man, which he thought v;as excellent.
Collins had learned that Joyce was now living in Paris
in poverty and was going blind and was in rather serious
straits, which vjas, of course, somev;hat of an exaggeration
but understandable. He asked Wallace to look him up and
arrange a meeting. The next time that I saw Wallace he
said, yes, he'd found Joyce and that Collins would be in

426

Paris on a certain date and he had made an arrangement to
meet him and have lunch together. So we did,

I've forgotten where the lunch was, but it was a very-
nice place with quite a pleasant, sunny dining room, and
a very nice table setting. Being a very successful doc-
tor, Collins didn't stint on entertainment. We met at this
restaurant and Joyce turned up. That was the first tim.e
that I'd seen him. Joyce was a rather slender, very erect
man.

The photographs that you see of him don't give you
a very good idea of the man. I've been trying to analyze
[the reason for] that. I think that v;hat happened with
photography in those days, especially nev;spaper photo-
graphy, v.'as that the ordinary emulsions that were used
had very little correction for color. So your blues would
come out white and the reds would come out black. That re-
sulted in this rather reddish little goatee and moustache
of his coming out much darker in a photograph. It very
often gives him a slightly comic look, and I can't remem-
ber ever getting that impression of him. You see this fun-
ny little man v/ith these little black spots on his face,
you knov;, and it doesn't look at all like Joyce to me.

He had a lot of dignity in his looks and in his bear-
ing. In fact, he had more of vjhat the French vjould call
comme il faut in his behavior than anybody I ever knevj.
He had a very particular manner and speech and politeness.

427

Some people rather make fun of him for it.

Joyce apparently didn't have very much of an idea
why he was invited or who Dr. Collins was. Joyce had a
strange way of clamming up and not saying a vjord if he
vmnted to, but that luncheon was very successful--Joyce
was very affable, very talkative. It lasted between tv/o
and three hours; Collins asked him questions about his
v;ork and his writing. Collins v;as then v;riting his books,
such as The Doctor Looks at Literature , and he fancied
himself as quite a literary critic. Joyce ansv.'ered his
questions very nicely and gave him a sketch of his life,
of his experiences in Trieste and how he taught at the
Berlitz school there, of his experiences in passing exam-
inations for a position of teaching and going to a bank
in Rome and other experiences he had in trying to make a
living for himself and his family in Trieste. Well, as I
say, the luncheon lasted quite a long time.

The conversation was very interesting, and I regret
very much that I don't have any notes or any recollection
of specific things discussed. Mostly, though, it was
about himself and his life, and to a certain extent his
ideas. It was more biographical than anything else. He
didn't get into any arguments on literature or anything of
that sort. Finally, the meeting came to an end.

We were walking down the street together and Joyce

428

said, "You live near the Gare Montparnasse, don't you?"
And I was rather surprised. He said, "How do you think
I know?" I couldn't think, but just through some chance
remarks, he had put two and tv/o together--that any person
who had said those things must be a resident near Gare
Montparnasse. That was the first evidence I had of his
extraordinary awareness of moment. He already had had
serious eye trouble, v/hich with these thick glasses gave
him a faraway, absentminded look. But he certainly was
not, and never was. He lived every moment to the fullest.
He knew and observed and stored away and would take out
his little notebook and jot down a word wherever he vjas.
It vjas very characteristic of him.

which was publishing Ulysses at that time before it was
suppressed, and he loaned them to Collins to read. The
next day I went over to Collins' hotel. He was sitting
up in bed v;ith these Little Review magazines on the bed
beside him. He had been reading these magazines since
the night before and throughout that morning. And he
said, "VJell, Nutting, I'll tell you. I have in my files
any amount of writing by insane people that's just as good
as this is." Collins got up and v;ent to the bathroom to
take a shower and corrimenced to talk about how tragic it
was for a great mind to deteriorate so and become perfect-
ly crazy. He really felt this m.an had extraordinary talent

429

and that this was really a very sad case indeed. VJell,
he was the first person I had talked to that had knocked
Joyce as much as that.

Of course, Joyce was very controversial, but he al-
ready had a very enthusiastic following. Ezra Pound was
in Paris then and v/as doing a great deal for him. A lot
of the young writers looked upon him as one of the great
writers of the period and were already trying to imitate
him and were influenced by him. Collins didn't feel that
v;ay. VJell, fortunately Collins didn't publish anything of
that nature and little by little he came around and decided,
after all, maybe there v/as something in his work. I think
that later he did write some things that were quite appre-
ciative of some of the valuable work.

I found his work extremely puzzling, but my wife, who
was much more of a literary student than I was, appreciated
his work from the beginning more than I did. It was only
after quite a lot of reading that, little by little, I com-
menced to really enjoy his work. For a long time, it did
seem to me that it was unnecessarily difficult, and I
could sympathize v;ith an English v/riter, Arnold Bennett,
who said it was reserved for James Joyce to make novel
reading penal servitude. [laughter] And I must confess
I never have read Finnegans Wake through. It's a little
bit stiff for me, but my wife enjoyed it very much. She
used to read it and reread it and quote from it, and she

430

she got more fun and interest out of it than most people
would from some of his simpler v;orks.

We met the family--Nora Joyce and the two young chil-
dren, Giorgio and Lucia. Lucia was a very charming girl
in those days. She had two great enthusiasms--one was
Charlie Chaplin and the other was Napoleon. She was just
crazy about Charlie Chaplin, and she came home one day just
all aquiver. She'd been out in a park along the Champs
felysees, up toward the Arc de Triomphe, and every afternoon
there 'd be crov;ds of youngsters sitting on benches v;atching
the guignol , the puppet theater. As she was standing,
watching this puppet show, she looked up and happened to
glance at someone standing beside her. It was Charlie
Chaplin. So, of course, she got a tremendous thrill out
of that. She had clippings and all sorts of things about
Charlie Chaplin. And, for some strange reason, she had
this enthusiasm for Napoleon. So if people would see
little busts of Napoleon at f ive-and-ten-cent stores,
they'd buy one for her. Or if it v;as a new picture of
Napoleon, they'd get it for her. She had a great collec-
tion.

Giorgio was older than Lucia--they were both teenagers
then--and he vjas a very correct sort of a boy. His manners
are rather hard to describe. I might imagine it being
the influence of the Austrian court or that sort of beha-
vior, you know, punctilious.

431

The family was av;fully hard up then. You can read
in Ellmann ' s book about his experiences in Zurich and
about Mrs. McCormick who had financed him for some time
during that war period. It v;as a double reason--partly
the fact that she felt that he was a very great talent
and also because the period v.'as extremely difficult for
people, such as writers or artists, with a career that
would be seriously interrupted. Even his teaching was
hurt by war experiences. So Mrs. McCormick financed
him in Zurich.

She was, I think, undergoing analysis with Carl
Jung and she wanted Joyce to be analyzed, but he refused.
As I say the story is in Ellmann. One thing that the ex-
perience CixCi was oO ourn ooyce againso psycuoansj-ysis, Gj.—
though he was quite a good analyst himself in a v/ay. He
v;as very clever in seeing associations in dreams. You
could tell him a dream, and he could remember things and
put two and two together in a way that was very good. But,
of course, one of his puns, v;hen he spoke of the Americans,
was, "They are a Jung people, easily Freudened." [laughter]
And the one time that I ever heard him use any really
strong language was something apropos of psychoanalysis--
I've forgotten what it v;as. He wasn't given to exaggerated
speech or any violence in his language whatsoever; he v/as
always quite sedate.

Well, being in straitened circumstances, they were in

432

this old hotel down by the river. V7hen I got to knov/ him
better, I used to go down to call on him, and eventually,
I used to take him around in my little car. He would be
working on a suitcase, sitting in an armchair. A suitcase
would be resting on the arms of the chair, and that was
his desk. They only had the two rooms, and that was a
very difficult situation for a man to do very serious
work. He was working very hard on his book.

He finally resorted to going to a cafe. It was a
cafe over on Rue de Universite, And he would sit at the
back of the cafe and write. He would get himself a coffee
and stay--as you can do in a French cafe. If you buy even
a small drink, you can stay there all day if you want to.
He became good friends of the proprietor and the v.'aitcrc,
and during most of the day, they kept this quiet corner
for him vjhere he wasn't bothered. There he'd have his
books and notes and the manuscript, and he would work.

I started speaking about Giorgio and his manner. He
was also extrem.ely neat in his dress. I imagine he pro-
bably pressed his ov;n trousers and kept his clothes in as
good shape as he could, but the poor kid didn't have very
much in the v-zay of clothes and they were getting pretty
worn. You could see where cuffs had been neatly trimmed,
you know, and the collar showed a little bit of wear. But
it was always clean, and he always looked very, very nice.

Giorgio was a much more reserved boy than most, and

^33

I don't remember him letting himself go except in impatience
He was quite an impatient sort of a boy sometimes. He'd
break out in protestations of one sort and another.

Lucia was quite full of fun, and she used to love
to come to our place when we had evenings, especially one
year v/hen my v;ife sent for her niece, Helen Kieffer, to give
her a year in Paris. VJe had a studio and the upstairs
sleeping quarters and also another little room that up to
that time we had used for storage. That v.'as cleaned out
and Helen made it quite a nice place. Helen Kief fer was
named after my wife, so they both had the name Helen.
Helen Kief fer got along very nicely with Lucia Joyce, and
they used to go places together. They both vient to the
sam.e school, and Helen Kieffer learned French very well.
Helen Kief fer was a quieter girl than Lucia, but they both .
had a lot of fun.

They went to a camp that summer. My wife found a
place--I've forgotten whether it was in Normandy or Brit-
tany--that had been highly recoimnended by some friends for
the girls to go and get some experience of country life in
France. The Joyces let Lucia go; so the girls shared a
tent in this camp. They had studies and exercises, and I
think we have a photograph someplace of them throwing the
j'avelin. They were doing something of that sort, I've
forgotten what. The principal excitement was when the camp
was visited by King Alfonso of Spain. For some reason he

434

was brought around to inspect the camp, and the girls all
met the king. Of course, that vjas quite thrilling.

Evenings at our place were quite a lot of fun. One
thing that used to contribute to it v;as that Lucia's
passion for the art of Chaplin went so far that she imi-
tated him. She would borrow her father's or her brother's
shoes and clothes and put on a little moustache and prac-
tice the walk and swing this little cane around. And she
did very well, too. So on these evenings, that was one
of her contributions to the gaiety. There were other
games of one sort or another that were part of the festi-
vities that we had.

The Joyce kids v/ere multilingual, of course. Having
lived in Trieste, they knew Italian. The fact is, they
only spoke Italian in the family. It always seemed so
funny to hear this Irish family chattering away in Italian.
And when living in Zurich, they learned German very well.
They v;ere just at the age they could learn rapidly. Their
French was excellent and their English was perfectly good
except for little things that once in a while would pop up
that would shov; that it wasn't their native language. Lucia
was trying to guide my wife to some shop or someplace, but
she made some sort of a mistake in the direction--she thought
she knew exactly where it was--and she wanted to apologize
for what was promising to be some sort of a vjild goose
chase. She said, "Mrs. Nutting, I don't want to make an

^35

experience for you." [laughter] Of course, it is a
French construction, it's not English.

She vms funny, too. Somebody loaned them an apart-
ment, but the furniture wasn't in very good shape, and
Lucia warned my v;ife not to sit down on a chair, because
she thought it wasn't safe. She said, "All the furniture
in this place is just stuck together with spit." [laughter]
Then she felt she had said something very crude, and she
apologized for it.

Of course, the tragedy in the Joyce family was that
Lucia lost her mind, some sort of a dementia praecox.
She's now in a sanitarium in England. Giorgio was married
and remarried and lives in Munich.

Well, that v;as the Joyce family when we first knew
them. They were in the hotel and they had apartments
loaned to them throughout the whole history of their stay
in Paris. Ellmann seems to have run down every place where
they lived. All I feel I can contribute, because so much
novj has been v/ritten about the man, are footnotes to what
has already been much more completely described by other
people.

As I say, Joyce v;as a man of great decorum and dig-
nity of behavior; I don't think I can cite an instance in
which he--within human reason — behaved in an undignified
manner. VJhat I have in mind is the contrast of his behavior
to a lot of other young fellows around Paris in those days.

436

even very, very talented ones. One idea comes up again
and again when people speak to me about the man. First
they say, "Oh, you knew Joyce," and I say yes. Then, very
soon, out comes the idea that Joyce was a terrific drinker,
that he vjas very much of a drunk. It seems to be a very
common idea, and which isn't at all true. I say it isn't
at all true, because although he did have very frequent
evenings in which he was bibulous, it wasn't every night,
by a long shot--and it was never in the daytime. I don't
think I ever saw him do any, what you might call "serious
drinking," in the daytime. If it was, it v;as X'/hat the
rest of us do and that v;as to have a cocktail before
dinner or something of that sort. But he v/asn't fond
of cocktails. The only drink that he really liked very
much was a very dry white wine--a Swiss wine that he liked,
one French wine and an Italian wine.

He had special ideas about wine. He didn't think that
the French idea of a very highly cultivated v;ine was in the
spirit of wine. Fie thought that v^ine should be good wine--
and for everybody. Of course, this is really the Italian
idea. The Italians don't have any famous v;ines from vine-
yards \';here a certain few square feet are cultivated and
where the wine then is kept until it's exactly right and
at a certain age, where the v/ine made from them is perfect
and becomes extremely valuable and is sold for quite a lot
of money a bottle. The Italian idea, so far as I could see.

437

was simply to make a good wine. If you got Chianti, it
was good Chianti. There v/as lots of it and it came in
big f iaschi . Something that was very recherche vjas foreign
to their idea of v;ine. Joyce also thought that v/lne v;as
one of the blessings of life and there should be plenty
of it and it should be good and unadulterated. That's
what must be asked of it, not something that was supposed
to be super-fine and for a very highly cultivated taste
that could tel3. differences in the superiority of the wine.

But, as I say, I don't feel that you can think of
him as being the drunkard that people are inclined to think
of him as, because being really under control, he was a
dedicated artist. He had enormous capacity for work, more
so than any other person that I have known. For other
writers that I've known, a fev7 hours of application is
about all they can stand. Of course, there is all the
other work you do in connection with writing--your research
and reading. But Joyce seemed to have the idea that he
should be able to have the ability to sit down and work
very meticulously hour after hour all day long.

He had his dinners at an hour which for us would seem
rather late, never before seven o'clock or about eight o'clock.
We'd meet for dinner; v/e ate out a great deal in those days.
A lot of our meeting with friends was at dinner at a res-
taurant--much more so than we do now. Joyce would turn
up for dinner, and you could see that he really was very

438

tired. He wouldn't know what to order, and he would sit
and he would always sigh. He was a great man to sigh. He
would heave a deep, melancholy sigh. He apparently had
no appetite whatsoever. But after v/e had a little cocktail
or something of that sort and a little conversation, he
commenced to brighten up; then he'd think of something he
wanted to eat and he'd order that. Then v;e'd have dinner.
On occasions v/hen the evening was prolonged and extra bottles
of wine were ordered, he would be quite himself again. And
no matter hov; much he had to drink, he was alv;ays a marve-
lous talker. You could listen to him for hours.

Another thing, he had a certain control of memory
which others did not have. He always could remember even
when it- seemed to m.e he v-as quite befuddled. I kncv; that
the next day I v;ouldn't have the foggiest memory of v;hat
feppened, but he could tell you everything and quote vjhat
everybody said. And he seemed to be just as observant and
just as able to collect impressions and ideas after tvjo
or three bottles of wine as he was before. It was fantas-
tic .

Then, the other thing was that even though the evening
would sometimes go on till one or tv;o o'clock--and by that
time it vzould be two or maybe three bottles of v/ine--he
would still be up at a fairly good hour, by eight o'clock
or so, and at work. I don't know how he did it. It was
beyond me. He didn't seem like a man of very strong physique,

^39

He v/as slender, and he v;as not in the least athletic. I
never knev; him doing anything that was athletic, except
that he liked to dance. He liked to do fantastic dances,
pick up his coattails and do an Irish jig. He had a lot
of fun in him, and quite a capacity for enjoyment.

There are all sorts of stories in a community of
that sort, and it's so easy to tell stories if it's a good
story, v;hether it's true or not, and a lot of them v/ere
told on Joyce. They had an idea that he'd get up early in
the morning and rush down to take a plunge in the Seine.
As a matter of fact, I don't think he ever took a tub bath.
He was very clean and very neat, but he wasn't fond of get-
ting himself in the water very much. He washed, I guess,
'h^7• si^ono"e bathinc^- and I don't think he was at all a swim-
mer. His son, incidentally, vias . Giorgio distinguished
himself in school in Switzerland as a sv\rimmer--won a prize
or something. I can't think for the moment what it was.
But, anyway, the boy was quite a good athlete, a very bright
boy. His father was anxious for him to cultivate his voice.
He did make a very good start at it, but apparently nothing
ever came of it.

I can see all sorts of little pictures of the man
that are very vivid, and if a person were writing a novel,
these little snapshots of him would be interesting. They
haven't any special importance, biographically, but if they
were put in relation to the picture of the personality by

440

a talented v/riter, they could be very interesting. I'm
not sure, but I think it was the evening after one of his
birthdays that v/e had dinner together. We then v;ent to
some little cafe down in the very old part of Paris where
there v;as that feeling of the houses coming together over
the street, that medieval style. Each story of the houses,
as you went up, v/ould become a little bit bigger, and
they got more room in a house by making the top floors
larger than the bottom floors. So the result v;as that
the street v7ould be a sort of a canyon with a tendency
for the roofs of the houses to meet overhead. Especially
at night in a street like that which is ill-lit, it gives
a very medieval kind of a feeling. You could imagine you
were back in the days of Francois Villon or some such
spirit of life.

As we left the cafe on our v/ay home, Nora was expos-
tulating with her husband about something--!' ve forgotten
what, I guess he didn't v/ant to go home--and he was very
quiet about it. Then he did one of the really impulsive
things that once in awhile he would do. The street was
deserted and rather dark, and all of a sudden, he leaped
out into the middle of the street and went dancing down
the street in this semidarkness . He wasn't very steady
on his legs, which gave a strange jumping-jack effect to
his m.ovements as he went from side to side and disappeared
into the darkness. And he was shouting, "l am free! I
am free!" That picture of him--that voice out of the darkness.

441

"I am free.'" and that marionette kind of a figure disap-
pearing dovm through these little old houses--is one of
the things, as I said, that has no special significance
except that it shov;s a certain amount of personality and
character of a person that you have known. So he didn't
let himself go in that way very often.

There v;ere a lot of funny stories told about him
because people didn't know him very v;ell, and they couldn't
verify things. So all the gossip and rumors--his
being a dope addict and this, that and the other thing--
were very easy to spread, because although he was not at
all unsociable--he was very fond of his friends--he was
not the kind to go out and be among people.

The Montparnasse grew very rapidly after World VJar I.
When we first went there, two rather small, insignificant,
very ordinary cafes, the Dome and the Rotonde across the
street were very much patronized. But, as the population,
especially of foreigners, grew in the quarter, these two
cafes enlarged^ they took on adjoining stores and broke
down partitions and became big cafes. Then another one
started. It v;as a sort of a coal and wood yard and some-
body built a huge cafe there--! 've forgotten now what it
was called. Some of the older cafes were quite well known.
The Closerie des Lilas wasn't very far away, and it was quite
a rendezvous for literary people. VJe lived quite near.
We first lived in back of the Gare Montparnasse, which v/as
a short walk, and afterwards in another direction up the

442

Boulevard Raspail, where v;e finally got an apartment.

Especially for painting, one had to economize on
daylight quite a lot, because in vjintertime the days are
quite short and decent light is only available until early
afternoon when it begins to get rather dark. Then the
interesting thing to do is to go out for a cocktail or
an aperitif and wander dov/n to the Dome or Rotonde. There
you'd invariably see some of your friends, and you'd
have an hour or so of conversation before dinner. Some-
times after dinner, there 'd be quite 2a rge gatherings and
maybe v/e would have a lot of discussion and arguments. I
always thought that was quite a valuable part of life over
there. You didn't have to have any special meeting place
or club or form a society for it. You could just go nut
at certain hours of the day and meet people; and a certain
group of artists would get together and in another place,
there would be writers. Their talk was good. They dis-
cussed their problems and had great debates.

Of course, that's obvious in the story of the Impression-
ist movement in Paris--the meetings of Degas and Pissarro
and Monet and others at that famous cafe in Montmartre. So
it's very characteristic of life there. V7hen you speak of
why this activity occurred in Paris, I think that cafe life
contributed a lot to it. I felt it to a certain extent in
Munich, but not so much so, and still less in Rome. But in
Paris, I think it was a really very important part of it.

443

You had this chance to talk to people, to meet people, to
exchange ideas; and I think that was one of the great
attractions that brought a lot of people there.

There were other reasons, of course, in that period of
the twenties, especially for the Americans being there.
The exchange was so much in our favor that many Americans
had a chance for a trip to Europe that otherwise might
have been impossible. And living was still quite reasonable.
So they v;ent there partly because of the fame that the
life was having at that time and partly because it v;as pos-
sible for them to do so economically, which, incidentally,
was the reason I v;ent to Europe in the first place. It
was basically a money-saving device; I could get more for
my money over there. Of course, I was crazy to go, so
that was also very much a part of it. And, while living
in Paris, although I always felt I was very soon going to
come home, I was very glad when I found v;e could stay one
more year. In some ways, it may have been a mistake, but
at the same time, I don't regret it.

Joyce never went where there were crowds of people.
Of course, after the beginning of the publication of Ulysses
by the Little Review, his fame and notoriety increased, and
people v;ere more inclined to throng around him if he shov/ed
himself than vjhen he first went to Paris. He didn't like
that sort of thing. I think he was a shy man in lots of
vmys. He was a very, very courageous man, but at the same
time, there vms a certain shyness. So we v/ere always finding
some little place where we'd congregate that was unknown to

444

other people. And as soon as it was discovered, we'd
move and find some other little place.

I won't call it a coterie, but he had a certain group
of friends. There was Ezra Pound, and an Irishman by the
name of Arthur Power, a man we all liked very much. He and
Joyce got along awfully v;ell together. And there V7ere a
few other friends that he would have at his apartment.
Afterwards vjhen he had a nice apartment, he used to enter-
tain very nicely with little dinners. We'd be there for
Christmas or New Year's. It was interesting to see him
enjoying a really comfortable life.

The apartment wasn't large, but it was a very pleasant
one. It was rather commonplace in its furnishings, but
it was very comfortable and not un tasteful at all. The
last years that we knew him, he had on the mantelpiece a
copy of Narcissus, a bronze that came from Pompeii. It's
a little nude that stands a couple of feet high. It's a
boy holding up his fingers this way [gestures], and I
think his one hand is on his hip in a kind of listening
attitude. It's quite a well-known Roman bronze. Somebody
had given him this, I imagine--I doubt if he had bought
it. Anyway, it vras standing on the mantelpiece and in
this arm that was crooked was a bunch of little Greek flags,
and each flag represented a new edition or translation of
Ulysses . And they were quite numerous; so, by that time
I think his income must have been pretty good.

445

For the publication of Ulysses , one thing that he
wanted was to have the cover of it blue (it was a paper
cover), and he wanted it the color of the Greek flag. I
said, "Well, Joyce, that's all right. The Greek flag is
just blue. That's all. It depends on how they're making
the flag. If they v:ant a dye that is permanent and will
stand the weather and the sun, v;hy, of course, it's an
expensive color because ordinary blue pigments and aniline
colors are rather fugitive and vary somewhat in quality.
We have a cobalt blue, which is very nearly prismatic
blue; ultramarine, v;hlch goes very slightly to the violet
side; and Prussian blue, which can be used in juxtaposition
to its complementaries to bring out a certain greenish

ntlfl"l^"^.^^ in i +. Rn+ TAihcin -f-V-icnr ' vo rnakinG f ISCS . thev SiniDlV

dye it blue according to the quality of the dye they hap-
pen to have . "

"No," he said, "I'm sure they have a very definite
blue for the Greek flag and not other flags."

So sure enough, he comes around waving this little
Greek flag and he says, "l want you to match this color
for me." So I got busy with the blue pigm.ents and pointed
out that the blue was a color of this sort and maybe just a
little touch of Prussian with ultramarine would give it
something of that sort. But one thing he couldn't see vjas
that the flag was silk and that you put that same color on
paper and it doesn't look like the same blue as the silk.

446

He couldn't understand that. He thought there was some-
thing v;rong with my vision because I couldn't make that
piece of paper look like that silk flag. [laughter]
However, as v:e know, the first edition of Ulysses came
out v/ith its blue cover, which didn't take too long to
fade and get rather dull.

He was not interested especially in the visual arts.
I think that he rather gave up on the idea of painting as
being anything very serious. The only art work I ever
heard him really get enthused about was the Book of Kells.
The manuscript illumination, of course, is of an am.azingly
complicated design, and that fascinated him. He'd get out
his magnifying glass--he had color reproductions, or at
least some plates somebody had given him of the Book of
Kells--and he'd look at them with great pleasure. He said,
"l think the reason I like it is because of the intricacy
of it." It's the first time I'd ever heard that pronun-
ciation, and in one of my letters to Ellmann, I m.entioned
that pronunciation. He said, yes, that Yeats also was
inclined to use that pronunciation--intrlcacy for intricacy.

But Joyce always felt himself a vmtchmaker, a man who
would work with infinitely small bits and put them together
with great precision. He felt that v;as one of his great
characteristics as an artist. On the other hand, there's
one thing that alv;ays rather amused me about Joyce. He
calls himself Dedalus in the Portrait of the Artist as a

kk7

Young Man . He's an artificer; he's a workman of precision.
And I don't think I'm wrong, but I think he probably was
as helpless with his hands as anybody I ever knev;. [laughter]
But, of course, that's not entirely fair, because V7hat
he did was to handle v;ords and language v;ith the same en-
thusiasm and the same love and meticulous care that the
artist would do--what Cellini would do, for example, in a
fine piece of gold work or engraving or something of that
sort, V7ith a great precision and great delicacy. So he
wasn't v;rong in calling himself Dedalus.

His evenings at home, as I say, v/ere alvjays very en-
joyable. They never had in a large group, only a fev/
friends at a time. I doubt if they entertained very many
at home. Unless they were people that they really felt
were in the family circle, they took them out to a res-
taurant to dinner and gave them hospitality of that sort.
His entertaining at his home v;as very informal. When v.'e
gathered there for dinner or for some evening, Joyce
wouldn't appear until the guests v;ere all there. Then
he'd com.e v/andering out of his study--he had the luxury
now of a study, a little room where he could really work--
and he used to come out in his white coat, v;hich should
have given him a look that rather suggested a doctor or
a nurse, but it didn't. And he v.'ouM wander in quietly
and sit down, and he joined the conversation and then we'd
have dinner.

448

Afterwards he'd go to the piano and sing some of his
songs. He had written songs using the melodies of other
songs. "Mr. Dooley" was one thing he used to sing quite
often. "Mr. Dooley, Youlee, You," is a satirical sort
of thing to the song of "Mr. Dooley." We had radios in
those days, but he didn't have one, and they weren't espe-
cially good yet. Somebody would play the piano.

And he loved to dance. He always danced in rather
a quaint, funny way, like he was doing an imitation of an
Irish folk dance or something. I never saw him dance
formally--doing the waltz or ballroom dancing. He just
liked to skip around and really have fun, always in a very
serious sort of a way. He never, never laughed. He'd
break into a rather charming smile once in awhile if some-
thing amused him, but I don't ever remember him really
going "haw-hav;" and really laughing.

About the drinking that I spoke of before, we did
have in the Quarter, in those days, some boys who were
rather hurting themselves in the way of drinking. Speaking
of this reputation that Joyce has of being a drinker, you
never hear of Sinclair Lewis spoken of as a drunk. I may
be unfair to Lewis, but I saw him very often in Paris while
on his vacation, you know, and when he was traveling and
having a good time, he began drinking pretty early in the
day, it seems to me--and shov;ed it. He showed it by not
being a very pleasant person very often.

449

Joyce, however, was alv/ays very polite. One time
he did get so far along (Just he and I were together)
that it came closing time and the proprietor insisted
he had to shut up the place and that we had to go. And
I said, "VJell, Joyce, they're going to lock up the place.
We realty have to get out of here." And he looked
rather distressed at that, \lhen he got up, I found he
really couldn't stand on his feet. I had to put my arm
around him and half carry him out into the street. Well,
out in the fresh air, he sort of straightened up and he
got a little more strength, but he was quite wobbly. He
and I started to walk slowly dovm the street--! vjas try-
ing to find a taxicab--and quite a nice-looking Frenchman
passed by and saw that I was in somewhat of a difficulty.
He stopped and said, "Can 1 be of any help?" In French.

And I said, "No, thank you. I can get along very
well."

Joyce drew himself up with great dignity and invited
this man to come and have a drink with us. I've forgotten
how he expressed it, but it was veiy politely done and in
a very dignified manner.

The other Frenchman said, "Oh, no. Thank you very,
very much indeed." And so Joyce said, " Alors allez-
vous -en! " ("Get yourself gone.'") A very cold a llez-
vous - en !

"Oui, monsieur, oui, monsieur." And he went on dov;n

450

the street.

So I got Joyce home. I wasn't making any effort to
be abstemious at all in those days, but I think that Nora
rather liked for me to be out with Joyce because she was
rather sure that at least he could get home without
leaving his overcoat someplace or have some kind of a
mishap. It was not because I made any effort to stay
sober, but just because of a physiological peculiarity
that has always been with me. Up to a certain point I
drink very enthusiastically, and then I get a sense of
paralysis of my insides and I just can't sv;allow anymore.
I just don't want it. [laughter] All I want to do is to
keep very still for awhile. If you leave me alone for
about an hour, I will then feel right. But the unfortunate
thing is that in not being able to join the party in the
spirit in which it is going, I get rather dismally sober.
So if it goes on too long, I'm just cold sober and want
to go home, while the rest are having a whale of a good
time.

Well, that would be true when I was out with Joyce.
I'd have all I vjanted, and I'd stop, you know. He'd polish
off another bottle, and by that time, I'd be sobered up--
and he wouldn't have--and I was in a position to guide the
party home and pick up the belongings and take care of
things. I think Nora got onto that. Afterv/ards I felt

451

that she v;as never reproachful if he came home even early
in the morning. She was always very nice about it.
SCHIPPERS: How often did you see Joyce?
NUTTING: Oh, very often. For one reason, Nora Joyce
was very fond of my wife and she used to come over a great
deal. She wasn't a complaining woman at all; she didn't
come over to weep on my wife's shoulder, but she liked to
have somebody to confide in. She liked Helen very much,
md for that reason, she'd be over quite a lot. And we
used to be at their place quite a lot.

Also what was conmon with most of us in the Quarter
in those days v/as that we ate out a great deal. We used
to have our favorite restaurants and we used to meet in
small groups, and very, very often it would be i.'.'ith the
Joyces. It was usually either a restaurant down near the
Beaux-Arts or down on the St. -Germ.ain-des-Pres, or a res-
taurant in the Quarter. There was one called the Trianon.
It all depended v;hether we wanted to have a very simple
meal or felt like splurging a little bit. Sometimes we m.et
at an extremely simple little restaurant where we would
meet by prearrangement.

Then we took trips out to Fountainebleau together and
to do things of that sort, little excursions. In the winter-
time, v;e'd meet at least once a week, either for dinner at
each other's house, or we would go on an excursion to places
outside of Paris and spend the day. Of course, in the

452

summertime, v/e went our various ways. VJe used to go south
a great deal, and they v;ould also go places. Everybody's
great ambition in Paris is to vacation someplace in the
summertime .

SCHIPPERS: About how many years did you knov; the Joyces?
NUTTING: V/ell, it was during the twenties. We left there
in '29, and they had been in Paris about a year before I
met them. If I'm not mistaken, they arrived in 1920, so
from '21 to '29 I knew them. My wife corresponded a little
bit with them after we came back to this country. Joyce
had a phenomenal memory for people's birthdays. He never
v;rote them down, but he remembered them. He had a great
love of birthdays and he used to send my wife a telegram
or something on her birthday. He congratulated me on my
birthday once, only he got the month wrong. He got the day
right, but he made a mistake on the month. [laughter]

TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TOO
JANUARY 5, 1966

NUTTING: Another man that I met through Joyce was Wyndham
Lewis. I was already somev/hat familiar v;ith his vjriting.
Wyndham Lewis was an extremely talented draftsman, a
painter, a very able writer and, in some ways, quite a
brilliant thinker. He v/rote a small book called The
Caliph' s Design . At that time it interested me quite a
lot. And when Joyce said Lewis v;as coming to Paris, I
asked if we might not have dinner together and I'd have a
chance to ask him some questions concerning some of the
things in this little book of his.

Joyce arranged a dinner. I went, but instead of
just the three of us as I had expected, there v;ere also
other guests. One v;as Robert McAlmon and also a young
sculptor by the name of Moore. Well, the dinner was quite
successful but I v/as rather disappointed because when I
started asking Levjis some questions about his book--I
told him I'd enjoyed it, and I wanted to talk about it--
the others didn't want any very serious conversation. So
it turned out to be just a good-natured sort of a dinner.
Bob McAlmon perhaps had been celebrating a little too much
or something. V7e had quite a few drinks at dinner that
didn't agree v;ith him, and he became ill. So after dinner,
he went home and left Moore, Joyce, Lewis and myself to go

454

on to a cafe and have some more talk.

Well, it resulted in our being out, really, all night.
I've forgotten where we went. We went from place to place
and talked. Finally we wound up going to Les Halles in
the early morning, down in the Paris marketplace. It's
quite a nice place, interesting, too — at least, it used
to be--I believe it's either being taken down nov; or is
gone. In the early morning, you v/ould see great wagon-
loads of produce coming into town to feed the city of
Paris, and in the vicinity there were lots of restaurants,
some very simple ones and some more ambitious ones, all
quite good. Winding up down there for breakfast was rather
a usual thing if you were out all night. So v;e v;ent down
there and had breakfast and then started leisurely going
home.

Well, Lewis and Joyce had been drinking rather con-
tinuously all night and though they weren't too intoxi-
cated, they had become rather uninteresting. Moore drank
very little; he was very sober. And I, as usual, about
that time of night was tiresomely sober. [laughter] It
had been hours since I had had the slightest desire for
anything in the way of alcohol, I enjoyed my breakfast and
coffee and then wanted to go home, but when I mildly sug-
gested that it was time that we break up and go and get
some sleep, Lewis leaned over and put his arm around me and
said, "My darling Nutting, I won't go home and you can't

455

make me go home. "

Well, I wouldn't remember that except--as I said before
— the interesting thing about Joyce was that he alv;ays
seemed to remember everything. At that time, he didn't
seem to be especially av;are of the world around him. One
of my worries, knowing that he had so little to spend,
was that he was buying a drink maybe for one franc and
giving a five-franc tip. So I was trying to salvage these
five-franc tips and would instead put down a respectable
tip, with the idea of giving the money back to him later.
I didn't think there was anything especially v;rong with
that idea. It seemed to amuse Moore no end, though. He
caught me doing it, and he laughed and thought it was a
j^reat "ioke. Aftcrviards Jc^^ce could mention things up
to the very end of the evening and described Lewis' state
and his saying, "Darling Nutting, you can't make me go
home." He quoted him verbatim and showed that there was
nothing in the whole evening that was in the least lost
on him.

There were one or tv;o things that were very Joycean.
One vjas superstitions. I could never quite make out vjhether
Joyce was really superstitious or not. He enjoyed super-
stitions, especially old ones, and sort of played along
with them. He had his own idea of what was good luck and
what was a good portent and that sort of thing. One time,
early in the morning, we were at a cafe and I lost Joyce.

456

I looked around and found that he was sitting with a Greek
sailor and having a wonderful conversation vfith him. V/ell,
it wasn't because the boy was an especially interesting
companion--! 'm sure of that--but it was the fact that he
felt it was a good omen to meet a Greek. Anything Greek
was a good omen to him. To have the evening wind up with
a contact V7ith a Greek seemed to him something that really
meant good fortune and led him to become very friendly
with this fellow.

Well, it's unfortunate that those two men, vjho v;ere
very unusual men, very different, disagreed with each other.
Even then, Lewis was very critical of Joyce and disagreed
with him. They were disagreeing on a lot of subjects,
and it was ver^'' unfortunate that I can't remember about
what. Why I did not make some notes of v;hat the talk v;as
about I don't know, but I didn't, so it just remains as
these mild memories.

Then about this young Moore, afterwards I saw notices
and pictures of his sculpture in art magazines. So, of course,
I said, to myself, "So that was the boy. That was Lewis'
friend that he thought was such a genius." And I always
supposed that it v;as he. But Ellmann, in his interview
with Henry Moore in England, said that Moore claimed he
never met Joyce, and I'm wondering whether that's really
true. It seems very much of a coincidence that another
sculptor who v;ould be admired by V/yndham Lewis and one he

457

felt was representative of very modern art, as Wyndham
Lev;is was, would also have the name of Moore. I think
it's rather strange. I'm rather wondering if at that
time the boy paid much attention to whom he v;as with. He
didn't talk; he didn't seem to be too much interested. He
was mild and a very pleasant young fellow. I think maybe
he just tagged along with Lewis and didn't especially notice
viho he was with. That's just a possibility. It doesn't
sound too intelligent because by that time Joyce v/as quite
well known. I'm sure Moore would have known, and if he
paid any attention to his guests, he would certainly have
remembered him.

So that was one of the evenings. It was the longest

pijpniriiy T e^MP-r Rnpn-h. wi -f-.h .In^rr-p' TTcnnl T ^r vjq ""Ot home St

a much better hour. That was the only time I ever met
VJyndham Lewis. I found him a much more interesting man in
his writing than he was personally.

In Ellmann's book, there is quite a vivid description
of Joyce and Giorgio. In its v;ay, I think it's very true.
It's very good. Of course, when you speak of the way people
were impressed by Joyce, I think you can understand it in
terms of their personal feeling. Clive Bell didn't like
him especially. Some people would call him arrogant. I
think that speaking of him as being arrogant is rather un-
fair; I don't think he was at all an arrogant man. I think
he was shy. He didn't seem to enter easily into a crowd.

458

In spite of all the people who really admired him and
were willing to like him very much, he much preferred to
be with very fev; people and keep his distance, but not
because he vjas snooty. It was because to suddenly become
well knovm after a life of hard work and neglect v/as a bit
heady for him. He couldn't quite take it. I never knev;
anybody who really disliked him, and I certainly never
knew him to be offensive in any way or give any reason for
someone to take umbrage.

I alv;ays thought it was rather ironical that he should
use the name Dedalus, meaning himself. A Portrait of the
Artist as a^ Young Man is, of course, roughly autobiographi-
cal and in Ulysses , too, it's himself he's v;riting about
to a certain extent--Dedan us . the artist, Joyce had the
limpest handshake of anybody I ever met. There were just
no nerves in his hand. He'd hold out this object, you know,
and you'd take hold of it and wobble it, but there was
nothing in the way of a clasp or a handshake. I don't
think it was any lack of warmth or feeling. I just think
that his hands were not parts that he expressed himself
with. I can never imagine him doing anything mechanical
or fixing an electric fixture or doing the little jobs that
so many people do around the house as a matter of course.
I had an idea he'd be quite helpless. I have no special
reason for feeling that except that his hand seemed so in-
efficient in the handshake.

459

One time I went down to get him on an appointment,
and I found him struggling v/ith a package he had wrapped
in a very childish way in black oilcloth. He had a cord
v/hich wasn't at all appropriate to tie it with. If he'd
had good twine;, he could have made quite a neat job of it,
but he had gotten this rough hempen cord which was hard to
handle anyway and was too big for the purpose. He v;as
trying to tie a knot, and the cord v;as slipping off the
package. I've forgotten whether I finally helped him out
or not. I rather imagine I didn't because I didn't v,'ant
to imply that he wasn't capable of v;rapping a bundle. But
he finally got this bundle tied and lifted it up, and it
held together. And he said, "Do you see this? This weighs
tv.'elve kilos and it's the notes that I have nnt uRRd in
writing Ulysses . " [laughter] So, I don't know how much the
bundle of his used notes would weigh.

Of course, as I said before, he v;as a continual
maker of notes--evcn in the hospital. I went to see him
the day after an operation on his eyes--one of the many
operations--to see how he was getting along, and they
told me I could go up and see him if I wished. So I went
to his door and itwas ajar. I looked in, and here v;as Joyce
lying on this bed with enormous bandages over his eyes, like
small pillows bandaged over both eyes. He v;as lying flat
on his back. I said, "Hello, Joyce." And he didn't move.
He lay there perfectly quiet, perfectly still, I felt

460

rather embarrassed. I thought they had let me see him too
soon after the anesthetic and operation. Then he reached
under his pillow and pulled out a notebook (a composition
book such as we use in schools) and a pencil. He held
the notebook up and very slowly traced something by touch
onto a page. Then he shoved it back under the pillow.
Then he held out his hand and said, "Hov? are you. Nutting?"
Even then, he had this av;areness of watching his thoughts,
his feelings and his ideas.

Ordinarily, he kept a very small notebook in his vest-
pocket. Walking down the street one day while carrying
on quite a lively conversation, all of a sudden, he pulled
out this little book and wrote something in it in his
fnjinv little tin'^'' hand and ■•"'ut it back. Of course, it
caused an interruption in what he was saying, so I looked
at him rather inquiringly--! wondered v;hat idea had sud-
denly popped into his mind. So he pulled the book out again
and held it up, and on one page were simply the words:
"carriage sponge." [laughter] Then he put it back.

Afterwards, I saw his method of vjorking. He had great
big pieces of wrapping paper and colored pencils and a
chart of his work. This note probably--! don't know--would
have a number and would go to department so-and-so and so-
and-so on this big chart. All of the material related to
Ulysses , which he was then working on. But that very metho-
dical way of working and that inveterate taking of notes v;as

461

to me most striking. Everything was mapped out in colored
pencils on the chart. He carefully preserved all his mate-
rial so that even after it got through v.'ith his material,
he'd wrap it up and v/eigh it and it vjas ready to be filed
av;ay.

Well, I think I mentioned the fact that when I first
knew him, I did catch him working one morning. I found
him in his room in a rather cheap little hotel v;ith very
little heat. It was quite cold. He had his coat on, and
he was sitting in an armchair with a suitcase resting on
the arms of the chair. That v/as his desk, and he was in
this little room working. I think they had tv;o rooms in this
hotel. I think it was on the Rue de I'Universite, down
by the river. That's the only time that T ever savj him
actually engage in his work.

Ordinarily, he v/ouldn't talk too much about his v;ork
except after dinner, after a couple of bottles of v;ine,
and then sometimes he would. I remember once when he was
working on the wandering rocks episode, he told me various
ideas he had for the form of it. One of them v;as what I
think Ellmann describes in his book here. He got the idea
from some childish game he played with Lucia. I won't say
childish because Lucia v;as then thirteen and she was not
at all a child; she was mature for her age. It was a game,
though, for young people. In playing this game, it gave him
an idea for the wandering rocks. And I also remember, for

462

example, he was concerned about the last episode which
is about Penelope, Molly Bloom, just before she goes to
sleep. It has enormously long sentences, and he said at
first his idea v;as to do it in the form of letters that
she had vjritten. And then he got this other idea of
simply a flow of her thoughts and reveries as she drifted
off, eventually, to sleep. That to me proved to be his
masterpiece. I think it was a very marvelous piece of
writing. The contrast between that and the style that
he invented fac Bloom is startling. To some people, it's
a very dull episode, but to me, it's very fascinating.
Have you read it?
SCHIPPERS: Yes.

NTTTTyMr! * V^n v»Ciyn ciYvi'h c»v» +-V^o-f- /^ rN T (^ wa -f- Komo -f n o Q 1 c-f-\rlo V^ o

uses? To me each episode in the book is sheer music, and
the book as a whole is a great symphony. Follov/ing that
wild VJalpurgisnacht , the Circe episode, one moves into a
quieter movement, the one of the cabman's shelter, leaving
the tumult behind. Then com.es the fascinating movem.ent
when the pair are homeward bound under the stars and where
Joyce makes scientific and mathematical exposition sheer
poetry. Finally Bloom is in bed, he dozes off. "He rests. He
has travelled. v;ith? Sinbad the sailor and Tinbad the Tailor
and Jinbad the Jailer and VJhinbad the Whaler and..."

I just said, he was alvjays writing things down, making
notes of everything. You can see that all of his writing

463

is based on very real, very concrete experiences. Probably
every mite of it he could trace dov;n to its origin. It's
not a thought-up fantasy or a dream life, ho'wever, the
dream form may be used. It's anything but that. Undoubted-
ly, all of the people v/ho knev; him are in some way in the
book. In Ulysses , at least, sometimes it'll be obvious.
Well, vjhen we had that little dinner on his birthday,
when he got out his first copy of Ulysses , one of the first
things that he did was to open it and show my wife where
her name appeared among the trees.

And once, by accident, I discovered something else.
Molly Bloom in this long reverie of hers says to her husband,
"Roll over for the love of Mike." When I read that, I was

was an American expression. So the next time I saw him
I spoke about it. I said, "Well, Joyce, I didn't know that
'for the love of Mike' was an Irish expression. I thought
that was something that v;as quite American. Do you say that
in Ireland?" He said, "No." "Well," I said, "where did
you get it from then? And why did you use it? Where did
you get it?" He said, "From you." [laughter]

There is also the saying my mother used in greeting
a friend: "Hov; does your corporocity sagatiate?" Once
we made arrangements to meet the Joyce family for some per-
f ormance--I 've forgotten what it was now--and we went in and
the Joyces were already there. I walked up to him and I

464

said, "How are you, Joyce? Hov;'s your corporocity saga-
tlate?" And he looked puzzled for a moment, and then he
smiled. But I didn't ask him if I had contributed that
or not. I rather suppose that I did, because he didn't
take it as an expression that he v\'as familiar with. It
turned up in Ulysses , so I sort of imagine I contributed
that.

Another thing was a little song. I was with him one
evening--I've forgotten what episode it's in now--and he
sang it. He first recited the words, and then he said
"The tune goes this vjay, " and he sang it--thls little verse.
And I said, "You ought to have the music with the words
vjhen the book is published." And he said, "No, we can't
do that. You can't go to the extra p.ypp.n^p. . Illustration
and that sort of thing is something that we can't afford."
But I said it wouldn't cost anything. And he said, "Why
wouldn't it?" And I said, "All you have to do is take a
piece of music paper and v;rite it out in black ink, and,
for very little, you can get a cut made from the engraver and
the printer will put it in for you." That seemed to be news
to him and, sure enough, that was vjhat was done. So I made
the contribution of having the music of the verse appear.
Otherwise, it would have been simply the words of the song,
nothing else. VJell, undoubtedly, as I say, everybody that
knew him would be surprised how much in some vjay or another
they contributed, because nothing was lost on him.

465

Wellj of course, the trouble over Ulysses began right
after I knew him. Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap had
published a certain amount of Ulysses in the Little Review
in New York, but then it was suppressed. Finally, the
ban was lifted. When we came to this country (I left
Paris in I929), I brought with me two copies. One was
the copy of his first edition, a signed copy that Joyce
had given us, and I'd also been given another edition in
a smaller format and very beautifully bound. V/hen I got
to New York, they searched my luggage and they found the
second edition, but they missed the first. So it was
sheer luck that I salvaged my valuable copy, vjhich now is
in the library at Northv/estern University. It was one of
the first copies to arrive in Paris from Di.lon, where it
was printed. Just a small number were printed.

Of course, I suppose everybody v;ould admit that Joyce
was a very impractical sort of a man vjhen it came to worldly
affairs and money, but he vjas very conscientious about it.
He didn't hesitate to ask for a loan of money when he needed
it, but you were quite sure of getting it back, and some-
times very quickly and very promptly. At least that was my
experience. So far as I know, it vjas alv;ays true of him.
He wasn't a sponger in the least. I met him one day, and
he spoke of the next day being his wife's birthday. He
said, "I have nothing to give her." So I loaned him a
hundred francs. A hundred francs then was quite a little

466

bit. The exchange fluctuates so, but it v/asn't a small
sum. He bought her something in spite of the fact that
they v;ere down to practically nothing, as his wanting the
loan would indicate. In some way, a very short time
after\-7ards, he repaid me. But, he v;as quite capable of
borrowing money from you and deciding that, instead of
groceries, he'd buy flowers. It had more meaning to him
than food would have at the time. So he would spend it
in that way.

SCHIPPERS: You previously mentioned something about a
standard joke in the Joyce household having to do with
Irish humor.

NUTTING: VJell, that v/as apropos of Nora Joyce. Nora was
--I alv/avK felt and J think my v;ife did, too--really quite
a grand person. She v/as always very dignified, very quiet.
She was very much puzzled by her husband and also very much
impressed when she found that all this crazy work that he
was doing really meant something after all. Instead of
making a good living for his family and all that sort of
thing, he'd spend all his time writing a book that people
thought was terrible and v;as censored. I suppose it was
something that was pretty hard for her to understand. She
never read it, of course. She was not an educated woman.

Curiously enough, she had a great love and a good
appreciation of music. She'd go by herself sometimes to
a concert of her favorite composers. She was especially

467

fond of certain works by Wagner. They seemed to mean a
great deal to her and some of V/agner's things she'd hear
again and again, even if she had to go alone. It v;as some-
thing that had real meaning.

So far as understanding her husband's v/ork, of course,
that was just nonexistent. There was no understanding
at all, and I don't think she v;as especially interested.
I think probably the favorite joke of Joyce in speaking
of his wife v;as that Nora would say to him, "Jim, have
you any book of Irish humor in the house?" And Joyce
would reply, "No." [laughter]

Family life in the Joyce family was really excellent,
very quiet, simple. The deep affection that Nora had for
her f ami 1 V held thRm f.ofyp.f.hp.v marvpT nii?;! v. .c;hp \«ja s -rt^i^^^-v
very patient. Once in awhile I'd hear her get rather
scolding, but it wasn't too serious and it seemed to me
that they really were very devoted. The relationships in
the household seemed to me excellent.

Speaking of that--of the family, the children--Lucia
was a very lively, imaginative, intelligent girl. Her
brother \'Jas not at all like his father or like his sister,
and least of all, his mother. He v;as maybe a little bit
stiff, a little punctilious and inclined to be rather ar-
gumentative. And the family vjould burst forth in Italian,
which v/as a very impressive language to carry on an alter-
cation in. You can make more noise and sound more ferocious-

468

it seeras to me--in Italian than you can In most any other
language. VJhen Italians get to really laying down the
lav/ to each other, they can make a tremendous racket.
Giorgio had quite an ability along those lines. Most of
the time, he v/as very quiet and very sedate. I don't think
the altercations really amounted to anything at all serious;
they v;ere just a little noise in the family.

At that tlm.e, I still V7as interested in doing portraits,
Temperamentally, I never have been a portrait painter, but
I like to paint people. I like to paint from nature, and
I like to do portraits if I'm not bound too much by the
whims and fancies of the sitter and the sitter's family--
that gets to be quite unbearable. I asked Joyce to sit
for me, and he seemed to be pleased to do so. Nothing
very much came of that, partly because he v;as working
tremendously hard, very hard, and also because his eye
trouble was always more or less present. Sometimes he'd
be laid up for some time with it. I no sooner got started
in my painting when an illness would put a stop to it. Then
I realized it was kind of an imposition. If I'd felt
more sure of myself as a painter, that I vjould do something
that was of great value, I might have pressed the matter a
little bit, but I imagine I v;as somev/hat intimidated by
my own work at that time. I v;asn't too satisfied v/ith it.

I did do some drav/ings of him. A crayon dravjing is
now ovmed by Paul Kieffer in Nev/ York and is mentioned by

469

Sylvia Beach in her book, Shakespeare and Company . She
said, "l wonder v/hat became of that drav;ing that Myron
Nutting did of Joyce? I've always liked it." That
pleased me because I thought she would be pretty sensi-
tive to what sort of things were done of him.

I also did one of Nora. Of course, Nora had plenty
of time to sit, and she was a very placid sort of a person.
She was a marvelous sitter. That portrait of her I always
rather liked, and it's reproduced in Ellmann's book. I
also did some of Lucia. She used to like to come around
and sit for me. One of the pictures I did of her is now
with the one of her mother. Incidentally, the beginning
of one of Joyce is also in the library at Northwestern.
It's there along vjith some odds and ends of Joyce's vjriting
and some drawing I sold to Northwestern University, some
time back. Most of the things I don't think I kept. The
one of Lucia is, I think, all right. It's quite nice, and
I wasn't at all ashamed of it the last time I saw it. The
one of Nora I thought was very good as a portrait, and I
think everybody else did. They always seemed to like it
very much. It had some sort of qualities of painting. It
v^asn't just a "spot knocker," as we used to call them v;hen
I was a student. We used to divide portraits into spot
knockers and real paintings.

It seems to me that Ellmann's book is really a master-
piece, a wonderful piece of patient research. And he has

470

used the material amazingly well. 1, not being a man
who's been up against that sort of a problem, wouldn't
be one to really be critical. I think that a lot of my
personal impressions of Joyce would not be of any histori-
cal importance. Hov^ should I put it? Even though the
person had the experience with the man, he might not have
any deep understanding and could not present something
that's memorable and interesting. I could cite quite a
number of examples.

One is of the painter Redon, v.'ho knew the painter
Delacroix. He went to an evening where Delacroix, the
painter, vjas present. He was a great worshipper of Delacroix,
Delacroix left the party alone and walked through the Paris
Ktreets . Redon and his young friend, who v.'ere both c^uits
young, followed him at a distance and vjatched him as he
was walking in a meditative sort of way through the streets.
Then he suddenly stopped, turned and went in another direc-
tion. They knevj v.'hat had happened. He'd recently moved
to another studio--the one he occupied when he died. But
when he left the party, he automatically started walking
home alone to his old quarters. Then he came to, and changed
direction.

That's a very slight thing, but I notice when I read
about interesting people, a little thing like that will stay
in my mind. That's one reason why I am encouraged to give
things that might by chance be interesting, although they

471

are really very, very slight.

I mean, I'll never forget that night v/hen Joyce went
leaping into the darkness dovm this medieval-looking
street. It may have nothing to do with history, but,
at the same time, it had overtones to me because I knew
the man. Like that picture of Delacroix walking home, it
increases my feeling of the reality of a very great figure.
That's very little to go on, but I'm glad that Redon re-
corded it.

Joyce was always interested in people. Sometimes he'd
listen very attentively to some story about something he'd
never heard of. You would tell it rather casually, and
then, all of a sudden, he'd start asking questions. For

pvnmnlp . T mpnt.innpii f.ha •(■. mv fir-pit. violin t.pflphpr wani'.pd

me to read Homer. Not only did Joyce sit up and take notes
of this little anecdote, but he v/anted to know what my
teacher's name V7as and every detail about my first violin
lesson and a vjhole description about the violin teacher.
Again, it v;as this thing of the Greek--Homer--coming into
the picture, and for some reason, he snatched onto that
little fragment and took it all apart and examined it from
all sides,

SCHIPPERS: You've mentioned that you cannot remember the
specifics of discussions that you had with Joyce, but in
general what were the tenor of the discussions?
NUTTING: Among other things, they always centered around

472

what he was working on, what he was thinking about at the
time in his v/ritings, like when he talked about the problem
of presenting the significance of Molly Bloom in this last
chapter and hovj he had at one time decided to do it in
the form of letters. He v^ould talk about what she meant,
and how she was the Penelope, the weaver of the tides, the
moon and space, turning the night aroujid the earth in in-
terminable revolutions. He would think out loud and describe
the significance of the things. That's why I'm so extremely,
extremely regretful that I didn't make notes at the time on
what he was actually saying v;hile he v;as working, because,
very often, it would be that sort of a problem.

Then there vjas the wandering rocks episode, but those
were the onl^'" two incidents that I actually remember. He
had an idea of what he wanted the vrandering rocks to be, but
it finally came to him when he was playing a game with his
daughter, some little game that he bought to take home to
amuse her. Just what the relation was I never could quite
figure out. But, in some way, it clarified things for him,
and he found out what to do in the formation of a style for
that episode of Ulysses .

He was never gossipy and he was never argumentative.
He would very quietly express opinions or advance an argu-
ment, but he never got warmed up to defend a position. It
was always a rather cool dialectic, as I remember. He'd
say something, and then if you would disagree with him he'd

473

say "but that," you kjiov/. He v/as rather unemotional^ even
under the influence of alcohol. He never got excited
about anything--at least v/hen I knew him. He v;as alvmys
very controlled in his thinking and his feelings. Oh,
he'd feel very strongly about things, yes. I think that one
of the most marked characteristics, so far as his feelings
were concerned, was his hatred of violence.

I know that he liked Wallace very much. I don't knovj
if he cared very much for Wallace's vn'.fe, Lillian, but
she appears very decidedly in Ulysses , and quite often.
The use of the vjord "yes" in the last episode has to do
with her. The episode begins with yes and ends with yes.
Joyce said that yes is a feminine word. Joyce vms out at
the Wallaces' little country place one weekend sitting in
the garden and heard Lillian talking, and all through the
conversation, Lillian would start with yes, and then she'd
end v/ith yes. He was dozing in the garden and heard Lillian's
continual use of the word yes. From there it got into
Ulysses .

At the time, I v;as rather puzzled that he didn't seem
to be interested in politics or v;orld events. Of course,
he was very much aware of them and very well informed. But,
working on a book which was set on a certain day m^any years
before ( Juno l6, 1904, I think, is Bloom's day), it seemed that
he was out of the world of present events. But, I feel
that he wasn't really at all out of the world of present

events. He v/as keenly aware of them, but he also had a
sense of things that were eternal. V7hat at the time seems
so tremendously important, v.-hen seen later in perspective,
perhaps hasn't as much meaning. This is rather a crude
way of expressing something that I ought to give more
thought to, because I think there's a kernel of truth in
it.

I knov; that Joyce several times said that he was very
much influenced by the philosopher [Giovanni Battista] Vico.
I never read Vico, and so it was never quite clear. There's
something about a recurrence of an event that's almost like
the Oriental idea of the spiral, a returning of things at
a different level. I took it to mean that the Trojan War
and the sixteenth of June in Dublin are the same, only
in a different place in the spiral. Maybe he vzas seeing
world history truthfully. And though the scene v;as not
laid in the Paris or Trieste or Zurich of those days,
years before, the reality wa s in Zurich and Trieste and
Rome and Paris and, above all, curiously enough, in Dublin,
from v;hich he was an exile, and also in Gibraltar, a place
that he never visited.

I think I told you about this man who could not be
convinced that Joyce had never seen Gibraltar, had never
been there. Joyce sat down and talked to this man about
Gibraltar and talked and talked about this characteristic
of the town or the life. Finally this man said, "When

475

were you In Gibraltar last?" And Joyce said, "l was never
there." And he v/ouldn ' t believe him. But the reason that
he knew so much about Gibraltar was that was where Molly
Bloom came from. He familiarized himself with everything
from the apes, to all the streets and shops, and apparently
every detail that would make Molly more real.

Speaking of Joyce's hatred of violence, he v.'as quite
fond of VJallace and was very much grieved v;hen Wallace
died. He died in the mid-tv7enties. But he vjas frankly
critical of him because VJallace was very fond of prize-
fights. He followed the French boxers all his life and
found a certain drama, a certain poetry and a certain sig-
nificance in fighting that he thought v;as very wonderful.
And Joyce couldn't see that, for a mnment., A lot of Joyce's
conversation and some of his witticisms were on violence.
His words to "Mr. Dooley, Mr. Dooley-ooley-ooh, " is a case
in point. War, violence, and cruelty were a special ana-
thema to him.

SCHIPPERS: Did he often give opinions of people?
NUTTING: Not too readily. Not too readily. V/hen he did,
though, he was very frank and very exact in what he'd say
and what he felt about the person. It was the same way
with anything else--books and writers--he always epitomized
his feeling very, very well. You knev; exactly how he felt
about talents. I think v;hat he said about Bob McAlmon was
rather good. Bob was writing then and was trying very hard

476

to become a good writer. I asked Joyce what he thought of
his work and he said, "VJell, I think he has a disorderly
sort of talent," Apparently he said that to somebody else,
too, because Ellmann quotes somebody else as saying it.
But it's what he said to me, v;hen I asked about Bob's
ability. At the time, I didn't know v;hether Bob was just
a playboy or really a serious writer. Of course, he
married a wealthy v/omen, which was very nice for Joyce be-
cause she v/as very generous in helping out the Joyce
family when they had difficulties.

One thing was somewhat peculiar to Joyce. I think
that most people who have accomplished anything or are
trying to, when they're asked to say a few words, will
at least get up and attempt to speak a little hit and
make themselves agreeable. But Joyce never would. For
one thing, he would never explain his v/ork. They'd say,
"Why don't you explain what you mean by this? Here you
have a book you call Ulysses . You say you get it from
Homer, but the only clue is the title of the book. I can't
see how you find that all this gloom and all these people
in Dublin have anything to do vjith Homer. VJhy don't you
explain?" No, he wouldn't do it.

We had in Paris a little group which was very much
like the Severance Club here. We had a name for it, but
I haven't been able to remember it and I can't find a
record of it. It was formed by Madame Ciolkov;ska (that's

477

v/ith the Polish ending to her name). Her husband was an
artist, somewhat of an Aubrey Beardsley type in his drav/ing.
But not being able to support himself with his art, he v;as
doing journalistic v;ork. He spoke excellent English, and
he v/as v.'riting in French on English subjects. His wife,
Muriel Ciolkov/ska, was also a writer, a correspondent.
Among other things, she was correspondent for the American
Art News. She was a very i.nteresting and very energetic
woman, and she formed a group, a little dinner club, and
was very successful in making the meetings interesting.
They had some excellent writers as guests. Andre
Maurois was our guest one evening and talked very well,
and J.H. Rosny, a novelist, was also an important and
interesting guest and gave a very interesting talk. Then
v;e had a dinner devoted to Joyce and that, of course, v.-as
quite well attended in the sense that it v;as an invitational
affair. Each paid--as v;e do at the Severance Club--for
his own dinner, plus his share for the speakers. Joyce
was the guest and other people were quite willing to talk,
but v;hen they asked Joyce to speak, he wouldn't say a word.
I never heard him speak before an audience. I wonder if
he ever did; I can't imagine him doing it. He was peculiar
that way--at least, to me he was.

TAI^ KUHBER: X, SIDE OKE
Jaxiuary 10, 1966

NUTTING: Apropros of that painting of Nora Joyce
that's reproduced in Ellmann's book, Mrs. Nutting asked
me if she was a "big woman, because the picture gives the
idea of a very large person, at least she felt that. And
I said, "No, she wasn't especially large." Then I told
her about a woman who was sort of a guide in Paris. She
made her living by getting together groups of people,
usually fairly small groups, not a very large crowd —
I think they probably paid her rather well — and she v;ould
take them to the Louvre and then to various places of
artistic inrerest. She also had the idea of taking them
to artists' studios, so they could see something of the
artist's life in Paris, get them right into the atmosphere.
She called me up one day and wanted to know if she could
bring her group over to my studio. Well, I didn't care
much for the idea, [laughter] but I knew her rather well,
and I felt I couldn't refuse her. So I straightened up
the place, and the next day when she came with ten or
twelve people, not a very large group, she commenced her
little spiel of what the artist's life in Paris was
like, and how Paris was a great center of art. Then she
commenced to try to explain my pictures, which was
[laughter] rather strange. I don't knov/ if some of the

^79

comments she made illuminated my v/ork to me any more than
to the group, but among other things, she commented on
that picture of Nora Joyce which v;as there. She looked
at that and said, "Look at that picture. I want you to
observe that very closely. Do you remember yesterday
when we were in the Louvre looking at Andrea del Sarto, I
said that one of the most outstanding qualities of his
painting was the quality of bigness? Now that picture
has it! That picture has that quality of bigness!"
[laughter] So it's been quite a goke in our family ever
afterwards that that picture of Nora Joyce has a quality
of bigness.

Sometimes the guides were really very well informed
and well worth listening to, but other times they were
gust simply people who'd take crowds around to amuse them.
One of my most vivid memories of going to the Louvre has
to do with crowds. One of my Sunday jaunts was to go
down to the river and browse along the caves and the
bookstalls and then cross over and drop in and see one
gallery or another in the Louvre, something that I
especially enjoyed. Everything would be still, and you'd
be enjoying things, and then there 'd be a sound in the
distance like a storm approaching, a kind of rumble.
The sound of the crowd would grow louder and louder, and
the first thing you'd know, the galleries would be full
of people. The guides would be shouting out explanations

480

right and left, and these people would helplessly gaze
at these things and try to iinderstand them to absorb
culture. They would stand around and get in your v:ay
for a while, and then they'd move off and the noise would
die down in the distance and you'd be left alone again.

When I had a vacation, except for one or two summer
vacations — such as the one spent on Corsica and the one
in Brittany — I looked forward to seeing important things
in galleries. Last time I think I spoke of seeing Edmund
Jaloux at the opera. I stood up and went through the
motion of looking around at people, and I hadn't the
slightest idea I'd see a soul I knew. So I was surprised
to see that Edmund Jaloux was a few rows behind me. I
had just met him, and he was a very pleasant person. I
went over and talked to him, and I told him I was going
to Spain, and he urged me to be sure to see the Pateniers
in the gallery at Madrid. That surprised me because
writers don't go as far afield, usually, especially
American and English writers, in art interest as to
know Pateniers from Al Capone. But I think largely that
the French, as young people, grow up with more feeling
for the arts than they do in some other countries. I've
noticed that they seem to absorb it naturally, and they
get a familiarity with it — both ancient and a familiarity
with modern art, too.

We went down to Spain shortly after that, and, of

481

course, seeing the Prado was a great adventure to me and
also getting a little bit acquainted with Spain, [tape
off] We spent about ten days in Madrid. My real interest
in going down there was to see Velasquez and Goya and
Greco, especially, and the people you don't see in any
great quantity outside of Spain. And it was a tremendous
adventure. As I was saying, I also very much en,joyed the
spirit of the country, getting acquainted with it. I
think the thing that I remember most was the typical thing
about the Spanish feeling. I always had a feeling that
a Spaniard was a person with great pride and a sense of
dignity, as that old joke about the tourist in Spain
indicates. He was accosted by a beggar, and he turned
to him and said. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, a good
strong man like you out begging when you can easily earn
your own living?" And the beggar drew himself up and
said, "Sir, I asked for alms, not advice." [laughter]
I was reminded of that spirit one day while having lunch
at a restaurant in Madrid. We had a table next to the
window and were looking out, watching the passersby, and
an old couple came up the street across on the other side.
The man was blind and was being led by a woman, presumably
his wife. They looked like a married couple, and they
could very well be. He was veiy simply, very plainly
dressed, but very neatly dressed. The building opposite
had buttresses that made kind of a niche in the wall, and

^82

she put her hands on his shoulder and backed him into one
of these places where he'd be out of the way of the traffic
but still close to the passersby. She got him placed
there, and then I saw he had on gray gloves. He pulled
off one of these gloves and put it in his pocket. Then
he took out of his pocket what looked like a little tin
plate, or a silver-effect dish, and he stood there holding
out his little plate for alms. I was wondering if in any
other country in the world you'd see anything of that sort.

In southern Italy the beggar, of course, plays the
game of being a beggar. He looks like a beggar and he
looks helpless. He can pretend illness or anything to
excite sympathy, whereas this man didn't do a thing. He

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so he asked for alms. That to me was a pathetic and a
rather startling thing. We all feel that spirit — whatever
it is — to a very large extent in Spanish painting. It's
not so much in Goya, but in Greco and in Velazquez there
is a certain authority, a certain dignity, a certain pride.
And it goes all the way down to the poor and all classes
of society.

Seeing the Prado is really an adventure, because
even though in other places you'd see very good things by
the Spanish painters — a good Velasquez here or a fine Goya
someplace else — there you had whole rooms full. And it
was breathtaking, Goya especially. I never realized the

485

amazing versatility of the man and that so much of the
very finest painting of the nineteenth century was antici-
pated in Goya's work. It might be Manet, for example,
which you would see well represented in a Goya, very
much Manet's spirit and his sense of painting. I even
found Whistler among Goya's things, that same search for
subtle tonal relationships which you find in Whistler's
work. Ordinarily, the person who is not too familiar with
Goya is inclined to think of him as a rather fantastic
painter with a certain amount of violence in his work or
his etchings, like the Desastres de la Guerra . His
war pictures and his very grotesque things do have a
certain interest from the point of view of iconography
and literary interest. But to realize the sheer genius
of the man as a painter, you really have to go to Spain
to see his work. That was, as I say, an adventure and
a great revelation.

Along with the paintings, dov/nstairs in a gallery
at that time was a large collection of his drawings. He
was an inveterate draftsman; he did hundreds of small
drawings. And, of course, he did his famous lithographs
very late in life. But besides doing those, apparently
he must have painted all day and drawn all night, according
to the amount of work that he produced. Lots of the
discoveries that I made about the painters down there
would be interesting to talk about to a person who
is interested in that sort of problem. I don't

^84

know that it's especially germane to our problem. One
thing I've always been interested in, speaking of Goya's
drawings, is the use of drawing by painters. Some
painters were very prolific draftsmen and did a great
deal, and others did none at all — Velasquez, for example.
I only know of three or four authentic drawings of Velasquez,
and they are very slight things, just sort of notations,
ideas. They're not part of his verve, of his output.
But a man like Rubens, for example, you can follow through
from the very first sketch to the final work. There are
first drawings and sketches, studies from models, from
life, studies out-of-doors of a landscape, and then a
small oil painting in which the general scheme of his

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it was thrown up on the canvas by assistants, and when
they got the basic structure of the picture on the large
canvas, then he would come to finish it up. In the case
of Velazquez, and to a certain extent in the case of
Titian, you don't find veiy much drawing. In Veronese
you find a great deal, and in Tintoretto, a great deal.
But there is a very strange thing about Goya — and I
think, maybe, the person even with a casual interest in
art might find it somewhat interesting, and to me it was
quite fascinating — is that although Goya, as you can see
in his etchings, had a very fine knowledge of figure,
sometimes his figures are rather badly drawn. The Ma,i a

^85

Desnuda, for example, certainly wouldn't win a prize in
an art school for figure drawing — in an academic art
school, at least — because the figure doesn't fit together.
The head doesn't really fit on the body and things of that
sort. But as a painting, it's quite fine. It's a superb
thing. But it shows that the immense amount of drawing
does not seem to have been preparatory to these things.

Usually, you find quite interesting work where the
painters, especially in the case of Rubens, would go to
nature. He would drav/ from a real hand, and you v;ill find
a whole sheet of studies of hands to be used in a final
painting. The same with a figure or a drapery. He'd do
it again and again, experimenting, and finally it would
go on the final canvas, .out in vjoya, j- only found one
drawing that had the evidence of being done from life,
from nature. All the others were gust sheer improvisations.
How he acquired this ability to draw the figures as well
as he very often did, especially in his etchings, in those
Disasters of War , for example, or the fantastic series,
is hard to explain. But there was no evidence in anything
I've ever seen of his, except in a very few cases, of it
being done directly from life.

The one that I did find in the library in Madrid
was a red- chalk drawing for that portrait of the Duke of
Wellington that was recently stolen and then returned to
the National Gallery in London. Apparently that was not

^86

painted directly from life, but he first made this drav/ing
from life in red chalk, and then from that he painted the
portrait.

This is also somewhat true of Greco. I tried to
find some original drav;ings of Greco. We know from early
documents that he modeled a great deal. After his death,
there was discovered a large piece of furniture, some
sort of a wardrobe with shelves, that was full of plaster
studies that he'd done. But in Madrid, I only foiind one
authentic drawing (that was also at the library in Madrid),
and there are very few others. But, it may be that he
didn't keep his drawings. Michelangelo, after all, left
instructions that all his drawings be burned. For a long
time in Spain, I don't think that there was any special
attention paid to drawings and studies that weren't made
into pictures for exhibition. Collecting that sort of
thing began fairly early in Italy and in France, but in
Spain, they probably weren't valued and were lost. So,
although I think the point is rather interesting from
the point of view of a painter, it's not very conclusive
as to just hov/.

The mystery of how painters work is sometimes rather
insoluble. I found that especially true of Velasquez; I
simply couldn't figure out how he could do it. I didn't
know what the procedure would be to accomplish that sort
of a thing. It just looked as though he all of a sudden

487

had an idea, and then it appeared on the canvas, [laughter]
There is no evidence of any process of the struggle that
goes into the making of it. [tape off]

Of course, one of the first things that I did was to
look up Patenier. He was Belgian, from the Low Country,
and you'd expect to find any number of his things, but I
had only seen one here, one there, and one someplace else.
He was one of the first real landscape painters. His
paintings have a little biblical incidence going on in
them someplace to give them a reason for being, but what
he was really interested in v/as landscape. He was a
genius at landscape. He really made a great contribution
in the development of landscape as a form of art. I

seven magnificent Pateniers all in a row. So I was
grateful to Jaloux because I would not have thought of
Patenier if he hadn't told me about them, and I might even
have missed those. So, I was grateful to him for putting
me wise to their presence there.

Ve spent about ten days in Madrid, every morning at
the Prado and in the afternoon going about to see what
else we could find of interest and to enjoy the city.
From there, we went dovm. to Toledo to see the El Grecos.

When I was a student in Boston, there was quite a
fine Greco portrait in the museum, that I liked very
much. The other students couldn't see very much in it.
That was before the days when Greco had become as famous

483

a painter to the student and art historian as he has since
become. At that time, his paintings were available at
prices that were not too great; they weren't very expensive
pictures, even in my youth. Zuloaga owned some very fine
Grecos and was a tremendous admirer of Greco. Velasquez,
incidentally, was an admirer of Greco and appreciated his
talents as a painter. But that picture in Boston was the
first one to make me quite enthusiastic about him, and he
has always been one of my heroes ever since. So going to
Toledo to see a great deal of his work was another very
enriching experience of that summer's travel.

Toledo is, as we all know, an old town. It has a
Moorish atmosphere with little tiny streets and it's a
place where you can get lost very easily. Usually in
traveling I do not depend on guides; they disturb me too
much. Even if they know their subject very well, the
talk and conversation distracts me from absorbing and
enjoying things. I always try to find out as much as I
can before 1 see the thing and then simply go to complete
an experience already begun. In Toledo, though, I found
that I could not find the churches and the convents and
the places where things were to be seen. Even with a
map, it was a perfect maze of little streets and a hopeless
proposition. So I had to wind up by employing a guide.
But, in one way, I compromised because I was careful to
find a guide who did not speak English, [laughter] I
could struggle with a little bit of Spanish if I wanted

489

some information, but the rest of the time he could leave
me to quietly look and enjoy things.

One of the great Grecos in Toledo was the Despo.i'ar ,
Christ Despoiled of His Garments , which is an early thing
and has a lot of the spirit of Venetian painting still in
it which gradually left his work. There is a certain
richness of color and a certain Venetian opulence in feeling.
His later work got more and more austere. But in his very
fine period there is a huge thing in a chapel called the
Burial of the Count Orgaz , and it simply knocked me for
a loop. At the times I saw it, a big iron grill closed
the chapel, but that was all right because the painting
was very large — and you couldn't get very close to it
ai'iyway — ^ou could still look through the bars of the
grillwork. To me it was one of the tremendous adventures
in painting of all my sightseeing over there. The first
one, I mentioned it once before, was the Giottos in Padua
and afterwards those in Assisi. They were very much of a
revelation and a tremendous thrill. Another one that was
a surprise and gave me quite a lot of excitement was the
Isenheim altar at Colmar of Gnlnewald. Another topnotch
experience was the great Grecos in Toledo. The Burial of
the Count Orgaz , with its very marvelous row of portrait
figures in the lower part of it and its wonderful movement
of figures up above, has a sense of realism and a sense of
mysticism, but above all it has that strange, indefinable
thing — a sense of painting.

490

It's interesting that Spain has not produced any
schools of painting. You haven't families of painters,
like you had in Italy. You haven't any special school
in which other painters are confused with the master. You
do have these great individuals v/ho stand out, and for
quite a long period, they had a very fine sense of painting,
partly because of their contact with the Low Countries,
•Flanders, which in a way is almost the home of this sense
of painting that I'm speaking of. Also they could acquire
things from Italy at a period when some of the finest
things had been done. As a matter of fact, Philip tried
to get some of the great French painters and Italian
painters to come to Spain, but the only one that did that
I can think of offhand was [ Giambattista] Tiepolo, and that
was in the eighteenth century. He died in Madrid. He
did the ceiling of the Royal Palace at Madrid. But Greco
being born a Greek, hence his name El Greco, his real name
being Domenico Teotocopulo, was educated in painting fairly
late in life, considering a painter's training in those
days. He studied in Venice and from there, he went to
Spain and spent the rest of his life there and became one
of the great Spanish painters. He's somewhat of an
anomaly, but he did it very convincingly. There's something
about Spain that seemed to have been exactly the country
for him to give expression to what he had in his art.
So that was our Spanish vacation.

491

Oh, yes, the other important thing that we saw there
was the Escorial. I would like to have gone down to
southern Spain and the region which is more associated
with people like Murillo, but we spent as much as we could
afford by that time, so we came back after seeing the
Escorial. The Escorial, of course, is extremely impressive.
You can see it from the train window. It seems isolated,
away off there in the hills; there are no cities or little
towns around it — this special building, this great mass
of somber structure. But it contains not only things of
tremendous historic interest from the point of view of
Spanish life and history, but also a number of excellent
Spanish works and of other artists, [tape off]

In dealing with material of this sort, the great
difficulty — at least I find it so — is to decide on what
is important to say. If I were trying to write this out,
my method would be simply to spill out everything, to make
notes knowing that I would want to use very little of it.
But I would get a flow of material and not evaluate it
until afterwards. Then, out of that, maybe I could make
something to write about. I feel the same difficulty
here because there are masses of things that I enjoy
talking about, but immediately my critical mind comes to
the front and I say, "Well, this is not of historical
value and this is not interesting to people, unless it
happens to be a special occasion or special person. " If

492

you can do it, of course, even a very slight anecdote can
be extremely interesting if told by a man who has great
ability in telling a story. But my mind keeps running
across things, as I say, that are to me quite enjoyable
memories, and on the chance that maybe they are a facade
for something that is more interesting later, I feel
tempted to talk about them. In this case, I have in mind
the people in Paris, and I find it's amazing how many
people I knew, [laughter] I have some quite vivid memories
of them, and "good many of them are quite important.

A couple of our very warmest friends were Jan and
Cora Gordon. We found them not only extremely enjoyable
friends but also extremely interesting. They were both
English. Jan's uncle, I think, was a bishop and Jan had
what I suppose you'd call a good upper-middle class up-
bringing. I don't know whether he went to what the English
call public school or not, but he was a very well-read man,
very highly cultivated. But as a young man, he had an
ambition to become a painter, and he went to Paris to
study. He entered a school — I've forgotten what school
he said it was — but after a week or so there, he decided
that that school was not for him. But he had paid his
tuition in advance, and it v;as against his idea of thrift
to spend money entering another school, so he spent that
term working by himself out-of-doors. He'd go over to
the Luxembourg Gardens and aroiond to other places in Paris

^93

and paint out-of-doors. In his various serious studies,
there were certain qualities of painting. I remember he
said he was especially under the influence of the
Impressionists and of painters like Velasquez, and he
wanted to cultivate as fine a sense of tonal values in
his painting as he could. He did a great many studies
out-of-doors with that very definite objective. Then he
met another art student in Paris, a girl, and he painted
her portrait. That portrait got into the Salon, very much
to his surprise and satisfaction, and it gave him a certain
amount of success. He married his model, Cora.

Well, they also wrote. They were both musical; I
think she had studied the violin quite seriously as a
young person, and he understood music quite well. They
had an adventurous spirit which seems to me especially
frequent with English people. They wanted to go out and
see the world and didn't mind roughing it and taking
all of the difficulties in stride. They didn't write
ahead for reservations and that sort of thing. They
couldn't because they didn't have the money. But it wound
up that they lived — it seemed to me — a very interesting
life. They both did quite a lot of drawing and painting,
and he was a good etcher. They both made use of their
drawings and paintings as illustrations for their travel
books. Also, in their travels, they would collect folksongs
and other music. They would hear a t\ine, he would write

494

it down, and when they got back, they arranged these things
for two instruments — a guitar and a Spanish lute. It
doesn't sound like too good a combination, because both
instruments are lutes, as a matter of fact, but he did a
very nice job of it. It made a veiy fine, colorful back-
ground. Though they weren't accomplished singers, they
could sing well enough to make it quite an interesting
evening. They'd get out their collection of folksongs
and folk music from the country that they'd been traveling
in, and it was really quite worthwhile. They would pick
out a country that they wanted to do; one year it might be
Portugal, another year it might be Finland. They'd select
veiy contrasting parts of the world and culture.

Tile wintertiiiie would be spent in getting the rudiments
of the language of that country. They'd study quite hard.
Also, that was the time when they did their writing and
would put their previous summer's notes and material into
shape for publication. They painted a sign which they
hung on their door: "We Like to Work Till Four O'Clock."
[laughter] And so they put in a good day's hard work.
After that, they were very sociable people — they liked to
have their friends in — so after four, you could drop
around and be sure of a welcome.

One of the most amusing afternoons that I ever
spent — it certainly was unique in the sensations that it
evoked — was at the Gordons. I dropped in to see them.

^95

riy wife wasn't along that time. She'd gone someplace
else, so I went around to see the Gordons. It was after
four, and in the English custom, they had the tea table
set up. A few friends of theirs were there, and Cora
introduced me to a writer (I think he was a Bulgarian).
She thought he was quite an important talent. Some work
of his was going to be produced in Paris. So I sat down
next to him, and he was very talkative, and in his speech,
he got along quite well. Apparently, he knew English very
well, but his accent was rather difficult. But with close
attention, we got along very nicely indeed. He was a very
interesting man, and we discussed all sorts of things.
Then, all of a sudden, he was saying something about one
Ox i_ii5 pxays, slUu. ne peacneu. inuo nis xnsj-u.e coau pociceu
and pulled out a manuscript. He said, "I have something
here that will illustrate what I mean. I will read to
you this scene from this play of mine." So I was pleased
to hear a sample of his dramatic writing. He started to
read, and — well, it's no exaggeration — if that man had
been speaking his native tongue, I wouldn't have understood
it any better, [laughter] I tried to find some simple
words like "of" or "the" or "and" that sounded English,
but none of it sounded a bit English to me. He was
declaiming this stuff to me, and he apparently thought he
was doing it in beautiful English. I guess the expression
on my face must have gotten rather curious, because I

496

looked across the room and Cora was trying to keep a
straight face, [laughter] When he got through he wanted
my opinion, and I didn't have the slightest idea, of course,
of what to say. In this sort of paralyzed condition, the
situation was saved for me in another strange way. All
of a sudden, there was a crash as though the house had
fallen in. The door to the courtyard v/as open and a cat,
who'd been snoozing off to my right, flew through the air
and out this door. Then there was more dust and clatter,
and I didn't have the slightest idea of what had happened.
Everybody, of course, was very much startled. This studio
was on the ground floor and opened directly onto the court
and next to it in this court was a wall. What had happened
was thai several square yards of plaster had fallen off
the side of this building and had come down through the
skylight. You can imagine what a racket that would make
and what the disturbance would be. Well, that left the
studio in a semihabitable condition because of the glass
and plaster and dust. Fortunately, it didn't do any
special damage. I guess the glass broke the fall of the
stuff to a certain extent and no other damage was done,
so we collected our wits. Then Cora went and made some
more tea and got out some more cups and things. Jan took
the little table and chairs outside into the courtyard to
finish our tea. Well, we no more than got settled and
collected ourselves, and started a little conversation

^97

again, when from behind me came the weirdest sound that
I'd ever heard up to that time. I hadn't much idea of
what a banshee sounds like, but this was about as close to
the wailing of a banshee as I think anybody could invent.
Well, that kind of froze my blood again, [laughter] I
didn't know whether somebody was being murdered or what
terrible distress they were in, but I noticed that nobody
else seemed to be the least bit concerned. And there was
no reason to be because I heard this strange sound quite
frequently afterwards.

There was a poor little old woman who they said had
been quite a successful singer in her day, and she was
going around and singing for coppers. She was a beggar.
But her voice, though it was strong and had a certain
resonance, instead of having a modest kind of vibration
which would be acceptable, had a strange kind of fluctu-
ation of sound that sometimes I have heard in sirens — a
wow- wow-wow-wow sound. It would rise up in this courtyard
where the acoustics made it resonant, and this sound
going up to the heavens was scary. It was the kind of an
afternoon that a writer simply could not invent, [laughter]
No amount of fantasy, it seemed to me, could describe the
atmosphere and the succession of feelings that took place
during that teatime. [tape off]

Among other people that we knew in Paris, although
in a way he was sort of outside of the general circle of

498

our acquaintances, was Raymond Duncan. Ity wife and I
found him really very interesting. He had a place down
near the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on the Rue Jacob, and
passersby could look in the window and see them weaving
and carrying on their occupations. Raymond had an idea of
living a very simple and rather austere sort of life. He
and his disciples, as we called them, dressed in this very
•simple costume modeled after the ancient Greek. They
wore sandals and this very simple costume with a cloak
for the rainy and foggy weather. Raymond always had a
sort of a band around his head with his hair rolled up
tightly in back. They got up very early in the morning
and worked very hard. They studied, did crafts, wove
things, and did woodcuts and paintings. Then part of the
day, they spent doing exercises. There was also a man,
Gurdjieff, who had somewhat the same idea of living a
rather austere life and doing a lot of hard work. He
incorporated the idea of a dance with exercising. Raymond
Duncan also had dance groups, but they did not gather at
his place. They met in a hall once a v/eek, and you could
go down there and meet with them. My wife was quite taken
with his exercises. They were done without music, and it
seemed to me, these things were somewhat inspired by —
even maybe copied from — Greek vase drawings, sculpture
and things of that sort that showed the dance. I don't
know how much authority he had for some of the movements.

499

They were simple and rather archaic, but when you would
practice them awhile, you realized they were excellent
because they gave you a certain control, a certain
precision of gesture. You could do rather interesting
things. If you should happen to fall, for example, there
was a certain sequence of movements that allowed you to
rise up without rolling over and shoving and pushing and
that sort of thing. You'd see the ones who were practicing
suddenly throw themselves on the floor and then almost
float up because of a certain coordination of movement. I
found it quite fascinating, and for awhile v/e used to go
down and practice these things.

Also he put over in the corner of the hall some easels

artist coming in could take advantage of this true Greek
life that was going on around him and make some studies.
So I used to go and make action drawings from these things.

I never met Isadora, but everybody else knew her. I
went to see her dance and I have someplace a collection of
some twenty-five or thirty pencil studies that I did in
the theater from her dancing. But, of course, she was
a very different sort of a person. She was much more of a
sybarite than her brother; I don't know whether they saw
much of each other or not. I used to hear a great deal
of her when I first knew Gordon Craig because she and
Gordon Craig were amis . But the things that Raymond
Duncan did were interesting. They were always extremely

500

active, all day long. They'd have Socratic conversations.
We didn't join in very much, but it was rather interesting
to listen to them discuss and argue things, sitting around
in their Greek costumes, [tape off]

There was one year that we saw a great deal of Saxe
Cummings and his wife, Dorothy. Saxe at that time was
writing. He was working on short stories, and he used to
read them out loud to get our opinion of them. His wife
was a very accomplished pianist, and she used to pose for
me. I did some drawings of her and also started a large
canvas of her sitting at her piano. I don't have it now.
I've forgotten what became of it, but I suppose I destroyed
it because it wasn't too successful. One or tv;o drawings,
though, I thought were quite good. I still have those.

Saxe ' s aunt v;as Emma Goldman. She was in Paris for
awhile, and I found her to be quite a grand old lady.
There was something very impressive about her. The v;ay
she talked, the way she told stories showed a certain
strength of character and a quiet sort of dignity that
was quite impressive. She was only there for a fairly
short visit, but while she was there, we met her quite a
number of times. We used to go out evenings with the
Cummings and with her other friends and enjoyed them quite
a lot.

I wish I could remember some of the stories she told.
She was a very good storyteller, not in the way of
anecdote but she could recount an experience of her childhood

501

or girlhood or some scene. It suggested to me that she
could have been a very fine novelist in somewhat a Russian
style, with a little touch of Dostoevski in it or something
slightly Chekhov. [tape off]

Fritz Vanderpyl was a man that Joyce enjoyed very
much. He was a very hardy sort, a talkative critic and
writer. I didn't know him very well, but I used to see
•him very often when I was with Joyce. His talk was very
good. Once in awhile even I would get into a bit of an
argument with him. He had some curious ideas about certain
things. He was a very good art critic; I think probably
that was what we had most to talk about. I would defend
some man's work he was averse to, or vice versa. But he
was a good marx to talk to because his discussions v/ere not
argumentative. They really were profitable kinds of talk,
which the French have maybe more talent for than most any
other nation.

TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
January 10, 1956

ITOTTING: Among our friends in Paris that we enjoyed most
were the Gordons because they were really good fun. They
had a sense of fun and also were highly cultivated people
with interests in all sorts of things. They were good
musicians. He was well educated and could discuss any
subject, and he saw the humor of life. They were very
interesting because they were very creative people. They
were not producing anything of any vast importance but
they enjoyed doing their work, which v;as writing. They
made their living with their books, and every year they
got out a travel book. Also he wrote on art very well,
and only recently, I saw one of his books on art quoted.
They may seem somewhat out of date now, because they were
written more or less for popular consumption, and there's
been so much of that sort of writing done that I imagine
he's forgotten. But I suppose that his books are still
available in the library, and maybe sometimes they're read
because they're quite enjoyable and he was very articulate.
As I said, they both loved adventure and they really
enjoyed their work. They'd spend their winters writing
and working on their drawings and illustrations for their
books. She especially did a great deal of sketching and
did some rather nice things of their travels. They also

505

were very good etchers, and he was a good painter, not
especially a distinguished one, but he had a thorough
understanding of his craft.

The last time that I saw him was when they were
planning their last big adventure, and they were really
excited about it. They were going to explore the United
States. And it was quite amusing, because they would do
a great deal of talking about it in anticipation of the
trip. You'd think they were a new Columbus discovering a
countiry that nobody had ever seen before, and they'd tell
us things about our own country as though we hadn't been
born there, [laughter] Incidentally I think that is
something that a real traveler will do. He anticipates
certain things; then he is interested in finding out how
the real thing doesn't jibe with his anticipations. I
remember that Besnard said that one of the first things
he always did before he went on a trip — he made some trips
to Africa and other countries — was to sit doi-vn and make a
lot of sketches of what he thought he was going to see
and what he was going to experience. Then he would get
a revelation when he found that his anticipation didn't
Jibe with what he anticipated. I have the same sort of
feeling. If I'm going to see some new region, I like to
find out about it. Well, this is going to be so-and-so,
and I expect so-and-so. That's especially true in great
works of art. When I make certain pilgrimages — as I have

504

done — to see a Greco or a Rubens or something, I try to
learn as much as I can about it from reproductions. When
you see the work eventually, it can become a terrific
revelation because you've done a lot of preparatory
exploration in the subject. That was especially true of
Giotto, for example. Well, if I had simply walked in to
see Giotto for the first time in the Arena Chapel at
Padua — it was the first things I'd seen of his — I would
have been very much interested, but I don't think I would
have gotten the enthusiastic reaction that I had when I
finally saw them. Because above and beyond what I knew
about him, all of a sudden I saw that there was a great
deal that I hadn't experienced in his work. So, although

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own country to me and v/hat we did and hov/ we ate and all
the funny ways we had, I was quite sympathetic because I
knew that they would bring a freshness and sensitivity to
their experiences and have a willingness to revise their
opinions eind ideas and impressions which would make it
much more meaningful than if they went in perfectly cold.

Well, it so happens that that was in 1927 — one of the
few dates I can remember. I also v;ent to New York, the
first time that I had come back to my homeland since going
to Europe. My wife didn't want to make the trip; she didn't
want to come back until she came back to stay. She hated
oceain travel because she was always very ill and, of course,

505

travel in those days was by boat (obviously so, because
in 1927 when I was in mid-ocean, Lindbergh landed in
Paris). Well, I met the Gordons in New York. Ve had
dinner together one evening and off they went. Apparently,
they had quite a wonderful time. They got a little old
Ford and went down South, and from there, they went on a
regular old-fashioned showboat. That seemed to give them
a lot of experiences they enjoyed. They were on the show-
boat for some time and then took off across country. I
don't know whether their writing on that was ever published
or not, because when they got out to Los Angeles, Jan
had a heart attack. The only way they could get back to
Europe was by going through the Canal. They didn't dare
cross into higher altitudes; they had to keep more or less
at sea level for his safety. They made the trip through
the Canal. He died not long after. I never saw the book
published or heard about it. I didn't correspond with him
after that trip.

I know that Cora lived in London and that she v;as a
writer for the Studio magazine. In the old days it used
to be the International Studio . It was quite a luxurious
magazine and she did art news and writing for the Studio
for quite a number of years. I saw her name. She wrote
quite well, not in a critical way. It was more of an art
news sort of thing. So that v;as the end of our experiences
with the Gordons.

506

There's one thing I was especially impressed with
when I was living abroad: it seemed at that time that I
knew a greater variety of people than I ever have since
coming home. It has been my experience that you get
into a certain circle of friends and acquaintances and
your contacts aren't as varied. Maybe it's because I
grew older and that as a young man, I was out sort of
banging around and hunting up experiences more and was
more excited by variety. But jne thing that I realized —
especially after I talked oncc with Ludwig Lewisohn
about the people who were most interesting and meant most
to his life — was that they ar by no means always the
people who are the most well-known talents, [tape off]
It seemed to me that people . ho had special gifts ox-
talents seemed to give everything they had to their work,
and really the art of living suffers to a certain extent
from it. I think that you could realize that — or at least
it seems to me that you can — in most biographies. The
art of living is itself a great art, and if everything
of your life is put into your work, your life sometimes
can easily go haywire.

The life of Edgar Allan Poe is an example, and it
may have been to a certain extent true of the poet Rimbaud.
They are people who have left very precious work for us in
their art, but people whom v:e wouldn't especially enjoy
as companions. Whereas, the all-around people are enjoyable.

507

And I think it's one reason I remember the Gordons so warmly.
They weren't great. They weren't geniuses, but they did
a good job. They gave it enthusiasm, with a ,ioie de vivre
and a sense of adventure, that makes the Gordons very
happy memories of our life in Paris. And I had quite a
number of other friends in the same category.

There was a man, Lambert, for example. I think he
was a French Swiss, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think he
was born in France. And as a young man, he did drawings
for Simplicissimus . Simplicissimus has a lot of very
remarkable draftsmen and illustrators for what we would
call a cartoon sort of drawing, marvelous caricatures,
like [Olaf] Gulbransson and some of those men who drew
for Simplicissimus . Jules Fascin as a boy was very
precocious. Simplicissimus published the first work of
Pascin before he went to Paris and became a painter. His
early drawings are really quite amusing, not at all like
the drawings that we know of him later.

Lambert was not a genius, but he was a very interesting
man in his enthusiasm on any subject. As an artist he
was verj accomplished. One has to have some understanding
of the difficulties of working on copper to appreciate
what really wonderful work he did, how he managed it
technically and with what precision. His drawings were of
a decorative sort, rather illustrative. When he came to
Paris, from the work that I saw, I imagine that he made a

508

pretty good living at it. In those days, there were quite
a few artists that worked for publishers. I don't know
whether it's done now or not — I don't think it is — but
at that time, they would buy a copperplate from an etcher
and steel-face it and publish it in quite large editions
that they could sell cheaply. Once in awhile in this
country, I run across some of those old things in second-
hand stores and places. They had the advantage of having
a certain quality of richness, a print quality, that
especially in those days could not be had in photographic
reproduction. They were real etchings, real copperplate
prints. And being printed by some means — I don't know how
they could do it economically, but apparently they did
this from the steel-faced plate — they could publish them
and sometimes a print would get popular and have quite
a large sale. The publisher would buy the plate outright
or else the man would get a royalty.

Well, Lambert did very handsome plates of Spanish
subjects. He was very much interested in Spain. His other
hobby was Latin. He was a very good Latinist, and there
was a concern in Paris that published a book of his of the
poems of Ovid. It must have been a very limited edition
because it was a very deluxe sort of a work. He made the
book in quite an amazing way. Every line in the book was
printed from a copperplate. There was no type used at all.
Every letter was drawn with the precision of a type-printed

509

letter. It didn't have the carelessness or imperfections
of a hand-drawn letter. It must have taken a long time
when you think of drawing a beautiful letter precisely on
copper. Then it had to be bitten and maybe worked after-
wards with an engraver so that the plate was as perfect
in design as it could be with type but at the same time
still have the richness of a copperplate print. So with
•the illustrations to Ovid, with all of the verses done in
Latin and his translations of the Latin, it must have been
a terrific job. But it was quite a marvelous performance.

Well, here again was a person who was a very real
artist. He wasn't a great artist; he wasn't part of a
modern movement; he didn't represent anything but he did
a vei'y beautiful j"ob. It was coDiniercial work, yes, but
it was tasteful, sensitive sort of stuff.

Among other things, he did very nice bookplates. I
think he got a great many commissions for bookplates, and
naturally his technique was perfect for that sort of thing.
He could make a beautiful copperplate of a bookplate for
a nice library, and he could probably get well paid for
them. One of the amusing things that happened was that
an ex libris society from this country wrote to him, and
they wanted to get samples of his work for a collection
of bookplates. And he got this letter which was written
in English. He knew French and German and Spanish, but
he didn't know English; so he had the letter translated.

510

Then came the problem of answering this letter. So he
had an idea that Latin ought to be the universal language.
He thought Esperanto was all nonsense, for if you had a
beautiful language like Latin, v;hy do you have to have
Esperanto? And so he decided he would answer this letter
in Latin, v;hich he did. I imagine it was probably quite
elegant and perfect Latin. But that was the last he ever
heard from his correspondents about the bookplates. Ap-
parently they couldn't find anybody to translate the Latin
for them.

He had quaint habits v/hich were rather enjoyable. One
peculiarity, among other things, was that he had quite
beautiful penmanship. He wrote somewhat in the style of
an old Italian hand, something like the chancery script.
I think I have notes of his someplace. I haven't been
able to find them yet, but I don't think I've lost them.
And they're rather worth seeing because when you see this
letter, it looks as though it had been in the mail for
the last couple of hiindred years. When he was out browsing
around at the flea market or someplace and there was an
old book that was of no value but was old enough to have
the handmade paper with the texture of the screen that you
get on real handmade paper, he would buy the book and
save the flyleaf. He used that paper for his drawings
and sketches and very often for correspondence to people
that he cared for. He would never use an envelope; he

511

folded it as they did in the old days and used sealing
wax. So when you got this piece of yellow paper with
this sealing wax and written in this brown ink, which he
made himself, .and looking as though it had been done with
a quill pen, why, you had a feeling that it was something
that had been delayed in the mail from the days of George
Washington. It was very noticeable but a lovely thing to
have. It was really quite charming, and he always expressed
himself in a whimsical, interesting way. I think I still
have one or two of his letters, and I hope I haven't lost
them.

Among my painter friends, a man that I really saw
the most of, curiously enough, was the painter Paul Burlin.
I've forgotten when I met Paul, sometime in Ihe luid-twenties.
I got into a conversation with him someplace and shortly
afterward there was a ring at the back door. I went and
here was Paul Burlin and his little dog — I've forgotten
whether his little dog was named Michelangelo or Vincent
Van Gogh. He came in, and from that time on, we saw
quite a lot of each other. He was a very interesting man.

Paul lived on the third or fourth story of a building
with a balcony in the Latin Quarter, and the dog, in
tearing around the house, dashed out into the balcony
a little too rapidly and tumbled off the balcony and was
killed. Paul felt very sad about that. He seemed to be
quite fond of his pup.

512

Paul Burlin is one of the most interesting of the
painters representing the modern movement, although he
never attained the distinction that a lot of his con-
temporaries did.

When I won the Paillard Prize in Paris for a mural,
it was sort of a windfall, and whenever I had some unex-
pected money of one sort or another — which would happen
occasionally if 1 got a portrait commission or, in this
case, a prize — I'd spend it in some special way. I wanted
very much to visit the galleries of Belgium and Holland.
My wife didn't feel like doing it, hut Paul Burlin was
very much interested. So we went off together on the trip
to Belgium and Holland. We went up as far as Amsterdam,
anu uCiGii xroui .Hifl5ueru.&m oo xjerxm anu. speriu uwo or onree
days more. When my money gave out, we came home. It was
really a very valuable, a very interesting trip. And he
was fun. In a way, the contrast between us — temperamentally
and looks an.d everything else — was very much like the
contrast between Ramon Guthrie and Sinclair Lewis. I
think that was one reason why I found him very interesting,
and maybe that's one reason he liked me because [tape off]
I was so different, in life and experiences and in the way
I reacted to things. In many ways, of course, we had
things in common — our interest in paint;ing. He had a very
broad and very excellent feeling for painting.

Very often an artist is inclined to see very little

515

outside a certain field. If he's a modern painter, other
periods will bore him iinless they have something very
definite to contribute in terms of what he's thinking
at the time. I often wondered how some of these boys —
I don't happen to know any of them personally, but I
would like to meet them, a pop artist, for example — how
he feels about Titian; or an op artist, how he feels about
Rembrandt. Is there something that is the same, or is it
an entirely different world? I mean has he broken com-
pletely?

But staying in one field was not true at all of Paul
Burlin. He was even inclined to defend people that other
of our confreres would run down; he would find merit,
liioeresu, aiiu uaxenu in uneir worK, anu. lor uj.j.axi reason, j_lS
was a very interesting man to go around the galleries with.

It was my second trip to Brussels and Antwerp, but
they are both extremely interesting towns. Brussels has
a reputation of being a little Paris, and in a way it is,
but it's also very, very different. It has its own
character and, of course, some wonderful galleries. Ve
got to Amsterdam. We had stopped off on the way to see
the galleries in that town which was destroyed completely
during the war, a town in Holland, Rotterdam. It's been
rebuilt rather beautifully in the modern way, at least
that's how it looks from what few photographs I've seen
of it. That desti-uction was tragic because it was a

charming Dutch city. It was more than just a tov/n; it
was quite a good-sized place. Amsterdam, of course, is
tremendously rich. We saw things like The Nightwatch ,
and in Haarlem, we saw Frans Hals. The day or so that we
spent in Amsterdam was especially interesting "because v;e
met a dealer from New York. Weyhe began as a dealer in books
and rare editions and from that went to prints and eventually
■became qpite an important dealer. His career in New York
was quite a bit like Jake Zeitlin's here in Los Angeles.
Jake started with hardly anything, just a few books and
a hole in the wall, and now he ' s an internationally known
man in the book world and also to a certain extent in
graphic art. And Weyhe v/as the same way. And his place

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place. But he happened to be in Amsterdam; he was buying
some things. I remember he had found quite a collection
of old maps, qpite a valuable collection, and he v;as quite
excited about that. At the time, he commenced to travel
a great deal in Europe while buying things, and he knew the
cities very well. He was a very interesting man to be
with. He wasn't just a bookdealer. He was a man of q,uite
broad feeling, a very interesting man to talk to and a
cultivated traveler with an appreciation of the things to
see. So he took us around to show us things in Amsterdam,
and he was a marvelous guide. I got more feeling of the
city from being with him than I could possibly have gotten

515

alone unless I had spent a good deal of time in the town.
And, in spite of the fact that I don't like guides, but
he wasn't a real guide. He was just an enthusiast, and
he wanted to share his pleasure of the old city and to
point out things of historical interest and artistic
interest and interests of other sorts.

Then we went from Amsterdam to Berlin. Berlin was,
of course, still in a depressed condition. Ve didn't
stay there very long, just about a day and a half or so,
but that was time enough to see the gallery there and a
little bit of the town. I had been there once before,
but only for a very short time. Then we went back to
Pari s .

Another man. living in Paris at that time was Adolf
Dehn. I don't remember how many years he spent there,
but he lived and worked there for quite a long time.
Adolf Dehn was doing lithographs. Afterwards, probably
his watercolors of the American scene made him as much of
a reputation as his lithographs did. But he made a very
decided reputation for himself with his lithographic
drawing. And it was rather courageous of him, I think,
to try to make himself a reputation in lithographic drawing
because even etched plates, which up to that time was
the quintessence of the printmaker's art, had fallen in
market value. Lithography to most people was looked upon
as a commercial art, v/hich seems rather strange because

516

Whistler did some quite beautiful drawings on stone and
there were quite a few people whose work on stone was
well known. But people didn't think that a lithograph
was something they could spend very much money for or
would have any great value as a collector's item. Most
people still use the term lithography in speaking of what
is really commercial lithography, which is simply offset
on metal plates, and it's not true lithography at all.
The actual work on stone hasn't been done commercially for
a good many years now. The true lithograph is done on a
block of Bavarian limestone, which is smoothed and grained
and you can draw on it. It ' s a very delightful method of
drawing, because you can prepare the grain, a coarse grain
or a line grain, according to your taste. Also your
crayons, which are greasy in the sense that they are
rather like a marking crayon instead of a graphite crayon,
can be used in a great variety of ways. Also there is
what they call tusche, which is the use of lithographic
ink and a brush. Well, it's a thoroughly autographic
method of making a print because you work on a stone and
the proof that is pulled can be modified afterwards. So
it's by no means a method of reproducing a drawing. It
is autographic as an etching. But in those days, that
wasn't realized. So I always felt that Adolf v;as rather
adventurous in spending so much time on them when he had
his living to make. But he was justified because he not

517

only developed a beautiful technique in lithographic
work and a nice sense of the possibilities of the stone
for various qualities in the use of the inks and trans-
parences and the use of brush and the handling of the
crayons so that the thing had a beautiful print quality.
But also he was rather lucky because he had quite a sense
of humor that showed especially in his lithographs. You
don't feel it so much in his watercolors. They alv;ays
had some little note which was illustrative but didn't
destroy the aesthetic value of his print at all, and it
helped to make the work more saleable. And Weyhe (I'm
not sure that I'm even pronouncing his name rightly —
I'll have to look that up) became interested in him and

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For a long time, he wouldn't do them, but finally when he
did do them, they were very successful. Well, those two
fellows were among the people I probably saw as much of as
anyone else.

One day Dehn decided to go out into the country, down
to the valley of the Chevreuse and spend the day. I had
acquired a little Citroen, cinq-chevaux , automobile, and
we had a wonderful time with it. (I've forgotten gust
what year that was.) I bought the car from George Biddle
when he left Paris. He had been using it, and I bought it.
I learned to drive in that little car. [laughter] Helen
and I made quite a number of trips in the summertime with

518

it. On this outing that I had with Adolf Dehn, we went
out into the valley of the Chevreuse, He didn't do any
very elaborate sketching from nature; the fact is that
he couldn't seem to draw very elaborately directly from
nature. He would make notes and memoranda, and quietly
at home he could build a thing up. He'd get all the data
and the material necessary for even his watercolors.
Then, in his studio, he would make quite a successful
picture. So he made notes and memoranda of life in the
little villages that we passed through, of the people
and that sort of thing.

I always will remember one place that we stopped at
for lunch because it was one of those times when you come
uO a certain ccncxusion auouu some prouxeiu t/iiau you ve
been working on. In this case it was the problem of
taste — what is good taste? Ve went into a little place
by the roadside and the first thing that impressed me was
that it was a very charming place. It was so immaculate,
and the proprietor and his wife and family were very neat,
very cheerful, very friendly. We had a very nice lunch,
and as I sat there and looked around this room — which,
as I say, was very pleasant, very agreeable — I realized
that there wasn't an object in the place that you could
consider in good taste. I think everything was what the
Germans would call kitsch. There were little porcelain
figures on the shelf, the sort of things you get at the

519

dime store. There also were several vases made from shell
cases. There were, apparently, quite a number of people
in the French Army X'^/ho were very good metal workers and
discovered they could amuse themselves very quickly with
the .75nmi shell cases by working them into some kind of
an ornamental object. They very seldom were very good
design, but very often were very well worked. They'd
'turn this shell case into a certain spiral with fluting
around it. Then they'd open up the top of it and bend it
back into petals and one thing and another. From the
point of view of craftsmanship, they were all right, but
as objects of beauty, there v/as quite a lot to be desired
usually, [laughter] Well, there were some of these things
around, and the pictures were the same sort of thing. At
the same time, I came to the conclusion that there isn't
any such thing as simply "in good taste," that's measurable,
Those objects in that relationship had a certain beauty,
because you felt that the people loved their life; they
loved their home; their cooking was good, and it expressed
an enthusiasm for what they were doing. But if you would
suddenly try to convince them that this was very bad
taste, that in turn would be in bad taste, [laughter]
And if you put a Picasso or some Matisse in there all of
a sudden, it would be a sore thumb. Well, I think that's
something that could be discussed ad infinitum . At the
same time, it was one of the little things that did have

520

quite a bit of influence on my thinking about those
problems afterwards.

Well, after lunch, we pursued our trip through the
Valley of the Chevreuse and went through a little village.
Then the adventure of the day happened. It wasn't anything
of any special importance, but we went up a very narrow
little street in this village that had a stone wall on
each side. When I came to the top, I very unexpectedly
found myself in the middle of a mud puddle. It hadn't
been raining, but apparently someone had thrown water out
or something and that mud puddle happened to be in the
middle of a right-angle turn of the road. So when I hit
it I had to also turn, but it was invisible until I was
right on it. So here I was in the middle of a mud puddle
having to make a sharp turn to the left. Well, you can
imagine what happened. I skidded wildly and slid over
into a house. I didn't do any damage to the house other
than a little scratch. But in getting away from the house,
before I could straighten out the car in this little tiny
narrow street, I ran into the stone wall on the other
side and crushed my fender. Finally, I got straightened
out. Everybody had rushed out to see what was going on;
we had quite a little crowd around us. I investigated
and found that the fender was crushed, but the alignment
seemed to be perfectly all right. So both of us got hold
of the fender and pulled it av;ay from the tire. We had

521

quite a little struggle, quite a little pulling, but we
finally managed to bend it away from the tire so the wheel
would turn and so I could steer the car without too much
trouble. Dehn seemed to think we ought to go straight
back home, but I didn't see any sense in that because the
car would run. So why shouldn't we finish out the day,
which we did. Well, the fact is, we wound up at the
Fontainebleau, and then from Fontainebleau we went back to
Paris. Everything went fine.

Well, when I left Paris, I found I had a reputation.
I've forgotten who was to blame for it. Both Dehn and
Paul Burlin \-jere awfully good talkers and awfully good
storytellers, and they could make a good story about
things. Now, Paul Burlin was a man who simply hated to
be bested by anybody; he was a very ambitious guy and very
unhappy if anybody could do something he couldn't do.
There was one thing Paul couldn't do — he couldn't- drink.
After one or two drinks, he had to call it off. Well, I
didn't even try to drink excessively, but I knew that
after a certain time, I could get along quite well if I
had another drink. I had got it pretty well figured out
how long I'd have to wait if I had two double-martinis,
for example, before I would drive. Looking back, I could
evaluate my behavior and reactions and could say, "Well,
I'll be more careful next time." But due to the story-
telling abilities of Adolf Dehn and Paul Burlin, I left

522

Paris with the reputation of being the wildest driver and
a drinker who could hold more than anybody else in the
crowd. I don't think I had that reputation with many
people, but they apparently conveyed the idea to a few
people that I was a bottomless pit when it came to alcohol,
which wasn't the least bit true. That trip through Belgium
and Holland was my first one with Paul, and then he v;as
•coming back to New York and wanted to know if I didn't
want to come with him. My wife didn't want to; she didn't
want to make the trip until she came home to stay. But
all this time, of course, in .my life in Paris, I'd been
concerned about going home but without much idea of exactly
what I would do, because I hadn't equipped myself with
some monejnnakmg means. j. hadn t won a reputation as a
portrait painter and gotten a clientele, and although I
had done a certain amount of commercial work of one sort
and another, odds and ends, I did not have contracts to
really look forward to so I could settle down to a job
or have some means of income. Of course, what happened
was that I eventually took a job of teaching and I have
done quite a lot of that. But we discussed the matter
and decided that it might be a good idea to make a sort of
exploratory trip back home and meet people and maybe get
some idea of how we could reestablish ourselves in our
home country. So I finally decided to make the trip with
Paul Burlin, He was doing it because he did have contacts
in New York, and he was taking back quite a lot of work.

525

He had a very good reason for doing it, "but I had a rather
more tenuous plan of what I would do when I got to New York.

What I was saying about the contrast in our way of
reacting and "behaving towards things was brought out
quite a lot in that trip. As I say, he was a very
ambitious fellow who hated to be bested in anything. He
played checkers with me, but I beat him so badly that he
swore he'd never play a game of checkers again, [laughter]
Well, it just so happened that I had played checkers a
little bit and he hadn't. It was quite unreasonable of
him. Once we were sitting at the bar on the boat going
over and just for fun (I think he started it) we made
sort of a little pass at each other. We got to talking
auoUl/ uoxing or someuu-xng. j- u.iu.n t know anythxng about
boxing, but his passes got a little bit more serious and
he really tried to reach me. Well, he was a short man
and his arms were short, but my arms are long, so I discovered
that all I had to do was to push him away and his passes
would be in front of my nose but wouldn't reach me. Well,
that drove him quite frantic. Each time I would shove
him away, and they would pass in front of my face. None
of them touched my body at all. Of course, he could
have hit me if it had been really serious, but it was
rather funny that just in that little thing he couldn't
get anywhere because of the length of my arms. He got so
winded that I v;as disturbed. He kept at it until he v/as

524

panting frantically. (I think he's still living, and
he'd be over eighty now or just about eighty.) I don't
think he had any special heart trouble or anything, but
he suddenly got v;inded in that little game. Well, I think
it was the day before v;e got into New York that he said,
"Ityron, do you know anybody who can get you a room at the
Harvard Club?"

I said, "At the Harvard Clul?? What do you mean?"

He said, "I think we ought to stay at the Harvard
Club."

I said, "Well, I'm not a Harvard man and neither are
you. "

"Well, that doesn't make any difference."

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Club?"

"Got to have a good address, got to have a good
address. "

And I discovered that is one thing that he'd knock
himself out to have, even if he had to sleep in the cellar.
If it was a good number or a good name of a hotel or some-
thing of that sort, that was very important. Well, my
only idea v/as to go around and find a reasonable room and
make myself comfortable. I was only going to be there for
a short time anyway, so what the heck. But no. "Oh
well," I said, "I'll see." So in New York I asked Paul
Kieffer v/ho was connected somewhat by marriage and a

525

Harvard man. He said, "Yes, that's all, right. I'll get
yqu a room at the Harvard Club." I rather demurred
because it seemed rather silly. "Well," he said, "you
stay there for a day or so and then find yourself a place."
So sure enough we did. The reason Paul could go to the
Harvard Club was because his first wife was of the
Philadelphia Curtis family, and he too could get an intro-
duction.

TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE OWE
January 31 , 1966

NUTTING: The trip over to New York in 1927 with Paul.
Burlin was rather an adventurous one in a way. In con-
nection with Paul Burlin, I often think of a friend of
mine Boris Glagolin, who had been an assistant director,
I think, of the Royal Theater, of what was then St. Peters-
burg. He was an actor and a writer and a very highly
cultivated man. Apparently, he had quite a hard time in
the Revolution, because he was on the wrong side. He
didn't tell me much of his experiences, but a few of them
are quite vivid that he Just brought in once in a while
in the conversation. One was about when he was in prison.
It was in the wintertime, and looking out through a little
window of his prison, he could see a bit of the courtyard.
The prisoners were dying in large numbers, and what they
did was to lay them out until they froze solid and then
stacked them up like cordwood until they got ready to
take loads away for burial. Well, he finally got out of
Russia and came to this country. One thing that I always
remember quite vividly, because it seemed to be a little
point that one does remember in the case of people who
feel keenly about belonging to a minority group. Some-
times it's ennobling, very often it is and brings out
great spirits, but it also can have a very bad influence

527

on them.

On Glagolin's way out from Russia on the train and
during this long trip, he got into conversation with a
Jew. They enjoyed each other's company very much and
became quite good friends in the sense of good traveling
companionship. But they got to a border and there was an
examination. The police or authorities were checking over
these people that were going out and picked up this Jew
and said, "You are so-and-so" and accused him of this or
that or something. And the Jew got quite excited and
denied it emphatically. He said, "No, I was not the one.
It was this man! " And he pointed to my friend who had
been his warm traveling companion across the country.

It also reminds me of a conversation I had with a
Jewish friend of mine that impressed me quite a lot. We
were discussing what people would do under certain cir-
cumstances, and he gave a very interesting talk that the
great characteristic of the Jewish people was the will
to survival, that came first, and when a decision had to
be made it was in terms of survival.

The question that brought it up was that of a woman
who had to decide whether to sacrifice one of her children.
Should it be the boy or the girl? What would you do in a
situation, of that sort? And he said that it was not the
Jewish idea that they should all go dovvTi .together, but
rather that somebody must survive. They'd pick out which

528

one would be the most important. member of the family to
survive. That would be the only question.

A man v;ho in some ways reminds me veiy much of Paul
Burlin is Lorser Feitelson. He also has that feeling
that they're quite wonderful friends up to a point, and
then if they get at all suspicious of their status, all
of a sudden you find they will turn on you without apparent
rhyme or reason. And Paul, I must confess, was a little
bit that sort of a guy. He was a man of tremendous
energy and ambition.

Obviously, he came from the East Side, from a poor
family. I met his brother, and he was just a common
Jewish boy. He was making a living in a clothing store
or something in New York. But Paul had very genuine talent
and great ambition. In his boyhood he had lived for a
short time in England before he came to this country; he
had even gone to school in England. He didn't have very
much schooling, . but he was a reader. I don't think he
read for the love of reading. It was so he could talk
about the right things and be a good conversationalist in
whatever company he found himself. For the same reason,
he cultivated the ability to tell a story, and he worked
very hard to become a good raconteur — and he was a good
one. He had a rather bitter wit which was very amusing,
and it helped to make him good company in a group. It
was always enjoyed. And he had a rather sharp mind.

529

I've run across several references to him in things I've
read since, by people writing on the art of that period
and personalities. One man spoke of him as having a legal
mind, which may be true. He had quite a good capacity to
reason things. But in his life as a whole, he could be
a very warm friend, but you were never quite sure of him.
We got along very well together, though I think there was
the same sort of a contrast between us, except in degree,
that there was between my friends Ramon Guthrie and
Sinclair Lewis, in temperament and attitude towards life.
I think that's one reason why I found him very interesting,
because so much that he thought and did contradicted what
I thought and did. It gave me a chance to be conscious

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have . otherwise done. And for some reason, he seemed to
lil^e to be with me. I don't know why; I don't know what I
had to give to him at all, because I had no pretensions
of being a good storyteller, and I wasn't especially
ambitious in society. He was. He wanted to know important
people; he wanted to go to important places; he wanted to
have a good address. He wanted to be somebody — and he
wanted it desperately. Well, I think 1 told you how we
got to playing a little bit and pretending to box, but he
being a very short man with short arms and I having long
arms, all I had to do was to keep pushing him away, which
infuriated him so. He wasn't nasty about it, but he got

530

completely winded. I got worried because he was panting
so. I thought they'd have to lay him out on the couch
or something "before he would come to. But he stopped
panting after a while and that was the end of that.

There was also that little incident in .the hotel
lobby vihen there was nothing else to do but to pick up
a checkerboard and play. He had never played checkers,
and I knew a little bit about it, not very much, so none
of the games lasted very long. Finally, he got up and
walked off and swore he'd never play checkers again as
long as he lived.

But the drive and energy of the man was rather
impressive. He certainly lived a full day in every way.
rie worked very hard, and he always had projects and plans
on which he was working. He decided to go to New York to
contact some dealers and to take over some of his work
and wanted me to go too. Well, as I've said before,
during all the years I spent in Europe, I constantly had
this idea in mind that very soon I was to go home and find
myself in my own world. But it was put off and put off,
and this seemed to be rather of a good idea, that I should
go with him, because he grew up in New York and he knew
lots of people there and knew all the galleries. I thought
maybe I could see how to find myself and what sort of work
to go into, how to look for an occupation, what to do for
an exhibition, and find dealers that might be interested in

531

my stuff, although I didn't take over very much. So I
decided to go with him. My wife said she would not go;
she didn't want to go home until she came to stay. She
hated sea travel. She was always very ill and, of course,
there was no plane travel in those days. So I came to
New York with Paul in 1927 — one of the very few dates that
I remember of my life over there. The reason that I
remember the date was because we were in mid-ocean when
Lindbergh landed in Paris. We got the news and, of course,
that was quite exciting.

Well, Paul and I got aboard the ship. He always
dressed very carefully for dinner because he didn't know
who he might meet and he would spend any amount of time

and adjusting that and brushing his hair until he was
quite satisfied with his appearance. Then we went to
dinner, and the first thing he did was to look all around
the dining room to see who was there. In the meantime,
he had read the passenger list. Once he said, "What do
you think of that woman over there?"

So I looked over at the table that he indicated and
said, "She looks very nice. A very attractive woman."
He said, "She seems to be alone." Well, he didn't lose
any time after dinner in getting acquainted, which he
did rather successfully. He was quite skillful in that
sort of thing. She did turn out to be quite a pleasant

532

and quite an intelligent woman. She was on her way home
from a rather extended stay in Europe and was going back
to New York. She had gone to England alone and then after
that to the Continent. Well, the upshot of the con-
versation was that she should come to our stateroom for a
highball before we turned in. And she did. [laughter]
The stateroom was very small; it was an ordinary old-fashioned
steamer stateroom with two berths and a sort of a couch under
the window. There wasn't very much room for us, and so he
and she sat down below and I got up on the upper berth
and stretched out and carried on the conversation very
nicely from there, without crowding the space down below.
Well, I never saw anything happen so fast in my life. I
didn't pay too much attention to the conversation; there
didn't seem to be too much to lead up to it. But the
first thing I knew, the light went out. There were
windows opening out onto the deck that had wooden shades
that pulled up from below and latched. So they were down
there speaking in low whispers, but I couldn't hear
anything and didn't pay any attention; so I dozed off.
All of a sudden, there was a bang, and it seems that one
of these shades, or whatever you'd call them, had fallen
down, [laughter] The latch hadn't quite latched. So
I saw the silhouette of Paul struggling with this thing.
He finally got it latched, and it was all pitch darkness
again. Then 1 heard a little rustling and very faint

535

whispers, and I lay there and waited and, guess, to a
certain extent dozed off. Well, it wasn't very long until
I heard the door open and some whispered good- nights, and
it was all over, [laughter] It had been accomplished,
and he v;as very satisfied with himself. Well, I wasn't
too much concerned about that except that the next day,
although he was quite polite to her, it didn't seem to me
that he was as nice to her as he might have been. He
seemed to have somewhat lost interest to a certain extent.
So I tried a little bit to make up for it, and I sat on
the deck and talked to her. As everybody knows, there are
lots of people who while traveling will just tell their
life stories and all sorts of things that they'd never
08-Lx m uueir nome uown uecause they feel that they can
talk to people they'll never see again. Hiey just open
up, and you get to know all about them. And she told her
story, which was rather interesting.

She was of a Jewish fajnily, and she was married and
had a couple of children. They lived in New York and I
don't know what her husband's business was or how he made
his living, but whatever it was, he lost his job. It
was knocked out by the war or for some other reason,
and he was going through a bad period and having a very,
very hard time. And she gave quite a vivid description of
her life and what it was to be so poor. Her husband would
go out every day to try to make some money, try to find a
job, try to find some way to get along. She said that

53^

one thing that made it especially hard for her was that
she knew — although he didn't know she knew — that he had
some pills in his briefcase and she knew what they were.
The idea was that he was going to fight it out, but if
worst came to worst, why, he'd bring an end to the situation.
This situation lasted for some time, until the man got an
idea, that now would be nothing at all but which at that
time wasn't too common. Some people that he knew were
having trouble with a typewriter in their office. Well,
he knew typewriters and he said, "I'll take care of it,"
which he did for a small fee. That gave him an idea,
and so when he took the typewriter back he said, "You
have got so many typewriters in this office that have to
be taken care of. now much does it cost; you "uo take care
of your office machinery?" Well, the upshot of it was
that he made an agreement to look after all the typewriters--
I don't know whether they had any other machinery or not —
for a fixed sum. And it worked out very well. He built
up a business of that sort. What would you call it?
SCHIPPEBS: Service repair.

NUTTING: Service repair for office machinery. Well, he
got so he could hire help — I suppose maybe specialists
for certain jobs and that sort of thing, I don't know. But,
anyway, she said that he really found himself in this work
and it wasn't too long before the pressure was eased a
great deal. They were living q^ite comfortably and in

555

quite a civilized way. Well, he went even further than
that, for he became rather prosperous in the business
and it became something more than Just a decent living.
Then to her amazement, that although during this period
of trial and tribulation and holding up the spirit of the
family there 'd never been any letdown, but when it came to
having the pressure talcen off, she found herself in a
rather peculiar state of mind. Probably a psychologist
could explain it rather clearly, and I think the rest of
us could understand to a certain extent. What I felt was
that a certain amount of responsibility had been taken
away; she wasn't as useful a person in keeping the family
going as she had been, and the children were growing up
and they didn't need her so much. So she found herself
in a curiously nervous state of mind, in somewhat of a
depression, aggravated by the fact that although she had
been extremely loyal to her husband and had done everything
in the world to keep their little family going and had
done all that she possibly could, that basically she and
her husband didn't have veiy much in common. What he liked
and enjoyed was rather boresome to her, and she commenced
to take an interest in things that to him seemed rather
nutty. I imagine that he liked just good plain bourgeois
living — good food and card playing and that sort of thing.

Por one thing, I know she was very musical because
she talked about music and would also comment on a girl's

556

voice that she happened to hear singing. She said,
"There's a voice." And she apparently \inderstood a good
voice the moment she heard it, or at least its potentiality.
That probably was a field that he wasn't interested in.
So it got to the point where she felt that she had to do
something about it. And she got the idea (that was in the
day before people went to psychoanalysts to get counsel)
of going to Havelock Ellis because she had read some books
of Havelock Ellis, and she thought he must be a very grand
person and that he would understand what her trouble was
and would give her some advice. Her husband was agreeable;
so she went alone to England and apparently had some
conversations with Havelock Ellis. I don't think she
saw very much of him, because aS far as I know, Ellis
didn't make a profession of counseling neurotics. But
she found him extremely helpful, and before she went back
to New York, she decided that while she was over there,
she would cross the Channel and take a trip. Apparently
money was not too much of an object any more, and there
was no reason why she couldn't do that and get the full
benefit of her trip to Europe. So she went to France
and then she went on down to Italy. She said she had a
marvelous time and enjoyed everything enormously.

In Italy she met a young Italian officer. Well,
apparently, that experience with this young officer was
just too wonderful and too beautiful for words. She went

537

"back with a very, very happy feeling — what with Havelock
Ellis and an affair with this gorgeous boy. So she was
going home now, and she felt that for the rest of her life
she would understand and she would live and everything
would be all right.

Well, that was all very interesting, but as I say,
this thing began practically before we left port. And
•I think it was about the third day I spoke to Paul Burlin
about something and asked him what was on his mind. It
turned out that he was fit to be tied. He had to go to
the doctor, and the diagnosis was the worst. He was
furious — and he was rather brutal about it. Well, I
thought it was rather unfortunate for Burlin, but the
person I i-eally felt sorx-^ fox* was this little woiaaii,
because here was her wonderful trip marred in this very
gruesome way, for she had passed the trouble on to Burlin
without the slightest suspicion that she could be guilty
of it. But it worked out that way; there was no other
explanation. So then I was worried about her because she
lapsed into silence and would stand by the rail and look
out over the ocean.

Once, very soon after that, I was .going down into the
main saloon from the upper deck (two great big stairways
curved down into the main saloon) and she was coming up.
She looked at me, then she fainted and tumbled down the
stairs. I had to pick her up and lay her on a couch.

538

She came to all right and wasn't hurt. At first, I
thought she had injured herself but apparently not. So
that was all right.

The rest of the trip, with Burlin in his state of
mind and his ruthlessness, was rather distressing. My
concern for her (I've forgotten her name completely and,
of course, that doesn't make any difference) was rather
considerable because if she was a neurotic, I was wondering
what steps she might take. However, she seemed to think
things out and come to.

When we got to New York, her family met her and she
seemed very cheerful then. I had a letter from her after-
wards, a little letter, and that's the last I heard of
her. I can only hope that everything worked out for the
best for her. But that impetuosity and that ruthlessness —
I don't say especially of this particular man but of a
type that I think we all know — was one of the most vivid
experiences I have had of that type of a person.

Lorser Feitelson was the same sort of man in some
ways. He was a very delightful person, very intelligent,
a very good talker and good storyteller, but once that he
turns, he turns on you with a viciousness that is infuri-
ating. I don't mind a person turning on me if they'll
tell me what it's all about; and if I can do something
about it, I v/ill or if I can't, I can't, and that's the
end of it. But to have someone just turn on you without

539

any discernible rhyme or reason I think is one of the
most unpleasant things one can have happen. It's very
seldom happened to me, and it never did with Paul Burlin.
We always got along very happily. In New York, he was an
interesting fellow to be around v;ith, but again you could
see how he was making the most of every moment. For one
thing, he was rather lucky because he had a man who was
•a rather renowned GU doctor in New York, a very brilliant
fellow. I enjoyed knowing him. He was highly educated,
and he had known Paul for quite a long time and took care
of him. He knew some interesting people and we went to
some interesting evenings. One evening was with Freud's
nephew. Be mays (I've talked about him before, but for the
moment his name has slipped my mind). He was a very,
very successful public relations, advertising man. We
both met him in Paris first, then met him again in
New York, and he invited us to dinner. He had some very
interesting people, and it was quite a delightful evening.

And the fact is, every evening Paul seemed to manage
something that was quite worthwhile. But in his life and
his business and his contacts — everything — that same energy
and calculation that characterized him, since I first knew
him was there.

He had friends dov^ni in Charleston, South Carolina,
and I didn't want to spend the money to go down there
with him, but for some reason I decided to. I've forgotten

5^0

now what I had in mind. Maybe I had been somewhat influ-
enced by his idea that if you're going to be at all a
success in the world, you must know people, which is to a
certain degree right. It doesn't mean that you've got to
chase after them, but if you know them and make a good
impression, from a practical point of view that's worth
thinking about. So I went with him. We stayed at a
place in Charleston where they took paying guests. It
didn't call itself a motel or a hotel or anything of that
sort. It was really a family that had rooms. It was very
nice and some rather interesting things happened down
there.

In some ways, I'm rather glad that this was part of

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very simple people have. I've often thought of it in
other connections since; especially when I did my Jury
duty here, I was again impressed by that same thing.
People who are uneducated very often by sheer human
sensibility would sense something that a person who does
too much thinking won't be aware of. Paul Burlin certainly
knew how to get around very well with all sorts of people.
And the fact is, he was always trying to kid me, you know.
When we got down to Charleston, he was always asking me —
would I do this with colored people, how would I behave?
He knew that my ancestry was part Southern, and he wanted
to bring it up continually and razz me about it. He always

541

claimed that he understood people thoroughly and could
get along with anybody very well indeed. He wasn't a snob
like me. He was a real adult human being. Well, I rather
resented the idea of being called a snob. But in this
house where we got a room, [something happened that
showed another side of him] . We unpacked our suitcases
and, naturally, our evening clothes were somewhat wrinkled.
In those days, we never went out to dinner except in a tux.
Paul called for the darkie who did the chores around the
house there. I think his name was Oliver. (It's funny
I should remember his name, but I'm pretty sure it's
Oliver.) When he found out his name, he said, "Oliver,
do you see my evening clothes there? They're badly
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could see, he asked him very nicely. And after all,
that's what the boy was supposed to be doing there, taking
care of the guests and the chores of that sort. And
Oliver said, "Well, no, sir. I'm awfully soriy. The
missus she's given me an awfully lot of work. I won't
have one minute. I'd be glad to help you, but I just
haven't got the time."

Well, that made Paul rather sore, and Oliver went
off. I \inpacked my clothes and examined them carefully
and found out I was in the same fix. Whether I hadn't
packed them very well, and in spite of all sorts of care,
they didn't look too ^ood. Oliver happened to be coming

542

down the hall and the door was open, and so I said, "I
am in the same fix as my friend here. My clothes need
pressing pretty badly. " And he came over and looked at
them and he said, "Yes, they sure do. You give them to
me. I'll have them back in no time." [laughter] So
he went off with my clothes and pressed them nicely, but
he wouldn't press Paul's. And I still never have been
able to figure out what turned that colored man against
Paul. There always was something that caused him to be
willing to do it for me and not for anyone else. There
was something he resented about Paul, and something he
accepted from me. It's one of those little mysteries,
[tape off]

Burlin's friends in Chai"leston proved to be very
channing, interesting people. They were old Charlestonians,
and one was a well-known writer, whose name I've forgotten
at the moment. I think with short stories, especially,
he was quite successful. How Paul would knov; such old-
fashioned Charlestonians, I don't quite know, except that
his first wife was a Curtis of the Philadelphia Curtises.
She was a very accomplished musician.

Well , I gathered from remarks that Paul made now and
again that the Curtis family didn't think very much of the
new addition to their tribe. I don't think they especially
disliked him, but they didn't think he was quite up to
the family tradition for one of their girls to marry.

5^3

Natalie Curtis had studied to be a concert pianist but
had injured nerves in her hands or her wrists through
overwork, and so devoted the rest of her life to col-
lecting folk music. That was rather a laborious job,
because that was before the days of tape recorders and
the means that we have now of collecting things of that
sort. A tape recorder would have been a godsend to her.
She would learn folk airs of the South, and then she went
out West and did the same thing with Indian music and
wrote them down. Of course, in many cases, when she
could, she collected the words. And, apparently, she was
on the way to accomplishing quite a lot when she was
killed, I believe, in a motor accident in New York.

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was married, though, at the time he made this trip. He
was married in Paris to a girl who was a buyer for a big
Chicago department store, and she was a bright, nice woman.
The marriage didn't last too long. But the wedding break-
fast was rather interesting. He wanted me to be best man.
Well, to be best man simply meant to go do;\Ti to the mairie
with him and picking up the legal papers for the marriage.
But, of course, at the wedding breakfast, he called upon
me for the toast. Well, usually I'm not fussed by that
sort of thing; I can get away with something. But for
some reason he sprung it on me. I didn't realize that
somebody had to propose a toast, and I was completely

544

•unprepared. I felt that on an occasion of that sort you
had to do something a little more than simply hold up a
glass and say "Here's to you." So, finally, I passed
the buck. There was a very nice French boy there and he
gave a toast in French. It was very short and quite
dignified and quite all right.

But it was surprising the number of important people
that he had at that wedding breakfast. They were people
of accomplishment of one sort or another, musicians and
writers and so on. And it showed that he had made a
certain degree of quite warm friendships with a great
variety of people.

I remember Leo Stein was there. Leo Stein gave him
a beautiful book of very fine reproductions of all the
engravings of Albrecht Mrer as a wedding present. Others
gave him quite nice things, and the affair was really
quite distinguished. I've seen Paul once since. He came
out here to give a course at USC, and I went down to
see him. I was quite flabbergasted because when I asked
where to find Mr. Burlin, Mr. Paul Burlin, I was told,
"You mean Dr. Burlin?" And that rather took my breath
away, because neither he nor Lorser, I think, had ever
got into high school. He was a self-educated man and, in
a way, quite successfully so. But "Dr. Burlin" certainly
sounded very funny to me. [tape off]

Besides meeting these friends of Burlin' s in Charleston

5^5

and attending some rather interesting cocktail parties and
dinners and affairs of that sort, we filled in our day by
exploring Charleston. We hired a cab, a colored man
and a horsecab, and explored the town pretty thoroughly.
Ve also drove out into the countryside and made sketches.
If we had had more time , we would have done some painting
down there, but we both brought back quite a lot of material
•in the way of notes and sketches on the life and landscape
about Charleston, [tape off]

I, of course, couldn't do very much in New York in
a short time. For one thing, I didn't bring over a sub-
stantial enough amount of my work to have an exhibition,
and I had no idea how to get one. The whole idea of the
oPxp was luore j.or reconnaxssance so unau Wj_i.en -u u.i.u. go
back, I'd have some sort of a plan for starting life over
again in my home country. However, I was kept fairly
busy in one way.

Dr. Collins was then back in New York and practicing
as a psychiatrist and neurologist. He was very nice to
me, and he had a friend who wanted some kind of portraits
of her children. He said, "Why don't you do them?"

"Well," I said, "That would be very nice." So I
did drawings of these yoiingsters and that was a terrible
gob. I'm not especially good working with children. Some
people have sort of a knack of getting something of children
that people like, but I want an adult sitter v/ho'll sit

5^6

still. Then I can get along fairly well, but these
restless children Just about drove me nuts. However, they
liked my things veiy much and then they had some friends
and they wanted some things done. So during all of my
stay there, I v;as sort of passed around here and there.
I think if I had stayed, I might have built up kind of a
little business, a source of income doing portrait drawings.
They weren't all children; I did quite a few adults, too.
I did them quite reasonably. I think it was seventy-five
dollars, something like that, for a drawing.

As a matter of fact, I did enough so that it went
a long way towards paying my expenses in New York. It
didn't pay the expense of the whole trip by any means, but
it helped very decidedly. Also it gave me a feeling that
if people liked my work or certain aspects of it, I might
be able to do something with it.
SCHIPPERS: How long were you in Charleston?
NUTTING: About a week, I think it was.
SCHIPPEES: And then you returned to New York?
NUTTING: And then to New York. Yes.
SCHIPPERS: And how long was your stay in New York?
NUTTING: I was trying to remember. It wasn't very long.
A month or six weeks. I would say about a month, [tape off]
The return to New York was rather thrilling. I'd been av;ay
for a number of years — quite a number of years! I left in
the autumn of 19'13 and then didn't see it again until 1927.

5^7

And what impressed me wasn't so much how it had changed,
but how I_ had changed. When I went there first as a boy
thirteen years old, things looked so tremendously grand,
not only because it seemed outwardly rather grand but
because they represented grandeur — a great art museum or
a big library. Per se, it was something av/esome to walk
up the steps of the Metropolitan Muse\im. Knowing that
these great masterpieces were in there magnified your
feelings and impressions.

When I was studying in New York, I used to go down
to the library, and I always had great respect for the
building. I never stopped to criticize it, because it
represented a certain amount of dignity and grandeur. And
to go in and be able to get the books that I wanted and
spend the hours of the evening there was one of the most
delightful parts of my life in New York as a student. So
when I got to New York, I took a cab to my hotel. I
kept looking right and left, and when I saw this dingy,
squat building, I thought, "My God! That's the library."
When I first knew it, it was fairly new. It wasn't dirty;
it was still rather pristine. When I saw it the second
time, the smoke and the grime and the way the surrounding
skyscrapers sort of crushed its magnificence, was to me
\inbelievable. That happened several times — things I
remembered with a certain magnitude seemed to have shrunk
amazingly.

5^8

That was my first feeling about New York. The second
feeling was how amazing it was that in a city as large as
that you kept running into people you'd met before. I've
never found that true of any other city. I went into a
cafeteria in New York for breakfast and looked at the boy
next to me, and he was one of my fellow students in Boston,
way back in 19^1 2, I suppose it was. I went into a book-
store and the first man who walked up was a man that I
had known years before, I've forgotten where. The ease in
getting around New York, compared to Los Angeles, and the
fact that you were always bumping into your old friends
always impressed me and surprised me. Also the ease with
which you could get together in New York is much more
pronounced than m any other city I've been in, even a
smaller place like Milwaukee. It seemed to me that with
a few telephone calls, all of a sudden the gang was all
there. I mean they jumped into the subway, and they were
there in no time. Whereas, elsewhere, you have to make
plans if you're going to see your friends, especially
out here with the big distances involved and where you
depend on your car. [tape off]

Well, the time I had budgeted for the stay in New York
came to an end, and first I was going to go back ahead of
Paul Burlin. I decided that I had done all I possibly
could unless I would come much better prepared than I
was then. It wound up, though, that Burlin decided to

5^9

go back first class. I didn't see any sense in it. There
was no point in first class that I wanted especially.
Second class was excellent, and so I went to get my ticket.
And there was a fellow ahead of me who was having some
kind of an argument about his stateroom. I got my ticket
and looked at it, and I said, "This isn't the stateroom
that I thought that I would get."

He said, "No, it's much better. I just had a scrap
with this guy ahead of you and decided to give you this
ticket instead of him." [laughter] I don't know what it
was, but for some reason I came out with a ticket for a
stateroom I hadn't paid for. I don't suppose the difference
was too much, but it was very nice and was much better
than I wnijXd have had otherwise. So I v/ent second class
and Paul went first class, and I found it really didn't
make any difference anyway because if you dressed for
dinner and wandered around, you could wander into first
class without any trouble. So I did that all the way over
and didn't paiy any attention to whether I was in first
place or second class. Of course, I didn't eat first
class. But I had met nobody in the first-class section
that I cared to talk to. They seemed to be the dumbest
lot, whereas I met quite a number of people in the second
class who were much more interesting people. They were
teachers or professional people of one sort or another
and interesting to meet.

550

One of my artist friends in Paris was Jean de Bouchere.
(I'm not quite sure of the spelling of his name; I'll
have to look up the spelling.) He was an illustrator, and
anybody getting books from the library, especially ones
published in the twenties and thirties, will find any
number of classics illustrated by him. In a way, his
work was very good. It was good book illustration and
■also very decorative. He was a Belgian by birth and very
articulate and a wonderful man to talk to. He was well
read, well educated, and an author of a book on drawing,
which he called The Dialectic of Drawing, which promised
to be quite a good book. He complained that the publisher
had cut it down, but even as it is, it was a book that I
enjoyed reading. I still have it in my librar;^^. He
lived in the country. There were several things about
him that did not at all bear out the popular idea of the
artist. One was his amazing ability to organize everything
in his life. Apparently, he bought this property in the
country which he loved, but he had to spend a certain
amount of time in Paris. He had a very small room as a
studio in Paris. You'd go into it, and you'd think it
wasn't big enough to do anything in at all. But then you
would come to find out he did an immense amount of work
there. He must have been a mathematical genius, because
there wasn't a square inch of that room that wasn't put to
use. He could pull out a great number of canvases, rather

551

large canvases, and you couldn't "believe there was any
place for them there. But there would be a slot which
would hold so many canvases, and all of a sudden, this
piece of furniture would yield up pictures for a whole
exhibition. His worktable was absolutely immaculate and
in such amazing order. He used inks, various inks. Even
in doing black and white, he'd have inks of various densities,
and he had a funny little keg, that I think he must have made
himself, that was inset on the desk with a little spigot
so that he could get ink from this and this and this
spigot. He took things of that sort off the surface of
his desk and put them up into little pockets and holes.
In sort of a guest book I have, he did this drawing, and
he described how he came to do it. He said he was sleeping-
out-of-doors in the summertime, and he heard a tree toad.
It seemed to be quite near; then all of a sudden he looked
up in a tree, and through the branches of the trees he
saw a full moon and the pattern of the tree branches
across the moon. And in a crotch of two little branches
sat this tree toad. He said the whole thing made a perfect
design. This little thing in my book is a sketch of a
moon, branches across the moon and a little tree toad
silhouetted against the moon. He always had a certain
whimsy, a sense of spotting charming things in that
way.

TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
February 6, 1966

NUTTING: Jean de Bouchere was a prolific illustrator of
books, especially of Greek, Latin and Renaissance classics,
many of which were enriched with his work in line and
color. I found him a most pleasant and interesting friend.
In looks, he was rather like a character out of an early
nineteenth-century novel, say from Balzac. He had a
quaint old-fashioned appearance, and his whimsy and fantasy
were always delightful. One picture I have of him was
when we were leaving a party one evening and a number of
people were standing about at the head of the stairs
talking, conversation was being carried on which ought
to have been finished before the party broke up. I looked
around and Jean de Bouchere was standing with his face to
the wall aind with his hat upside down in the crook of his
arm. I wondered what in the dickens he was doing. I
discovered he was spending the time very carefully plucking
the rosebuds from the wallpaper and dropping them into his
hat one by one. [laughter]

Another person that I appreciated very much knowing
(I don't know where we should insert these various little
reminiscenses; we v/ill have to organize them eventually),
was Paul Robeson. Very often among other people at
Lewisohn's evenings were some of the Negro writers v;ho

553

were either living in Paris or passing through Paris,
and they would spend an evening with him. Paul Robeson
was in Paris for a while, and he and Lewisohn seemed to
be quite warm friends. Paul Robeson, himself, I found
delightful. He was quiet, rather slow-spoken, dignified in
his manner. With him was his accompanist, Mr. Brovm, who
was very lively and full of fun and a good musician, of
course. In many ways, he was quite a contrast in manner
and appearance to Paul Robeson. One thing about Paul
Robeson that is not too common, I think, with musicians
and people in the performing arts, was that he was happy
to make his contribution. One of the delightful things
of being in company with him, even though there might be
a few people — maybe a half-a-dozen or so of us — Hr. Brown
would go to the piano and Robeson would sing magnificently.
He was a man of broad interests, and fine education, a
good talker on many subjects. His singing was not only that
of an accomplished artist but impressive because of his
interpretation of such things as Negro spirituals which he
sang simply and with deep feeling, not concertized or made
sentimental. I saw him years afterwards in Milwaiikee
where he gave a concert; after the concert I went back to
speak to him, and he remembered me very warmly. He had
a quiet, very charming smile, and he seemed to be pleased
to see me again.

I just noticed in a new encyclopedia that I got recently

55^

that Ludwig Lewisohn (my biographical dictionary is rather
old, "but the Columbia Encyclopedia is up to date) was one
of the founding professors of Brandeis University. He
was a professor there, I knew, but I didn't know that he
was one of the first ones.

The last time I saw Ludwig was in Milwaukee. He
came there to give a lecture, which 1 attended, and after-
wards we got together. I asked him up to our apartment,
and he said he would be delighted to come providing nobody
else was there but ourselves. He said "I'd like to spend
the evening with you, but I really haven't the energy to
see other people." Well, of course, I agreed to that,
very much to the disappointment of some friends v;ho
LuTifortunately knew that I v;as going to ask him up. They
didn't know, of course, whether he would accept or not. I
Just happened to mention that I hoped that after the lecture
he would come up to the apartment, but after I promised
Lewisohn that I wouldn't have any guests, I had to explain
to them. In spite of that, when I looked out the window,
I saw they were driving up and down the street, apparently,
in hopes that they might get invited in. So we had the
evening together. It was very pleasant, and that's the
last time that I saw him. [tape off]

Of course, one's life is not made up by any means of
simply your experiences or observations or of people
you've met or anecdotes or that sort of thing. 1 feel so
strongly that the interest of living is also in the life

555

of the mind. I think for most of my life I've had the
very definite sensation or feeling that we live between
two worlds. We have a Januslike structure. We're looking
to two directions — the outer world and the inner world.
The meaning is dependent upon a rich experience in both
directions. The magnitude of that sort of an approach
began to almost appall me when I came to the consciousness
that I could put it into that form, that figure, that the
two are so absolute in their mystery and profixndity. The
few times that I have suggested that idea to other people,
I seem to get little sympathy or understanding. I think
everybody v;ould agree that they have certain experiences,
certain revelations, something that all of a sudden becomes
real to them and from then on through their life has
meaning. I believe that people have that without realizing
the importance sometimes. They think it's slight and
maybe a passing thing; whereas, if they grasp it, really
would discuss it, they might find it to be an opening
wedge to some new development or new line of thought or
something important.

Something happened the other evening which is rather
a case in point. It's the sort of a thing which I think
may be somewhat analogous to Joyce's idea of an epiphany.
We were at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner, and I was talking to
Stephanie Holton, Firs. Cyril Holton, our hostess, and she
was speaking of Henry Forman and regretting his loss because

556

he was a charming and valued friend. Among other things,
she said "I think he was a very balanced man, don't you?"
And I didn't say anything. For some reason that remark
seemed to stir up something I didn't know exactly what
it was, so I didn't answer right away.

And she said, "Are you there?" [laughter]
I said, "Yes, I'm here. I agree. He was a very
well-balanced person." But what happened was that, like
a projection on a screen, that word "balanced" seemed
to stir up something almost like resentment. The first
thing I saw in this amorphous sort of vision was the
balance in this use of the metaphor and it went back to
childhood where the statehouse had a woman with the
handkerchief tied over her eyes and holding a pair of
scales in one hand and a sword in the other. The scales
made me think of other simple mechanisms that have played
such a vastly important part in the history of any culture,
such as the wheel. But the first things that came to my
mind on this movie screen were things like the plumb line,
a weight on a cord. It might at first be some natural
cord like a horsehair or vine to form a string or a thread,
and on that put a weight; so you had the plumb line and the
plumb bob. And another thing that came to mind was the
spirit level. It occurred to me that the spirit level
was a pretty advanced instriiment compared to the other
two, but then I could see that it wasn't at all difficult

557

from the very beginning — to construct something quickly
and fairly easily which would establish the horizontal
right angle to the plumb line. So the ideas of the vertical
and the horizontal and balance become metaphors that
enter into our descriptions and our evaluations of other
people. We say that he is an "upright" person, or he's
"on the level," [laughter] and, of course, he's "well
balanced. "

But recent events really enter into this. Supposing
you were to take a trip to the moon someday or maybe to
some greater distance in outer space. What meaning does
verticality have out there? What meaning does being on
the level then have? And how are your balances going to
work out there? Tne metaphor has disappeared, and we have
got to think in different terms.

In the first place I feel that imbalance is more
interesting than balance. Man gets an "insane desire"
to fly. Then when he succeeds nothing will do but he must

keep going to "the ends of nowhere." His obsession,

imbalance, leads him to harness a terrific amount of energy
which in turn enables him to create a fantastic imbalance
that thrusts him on his way.

Another subject I would like to mention, Stephanie
Holton talked about education. She has always been deeply
concerned about the education of her two daughters.
Conversation turned to philosophy. She said, "Oh, that's
a very hard subject." And I said, "No. It's not at all

558

a hard subject." Then it was time for the speaker, and
our conversation ended. I don't suppose we would have
carried it very far anyway, but I would have maintained
that from early childhood the sense of wonder and hunger
for understanding causes us all to "philosophize," and
is not in essence working for a doctorate.

I recall a quotation that for many years has interested
me. It's from Goethe and he says: "He who has not art
and has not science, let him religious be. He who has art
and has science, religion too has he." That's my memory
of the quotation. I don't know if it's always translated
that way. I don't know why I suddenly think of it. As
a teenager, I was interested in religion. My mother was
also, but my father was not so much ao until much later.
He had become rather agnostic. I had to go through the
struggle of thinking my way out of religious problems. I
feel I was fortunate in that I never completely threw
religion out the door and simply said, "Well, it's all
nonsense, don't you know. I'm an atheist and that's the
end of it." That seems to me to evade the problem. I
think that in this quotation from Goethe is a clue to an
approach which I have found meaningful. Of course, the
result is that in discussions some people put me do^^m as
a rank atheist and others say, "Well, after all, Myron,
I think you're rather a religious person, aren't you?"
So far as thinking of subjects themselves as being difficult,

559

I think that is a very harmful attitude. Take philosophy,
which in the Western world has become to such a large
extent in the minds of many people an academic subject,
something that you have to take courses in and get a
degree in and you have to read things that are abst37use
to explain it and expound on it. It seems to me it's
ruinous to what ought to be a very valuable feeling towards
thought. Take any experience that you have. To go back to
my extremely early childhood, one of my earliest memories
is that I was rather disconcerted by the apparent auto-
matic movement of my feet when I had learned to walk.
I can remember distinctly toddling along with these gigantic
figures of my father and my mother behind me. And what
was happening then was to be continued and is being con-
tinued through my life. In other words, at two and a half
or three years old — whatever I was — I was already a
young Cartesian, [laughter] In other v/ords, I had begun
to wonder at the relation of mind and body, of spirit and
matter, though I had no words for it. But I was experiencing
something that would eventually lead to verbalizing the
problem and sometimes to talk about them.

My father was an excellent man to discuss things with.
He might not have the slightest idea of what I was talking
about, but he was patient in trying to find out what I
was driving at, and in that way he contributed more to my
education than anybody in my life. He cultivated a feeling

560

for dialogue. But in any other form of thought or
experience, the same sort of thing would happen. You'd
have mathematics or sciences or mechanics.

I can remember when I was a child, I saw in my
picture book an illustration of some little Indians out
with their bows and arrows and I thought that was fascinating,
but I couldn't quite malce it out because I'd never seen a
bow or an arrow; I didn't know anything about them. The
Indians apparently had some strange object which they could
shoot with. So somebody explained to me that that was the
arrow and that they put it in a bow and the bow being
springy, why, it made the arrow fly through the air. That
was a fascinating idea. I wanted to do that myself, but
I had no experience in bows and arrows and only had a veiy
slight conception to work with. It had this strange
shape. One part was curved, and apparently the string
bent it into an arc. And they said the substance of the
bow was springy wood. Well, that idea of springiness
seemed to convey something, so I hunted around the place
and eventually I found a piece of very stiff wire that
was springy. I tied a string to the ends of the wire,
and sure enough, it bowed out. But the placing of the
arrow was a bit of a mystery to me. It's curious what a
struggle I had in getting the principle of laying the
arrow against the bow and then pulling it out and letting
it go. Once it was shown to me, I felt like an idiot.

561

that I hadn't seen it in the first place. But after all,
I was working on very little experience and information
and nothing but a diagram of shapes to v/ork on. Well, of
course, mechanics and mathematics are extremely difficult,
but it ' s far more important that you experience them than
to just know about them from a book. I felt that deeply
in my teaching.

Some years ago, I started a monthly talk on art.
Well, if you have slides, it's not too hard to keep people
interested in an art talk, with a little good sense and
sympathy. But I wanted to go a little bit further,
because even people to whom I talked and who had taken
courses in art appreciation were in the same boat as people
in many other fields. In other words, they ax'e leax-niiig
about something. They're not learning the experience. The
only thing that I can liken it to that seems to convey
much of what I have in mind is that there's a great dif-
ference between reading a cookbook and eating a good
dinner. If you have somebody who can prepare a fine
dinner for which you have appreciation, you have something
that is important. A cookbook is a fine thing, but you
can read a cookbook till the cows come home, and you
won't know a good food from inferior food or have a taste
for good cuisine; and you're still hungry. You only kno\v
about the subject. In literature and in art, m.any people
suffer in this same way. Again I think that is something

562

in which they have not outgrown their school experiences.
So they say, "Well, you know Coleridge said this about
so-and-so. Or a contemporary critic said so-and-so about
this work. "

"But how did you experience the thing?" Very often,
in extremely simple people, you have revelations; if you
only could forget what has formed you and simply in all
■innocence watch what's going on. The fact is, I paraphrase
the saying of Jesus, "Unless you become as a little child,
you shall in nowise enter the kingdom of art. " When it
comes to the creation of art, I also claim that it is a
kingdom that "cannot be burglarized." As Emerson says,
"It's better never to read a book than by so doing be
warped from your own orbit."

Years ago 1 served on a jury in Los Angeles. It
was composed, excepting myself, of women. It was an
experience I'm glad to have had. It gave me an insight
into the workings of a court and the law, Justice, and
so forth in this country, which I hadn't had an opportunity
to see firsthand before. The jury was composed of
intelligent women, most of whom were well-to-do and well
educated. In every way you could feel that they belonged
to a class well above the average. But there v/as one who
was a very simple woman. She was middle-aged, and she
apparently was not a native because she still had some
accent. It may have been a German accent. She was quiet-

563

mairaered but in the jury room, as the discussion and the
argument went on I realized little by little that several
times the person who really understood this case was this
woman. She didn't belong to any privileged class whatso-
ever, either in education or from the point of view of
money. But she had iinder standing. She had feeling. She
had humanity. She had a sense of what is right and Just.
She stood out little by little in this sophisticated group.
There were several cases in which Negro lawyers represented
litigants, and I was impressed by their self-control,
their dignity. They were articulate and good thinkers.
You're inclined to think of their talents running to theater
and entertainment or to fields that are not characterized
by qualities you think of as necessary to being really a
fine lawyer, [tape off]

SCHIPPEES: Many times you've mentioned off tape — why
you saw so many writers in Paris instead of artists.
NUTTING: Yes. Of course, it's not quite as true as the
talk so far would suggest, because after all I was working,
and naturally I went to exhibitions, to schools, to
gatherings. I was one of the founders of the Paris-
American Society of Painters and Sculptors, but I didn't
belong to any other art society. I think I told you about
that and about getting our American ambassador to open
a show for us. But I think I had less of that sort of
thing than my artist friends.

564

I don't know exactly how to explain it except that
I liked the contact with another world. I liked my
thought to impinge on fields of thought that weren't in
common with the one in which I was working. I found it
very enriching.

But also there was another reason, and [that has to do
with] what I said about attitudes towards school and the
effect of school and how I think that we ought to really
outgrow our school. It shouldn't dominate us as much as
it seems to with a great many people. They stop [growing]
after they've graduated, and their thought seems to go
around too much in circles. There should be more courage
in exploring your ideas, even if they don't seem very
sound. At least it's more wholesome, I think, to live a
creative life.

One of the experiences that I had as a boy was
getting used to an idea that I found rather difficult. I
always had great respect for people who knew things,
maybe sometimes a little bit too much. A few times I
suffered by trying to be a follower and not trusting my
own intuitions enough. If I had brought up my own feeling
and intuition and given it expression, I'd have gotten
more out of my teacher than by simply saying, "Oh, well,
I don't know anything yet. I must follow him. I must
understand what he does, what he says. That must be right,
and he knows more than I do."

565

But along with this respect came another development,
along with my religious struggles, as a teenager and also
with my ambition to have as well developed a mind as I
could attain within my limitations. Up to that time, I
had gotten the idea as a youngster that in some mysterious
way, education was something in itself. To this extent —
that a person who was learned or experienced in one field
would have some sort of a natural overlapping into other
fields of thought. A little bit of that, of course, is
in the old-fashioned idea that you should study things
gust to train your mind, Just for sheer discipline, that's
that, and you became educated. Of course, that is ob-
viously not true. I even thought at one time that

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that it must be a development of the spirit in some way
that would lead to deeper understanding and make you a
greater soul in every way, which meant that your sense of
values in -other fields would be much more worthwile —
more correct, if you like — more accurate. When I dis-
covered that that was not at all true, I was very much
disappointed.

Well, another thing rather impressed me early in the
game. It was that in the field of literature you apparently
have the expression by the great writers of all facets of
life, all forms of life, which to a large extent is true.
But when I discovered that because you could appreciate

566

Homer and Shakespeare, it did not mean that the work of
Rembrandt and Michelangelo automatically also became open
books, I was really quite amazed and felt that there was
something wrong about it. I think to a certain extent
there is, but not too much. I did begin to feel that a
writer had a wonderful medium as an artist, that you get
a vision of life, insights, which are impossible to get
■in any other way. But they're not the only ones. One
mustn't be at all disturbed because they may be extremely
common and ordinary in their reactions to things that you
think important and that to you have meant very much.
Some of the writing, even of the criticism of their own
work, will say things which as an artist, to me, don't

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that the way to describe moonlight — I've forgotten Just
how it goes — has something to do with the reflection of
light off a bottle lying in the water, it's suggestive,
but it's only a technique and out of some context easily
becomes absurd. It has little to do with moonlight. If
I see the glint of a beer can in a creek, I don't think
it necessarily means moonlight. If I'm walking out at
night, it may be moonlight, but it might be something else
quite different. It's symbolism that is really not
of any great value. But I think it is quite suggestive
to the young writers, that you don't go on trying to
exhaust your vocabulary on the qualities of moonlight.

567

It is a veiy definite experience. A book I haven't read
for a great many years — and I think I'll have to reread
it because, I think, to a certain extent it has value,
maybe more than I think — is Tolstoy's book on art, What
Is Art . I think it illuminates Tolstoy probably a lot
more than it does any question of art, especially when he
talks about the visual arts. Russia, with very few
exceptions, has had little influence in painting and sculpture
comparable to her contributions in literature and music.
Her Kandinskis, Chagalls and Soutines found themselves in
foreign climes. Of course, the book was written after
he'd gotten a certain bias. So here was a man with a
tremendous insight and a great artist, but not a man who

who was practicing an art which was not his own. So I
learned to accept my limitations and be resigned to a
place at best on the periphery of things. For instance I
have to sadly admit myself an outsider in much of modern
music.

I said that I entered the field of drawing and
painting, not altogether willingly, because I was questioning
and somewhat skeptical, largely because I did not know
people who valued it very greatly and who, at most, thought
that it was something that was all very nice and a good
thing to know about and that it represented some refinement
of culture which is important to people with education;

568

but it wasn't of vital importance in real life. And I
think that has really been the American tradition up to
fairly recently. Now, it's miich less so. So my interests
as a youth v;ere, and to a large extent still are, diverse.
I still think that it's a very wholesome idea to consider
the artist fundamentally as a maker. Unless you feel
that his primary function in life is as one who makes
things, you can't get very far in understanding what he
does beyond that. It is the central objective — the
experience of making something, of making something grov;,
of putting materials together, or of constructing something.
Any activity begins that v/ay. Joyce, in spite of being
helpless with his hands, called himself Dedalus and .
likened himself to a watchmaker, and I feel he v;as quite
right to do so. But. it began not because he was fond of
watches but because as a child there was a [sense of the]
magic of words and a love of fitting them together with
infinite patience and great finesse. Most children have
it, as a matter of fact, and there's something that I
really can get quite warm about. That is the atrophy in
the growing child of his sense of metaphor and his sense
of graphic symbolism. The youngster has them, but little
by little, his language flattens out into stereotype
expressions and his drawing, which might be full of
vitality and excitement becomes blighted. As a child he
happily "makes" things in line and color. This happens
along about the age of nine, ten or at most eleven, then

569

you'll find that all of a sudden he becomes timid. And
when they become adults and you try to teach them some-
thing about drawing, they say, "Oh, I have no talent." It
simply means that they have buried their talent and for-
gotten where they left it, but it's there all the time.
But so far as any use of it is concerned, it's more a
question of atrophy than anything else. Extended, it
becomes simply a commentary on civilization and education,
which gets you into some very fascinating but awfully
deep water. Well, there are, of course, exceptions.
There have been many writers who have lived a very rich
sort of life and who have even had ambitions in the other
arts. Thackeray's ambition to be a painter is evident in
his writing. And although he didii't draw so awfully well,
he drew very interestingly, and I think it's too bad they
didn't allow him to illustrate his own books as he wanted
to. But the most they would let him do was for him to
make his sketches. Then they'd get somebody else to do
the drawing from his sketches, but his own sketches were
often delightful. I think nowadays he would illustrate
his own books just as Thurber did. Other painters have
had ambitions in graphic art and in music and in the
sciences. To me, it's rather impressive the extraordinary
number of writers and even musicians who began in fields
like medicine. Fritz Kreisler, if I'm not mistaken, was
a graduate in medicine, and he maintained an interest all

570

his life in it. All artists — although it may be simply
the art of using and putting together of words and the
fascination they have with that — are makers and very often
are very fine makers in other fields. They can use their
hands; they love to build, to make, to construct — a certain
contact with the outer world. But by and large I think
that American and British writers have not had too much
feeling or at times even respect for the painter. They
don't feel that his medium is one which means too much.
As in the case of Tolstoy, they looked upon the painting
as an image, as an illustration in which you took actual
things from nature and in some way made them a symbol
of something else. But that strange ambiguity which the
painter has always been conscious of — the difference
between the appeal of the image and the appeal of the
thing itself — is something they very seldom understand,
and yet it's vastly important. It's quite obvious in
some forms, like music, for example. It's not at all
difficult even for people who Eire not too musical to
realize that music is something which is of intrinsic
appeal and that program music is not of the highest order.
They may not feel that way, but they can see the argument
and admit it. But it cannot be so easily understood in
the field of painting. When you look at the image, you're
not looking at the painting, and when you're looking at
the painting, you're not looking at the image. That is

571

pure nonsense to most really very highly cultivated people
who have not been too much influenced by a field such as
that of painting. They may feel it to a certain extent
in more abstract forms and in qualities of architecture,
of good taste in furnishings and other things. But the
relationship between what the picture is about and what
the picture i_s, is something that, once it is recognized,
one feels has been the struggle of the artists through
the ages. It derives from the fact that like all the
activities, it must have some sort of social value, and
people v/ant pictures; and they want pictures of things.
So on that basis, the artist will go ahead and find a field.
Some of the Renaissance painters, for example, were not
even x-eligj-ous, but there was a demand for the religious
painting; and they expressed religious ideas very well.
But the fiindamental drive or stimulus to become a painter,
was not the fact that it was religion that they were
interested in, but it was simply because they loved painting.
That was all. I think that somewhat the same is true
of a surgeon. Although he does wonderful work for us in
the field of surgery and his contributions have been
invaluable. The doctor is often one of the highest
types of mind in the devotion, sacrifice and dedication to
their work. It began not with the idea that they wanted to
help somebody, but with the thing itself, which is so
amazing. As a boy, when his pet cat or dog or little animal

572

broke a leg, maybe he found that he could put a splint
on it. "Isn't that wonderful? If I'd do that, the bone
will grow together. It's fascinating. I must knov/ more
about that." And maybe for the time being, he forgets all
about his little animal in the miracle of this thing
happening. Or if he cuts into the form and finds a
tendon and how it pulls here and there, he thinks, "My
•this is an amazing mechanism. How astonishing. " Then
when it gets in disorder, like a kid who wants to fix his
car or something, he wants to put this together again so
it will work. And from that will grow some activity on
his part of tremendous social value, but basically it's
an extremely simple wonder at something that is happening
in one worxu arounu us.

A person who is musical will find a very deep experience.
Santayana said something about the composer and the musician.
How did he put that? It's something about the composer
being one who philosophizes in music, and the musician
being a philosopher in sound. That wasn't the way he put
it, but that roughly was the idea. If I remember rightly,
Robert Burns, who had a fine sense of word rhythms and
combinations in his verse, was a person who couldn't tell
one tune from another. I remember reading once that he
was very unmusical, which seems very strange because
poetry seems so closely allied to music — it's the music
of words as v;ell as its appeal through imagery.

573

Well, I think the interest that I've always had in
writers and people v;ho v/ere interested in literature was,
to a large extent, because I envy them. Although I scribble
memoranda and notes on all sorts of things, I promptly
lose them. As we have observed, I really ought to have
a vast amount of material from the period I have been
talking about, but I don't seem to be able to find it. I
find all sorts of worthless stuff that I can't make any
use of; a little bit of organization would have meant
quite a lot. It does lead one to understand that sometimes
an activity which may seem very shallow to a person in one
field is really a very, very deep experience to another.
The field of painting is especially that way. For the vast
majority of people, it's a picture; it's a piece of wall-
paper. I don't object to that because it's something that
pleases them; it symbolizes something. But there is no
realization that as the musician philosophizes, the painter
does too. If one could respond, if your receptivity to art
and to thinking v/ere sufficiently delicate, I think you'd
very likely find that Spinoza and Rembrandt, who were
somewhat contemporary, were also somewhat alike in stature
and significance. It's one of the ways, one of the paths,
the tao of experience. That is the reason why I alv/ays
argue that it's not some sense of values you can set up for
the thing itself v/hich are independent of the man who made
it, because it ' s an activit;)'- or a product v;hich is really

574

a by-product of what is really important — that he has
traveled through a country and, as it were, has left a
record of it which makes us realize that he sometimes
traveled in a marvelous country. It's a countiy that we
don't see — he did! But when we read what he wrote, when
we hear what he plays, or when we see what he makes a
symbol of, in some strange way we get reverberations from
this far-off world that's very exciting, very thrilling.
And it may be something that to one person seems very
unimportant. When a man like [Jean Henri] Fabre, a country
school teacher, went out to watch the ants, many may have
thought him crazy, but maybe he was having a tremendous
revelation through that. To a small- town mind, he must
have seemed an unmitigated nut.

TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE OKE
February 1-4-, 1966

NUTTING: Besides the introductions that we had to people
in Paris through the publication of Atys , I found that
there was a club in Paris called the American Art
Association in the Rue Joseph-Bara and I met an American
•painter who was a member. He took me around one evening
and proposed me as a member. So I took down a canvas to
show, as they asked me to do, with some others who wanted
to be members of the club. And I was voted in. While
in Paris I was a member. It was a very nice place.
Frederick Frieseke, the painter, did the most in keeping
it going mccxy uecause ne was a -Lrienu- ox xaenjamin jiltmaii
who owned the B. Altman Department Store. Altman was very
generous in supporting the association. It was a very nice
apartment with a billiard room and comfortable furnishings.
It had a place not only large enough for meetings but also
large enough for small exhibitions. Most of the members
were older painters, somewhat to the distress of Frieseke.
He wanted to get in more of the younger artists, but the
older ones were interesting to me because some names I
had known since my early boyhood. One was Alexander
Harrison. I used to get from the library in St. Paul
the volumes of Richard Muther's History of Modern Art.
I would read one volume, take it back, and get the next
volume. And I think I must have gone through that

576

histoiy "two or three times, and among the American painters
that he mentioned v;as Alexander Harrison. At one time the
painting of his in the Corcoran Gallery in Washington,
called The Wave, had made him famous. Also he had won
quite a lot of acclaim at one time in Paris where he spent
most of his life.

His brother, Birge Harrison, came back to America.
In his day, he was a v;ell-known landscape painter, though
pretty \\rell forgotten now. As a matter of fact so is
Alexander Harrison. However, to be sitting next to Harrison
at dinner, I found rather exciting. Here was a man I had
read about and I had seen his pictures in books and in
art magazines. To know him personally I found quite thrilling,

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what we speak of now as modern art — the influence of the
Fauves and the rise of such men as Picasso and Derain,
Matisse and others — v;as very far along its way. So it was
interesting that the old gentleman would say, "Oh, yes.
Yes. I think there's some very remarkable work being done
in modern art." I commenced to wonder what in the world
he would find interesting in it, because his success went
way back to about 1890, maybe the eighties. He said, "I
myself don't use broken color, but I've seen things in
broken color I've thought were veiy interesting." So the
Impressionists were the last word in modern art! From
then on, apparently he wasn't aware of anything happening.

577

I'd ask him if he was painting anything. "Oh, yes, gust
touching up some old canvases." Everyday he would walk
past our place to the Lion de Belfort which is qi:^ite a
long walk.

Another man who was at that time — or had been previous-
ly — a very successful painter and was looked upon as one
of the most important of our painters was Frederick Frieseke.
Again I doubt if his name is known to many people now. He
received, I think, a gold medal or something in San Fran-
cisco and he had gotten other big prizes. At one time, he
was looked upon as one of our most important American
painters. But his reputation was also commencing to dim
as he was replaced by other rising generations of Americans.
He lived in Paris and had a very nnce apartment there. He
also had a country place in Brittany.

The Negro painter, H. 0. Tanner, was another who in
those days was very well known. And before World War I,
I suppose he was by far the best known American Negro
painter in this country. He was a pupil of Benjamin
Constant and had an austere academic training, but it
developed some quite nice qualities in him as a painter.
He got away from the old salon kind of painting into
something that was really painterly, fine in color. He
was fond of doing biblical subjects. He did other things
besides. One of his canvases is owned by the museum here
in Los Angeles, Daniel in the Lions' Den . I haven't seen

578

it for a good many years. Apparently, they keep it in the
cellar, which I don't think is altogether right because
for that sort of thing, it is very good. And I think if
you're going to have pictures on show, you should have
[those with] intrinsic interest and value, but also [those
that] will give a person an idea of the development and
history of American art. And the paintings of men like
Tanner should be represented by at least one work. A
good many other painters, of course, are in the same
category, and the museum may own' many that from my point
of view ought to be accessible to the public interested in
American art.

The Irish painter, Roger O'Connor, was also a member.

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writers — as well as painters. He lived in Paris. When I told
Roger Fry, sometime later, in St. Tropez where we stayed
in the same hotel. (I used to have conversations with him
and I mentioned O'Connor), Roger Fry seemed to have quite
an admiration for his painting, though he didn't represent
anything especially modern. It's just very genuine,
very good work. And I told Roger Fry that O'Connor had
decided that Derain was a very talented painter. Roger
Fry said, "Oh, I'm so pleased." [laugher] That was a
funny way of saying that O'Connor had come around to
recognizing the talent of someone so modern as Andre Derain.
Another extremely able painter, and a very interesting

579

man, was Eugene Paul Ullman who had had quite a lot of
success in the days before World War I. He was living
in Paris an4 painting. He interested me for more reasons
than one. Most painters can talk about painting and its
theory, but Ullman happened also to be a man who loved
the craft, the technique of painting, more than most
anyone that I knew at that time. He understood all the
processes that had been used, for example, the various
ways in which egg tempera could be combined with oil
painting as a preparatory process in the making of a
picture. It is an ancient idea, revived later, and now
it's quite common. But, then, painters apparently didn't
think very much of doing it. So I painted a couple of
lax'ge canvases more or less using techniques suggested by
Ullman.

Ullman also loved the idea of the club. He enjoyed
the club and was a regular attendant and a great talker,
but he thought that we weren't doing enough in the way of
exhibitions. He said we had enough talent in Paris among
the American painters to have much more important repre-
sentation than we were having especially in group shows.
The result was that we formed a small association; the
Association of Paris-American Painters and Sculptors, I
think was the name we gave it (it was rather a long one).
That was towards the end of my stay in Paris. It was
about three years that we kept it up; I came back to this

580

country and others went elsewhere, and I don't knov; that
it was kept up as a club. It may have been reformed,
reorganized. I know they have an American artists' club
there, and it may be very much the same thing, in idea at
least.

I already told of the opening of our first show of
the society when I got our ambassador to come down and
open the show. Well, that was my principal chance of
associating with mature painters, and in many ways it
meant quite a lot. Among other painters was Harold
English. He was also a member of this group that we formed,
a Los Angeles painter who died here some years ago. But he
was quite prolific and in many ways an able painter. I did
not become a member of any French society that I can think
of or, at least, nothing of any importance. Small groups,
temporary sort of affairs would be formed. There was one
that had, I thought, a rather silly name — the Arc-en-ciel,
which means the rainbow. Why a group of painters should
be called the "Rainbow" I couldn't quite see. But somebody
had some idea that the promise of better things, a rainbow
in the sky after the war, and that sort of thing would be
symbolic and that we should sort of herald the dawn of
better times. The group that formed the Rainbow was not
especially important, but I enjoyed showing with them at
a nice gallery.

Most of my contacts were with what might be called

581

sort of constellations of people, most of whom were
literary people. Probably Lewisohn represented more of
that sort of thing to us than anybody else, because he
seemed to have many more people at his evenings, not only
the ones who were living in Paris but those who happened
to be passing through would be invited up to his apartment.
The first apartment that he had v/as exactly like ours,
which gave a very large room. It was through him that I
met a great many people that I wouldn't have otherwise
gotten acquainted with, at least not so quickly. I met
people like Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser and some
Europeans — [Josef] Hoffmann, the Austrian architect, and
Joseph Vood Krutch. I didn't know Joseph Wood Ki*utch's

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very much. But he was a stimulating man to meet. I had
a really very delightful conversation with him. I've
forgotten the subject, but the flavor of that talk I have
never forgotten.

Hoffmann, the architect, was very interesting and
his ideas of painting seemed to me so very good. He tried
to present the idea that a good painting had a certain
consistency of make or of texture that will go through
the whole thing, and the lack of that was one of the
first things that one felt, even without knowing what might
be the fault of a bad painting. It has since been
expressed, and I think quite well, as "equalized tension."

582

Well, I've met people who quarrel with that because it's
borrowed from physics. But I think it suggests very much
what Hoffmann had in mind, and what I find to be a very
sound idea in the consideration of painting per se and of
a man who has a sense of painting and v;ho says something
directly through the medium of painting and not simply
through the representation of a symbol, a landscape painting,
a still life, a group, a scene, or historical picture in
which you have a substitute for seeing the thing in nature.
Those things can be very ma37velously rendered and have
been done by people who make very fine illustrations. But
then you come to the thing which is the real painting and
this quality, v/hich I speak of Just now as equalized
tensxon because -l can t j-inu. any ueuoer expression lor lo
than that, was one of the things that I got from Hoffmann.

Another of the marvelous things about those gatherings
in Paris at places like Lewisohns and Victor Llonas sind
Galantlere and others was that people seemed to get
together to exchange ideas more than I've ever experienced
since. Now we have some quite interesting discussions at
gatherings here, but we haven't that sense of everybody
trying to throw some ideas into the ring and let them
impinge one against the other as one would have at those
gatherings in Paris. And we got into that quite quickly,
curiously enough.

There is one man whose name I've been trying to find.

583

but I can't find it. It'll come to me because I remembered
it a while ago, but I forgot to jot it dovm. Oh yes, it
was Mercereau. He was in the literary world as a critic;
I don't know if he made any fame for himself as a creative
writer, but in publishing and in book reviewing, criticizing,
he was well known in Paris. His apartment was small, and
I thirJc that's the most vivid thing I remember about it.
The people who used to come to his weekly afternoons were
extremely interesting people and just listening to the talk
going on around you was well worthwhile. But the apartment
was so small and the gatherings sometimes were so big
that you never had a chance to sit down. They v/eren't
cocktail parties. At the home of one of our friends, it was

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others, Italian vennouth and seltzer water and a cracker
might be all you would have in the way of refreshment.
People didn't go to them to drink. They didn't expect
cocktails; they went because they wanted to see people,
and they wanted to exchange ideas and get together. I
didn't experience that so much in Italy, and in Germany
I was too much of a stranger to know. By the time I got
to Paris, though, I got some understanding of European
life, and probably in some ways entered into it much
more easily. But I did notice that the great difference,
for example, betv;een England and France is that in England
you haven't the same chance to know interesting people.

584

The Englishman is more dependent upon his club^ and he's
also somewhat more aloof in his social relationships.
But in Paris, you did meet people, partly due to habit
of having afternoons in which you received people without
any obligation to extend any expensive hospitality. If
you wanted to drop in, it was fine, once you had the
entree to somebody's salon. The other habit we had there,
after a day's work, especially around the Quarter, was
wandering down the street to get an aperetif at the Dome
or Rotonde or the Closerie des Lilas or wherever you liked.
You wouldn't be sitting there very long before you'd
see a friend pass by and he would sit down and have a
chat. You might wind up with a group and would have a
wonu.erxuj. time bexore dinner, talking things over. So
that and these gatherings in people's homes contributed
a great deal [to knowing people]. There was more of that
sort of thing, as I say, than I have experienced before
or since.

The principal homes to visit that I can think of
offhand would be those of people like the Victor Llonas, the
Joyces, the Lewisohns and the Galantleres. They had
larger gatherings than most people, except the Joyces,
who never had many. Joyce did not seem happy with many
people aroiind. If he had an evening in their apartment
with a half-a-dozen people, he was content. He enjoyed
himself and he made everybody else enjoy themselves,

585

because in his quiet way, he was full of fun. He liked
to dance a jig, and he loved to sing funny songs, and he
loved to listen an.d malce funny comments.

Speaking of the American Art Association, our art
club in Paris, the fact is that many of the members v;ere
or had been very well-known painters. One member, though
he didn't attend gatherings too often, was Waldo Pierce.
Waldo Pierce seems to have made himself quite a fixture
as a really significant painter in American art. I notice
whenever he has any exhibition or mention in the art
magazines, there's considerable respect. Although he's
not representative of any of the modern movements, he's
felt to be a very genuine and certainly a very amusing man.
iic was very wiuoy. ±±b was, ix j. m nou miLSuaxCsn, a Cj-ass—
mate of George Biddle's at Harvard. And he v/rote ballads
that were very colorful and quite a lot of fun. For some
time probably the most interesting gatherings — at least
they were most varied — were the ones at Ford Madox Ford's
studio. He also took a studio apartment which gave him
a very large room and a nice place to have gatherings.
I never was there when there seemed to be any complications,
but after coming back to Paris, I found that he wasn't
having his parties in his studio anymore. He had made
arrangements with a bistro. I've forgotten the address
of it; Sylvia Beach may have possibly mentioned it in
her book. I forgot to look that up, but it seems to me she

586

did. Maybe Hemingway also mentions it in his book. Well,
some of the boys sometimes would drink a little too much
and then get a little out of hand and it was annoying to
the Fords, I suppose, and I don't suppose the neighbors
liked it too much if they got noisy. So having this
place on the off-night that they were closed made it quite
nice. It had a little balcony upstairs where they had
French accordion music, and they could dance or simply
talk or do as they pleased.

I have described one of his parties when he had the
Grand Duchess Marie present, one of Ford Madox Ford's
parties that I especially remember because of meeting
a very interesting person. We got to the party and Ford

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dance like hell. There are hardly any men here and so
many women." (It was early in the evening and the guests
hadn't all arrived.) "Come over here. I want to intro-
duce you to a genuine grand duchess." So he introduced
me to this slight, dark little person, and we danced and
talked for a while. She said that she, too, was trying
to write, and I said I thought that was a very interesting
thing to do indeed, and, was she writing in English? I
believe she said yes. Her English seemed to be very good,
and I gathered that she was being helped by Ford to put
her ideas into words. That wasn't a new thing, of course,
for Ford Madox Ford, because he and Conrad collaborated.

587

and I have an idea he must have been a great help to Joseph
Conrad in the beginning of his career as a novelist.
Well, I supposed that her writing was a novel or something
of that sort, but I discovered afterwards she was the
Grand Duchess Marie and that her book had quite a lot of
success, although maybe not because of literary merit
but because it was a very valid and interesting document.
It gave her quite a lot of fame, and from the way she
spoke, she needed the money. Whether she really did or
not I don't know.

Ford Madox Ford's wife, Stella Bowen, was an ac-
complished painter. I don't know whether she was a student
at the Slade School, but her drawing was good and was
somewhat reminiscent of Slade School draftsmanship. Stella
used to come around and we used to share the expense of
a model and practice drawing in the evenings at my studio.
Then after she and Ford Madox Ford parted, she kept the
apartment, which was also a studio apartment. But she
did not have as large gatherings. If I remember rightly,
it was Wednesday afternoon when she was at home and she
had very few [people in] . Ramon Guthrie and his wife and
ourselves were usually there, and there 'd usually be two
or three other people. The Russian painter, Pavel
Chelishev, was nearly always there. Pavel Ghelishev
was one of a group that called themselves the Neo-Romantics,
the chief members of it being Eugene Berman and Christian

588

Berard and Pavel Chelishev, Whether there were any
others that exhibited with them, I don't remember, but
they were the ones who were by far the best known.

Chelishev was quite an interesting man. He used
to bring Stella a drawing once in a while, and I used to
talk to him about the problems and the sort of thing he
was doing. Well, once, one of the guests was Edith Sitwell,
who had come over to Paris to give a lecture, and she
could talk of nothing else but this lecture and the
reception of it. I got the idea what disturbed her most
was that her readings and her talk hadn't stirred up any
conflicts or noise. I think she rather enjoyed having
some kind of a succes de scandale from the way she talked,
which seemed rather strange because she didn't look like
that sort of person. And, in the way she discussed
things, it wouldn't suggest she was out to scandalize
people. Well, she wanted to leave early, so I went out
with her to help find a cab. I walked v;ith her over to
the Boulevard Montparnasse. As we were walking to the
boulevard, we passed an art gallery and a beautiful Renoir
was in the window. I made some remark about it — "What a
beautiful canvas that is of Renoir that's in the window
there." To my disappointment, she didn't even turn her
eyes to look at it. I have often wondered since
whether [it was because] she didn't have any special
feeling for painting or whether she wasn't going to have
her attention directed by this uncouth American to what he

589

thought was art. I don't know if she thought me uncouth,
but sometimes you have a feeling English people think all
Americans have something strange about them. Hemingway
makes quite a lot of Ford Madox Ford's idea that an American
cannot be a gentleman. I think Robert Graves also has
some such idea in some of his writing, which isn't so
offensive as it sounds — at least I didn't find it so.

Our own place was quite a favorite; we used to have
a great many visitors on our days at home. Paul Burlin
also used to have interesting people. He was a witty
talker. People enjoyed him, I think, not so much for the
benefit of the conversation as it being so amusing. He
had a good critical sense in many ways, though, and his
uiscussions couj-u. u6 quioe interesting, wne o± one mosu
amusing things I remember at his place was a gathering of
people (I think we were all going to a costume ball
someplace, which were then so popular), and Paul had a
meeting at his studio before we went on to the ball. I
think the most striking figure in the party was Sholem
Asch, the writer and dramatist. He was a tall, Oriental-
looking person, and he had on an Oriental costume of
some sort, which was very becoming. He looked as near
like King Solomon, I think, as you can make up a man to
be for that sort of character. Sholem Asch's son became
a successful writer, but I don't remember meeting him,
although I met Sholem Asch several times. He was

590

articulate, pleasant, and loved to talk on all sorts of
subjects, which, incidentally, I think is sometimes not
true of talented people. Some don't always talk easily.
Joyce, for example, was often rather difficult to talk
to, just to sit down with and have a conversation. If he
felt in the mood and it was the right time of night,
his conversation might be wonderful, but then again, he
could sit with company by the hour and hardly say a word.
Joyce was once at Mercereau's apartment, where we used to
have to stand up because there were not enough chairs,
and if there were enough chairs, you wouldn't have room
enough to bend your knees because [laughter] we were so
close to each other. I don't think Joyce did any talking
at all, but he did have a chair in the little room in the
apartment. And this man's apartment was full of books
on bookshelves and there were stacks of books on the
floor and stacks of books on the chairs. He also had a
large collection (apparently it was something that
interested him very much) of all sorts of little objects
that are used in the church services, which included bits
of embroidered vestment and utensils of one sort and another.
Joyce sat and gazed at all these things, apparently in
considerable puzzlement. I couldn't make out exactly what
he was turning over in his mind, but apparently the fact
that this stuff which had been used in churches and in
sacred ceremonies of all sorts and of a very serious nature

591

should simply become objects to decorate the walls of a
critic's [apartment] for some reason seemed to malce quite
a deep impression on him. "Do you realize," and then
he went on in words to the effect that these had been
associated for years with the holy offices, and how here
they are Just objects of curiosity for people to use as
conversation pieces, or so they seemed to him. [tape off]

Another writer I knew was a Rumanian. His name was
[Konrad] Bercovici, a Rumanian by birth but an American
writer. He lived in Paris for about a year, if I
remember rightly. They were neighbors of Jan and Isabel
Hambourg, so we got to know them through the Hambourgs,
because we were quite warm friends of Jan and Isabel.
Ve met the Eercovicis at one of their evenings. After-
wards, we went to the Eercovicis for an evening, and my
wife left her umbrella. The next day I went to get the
umbrella, and I found Mrs. Bercovici out in the kitchen
having coffee. She invited me to have coffee, and we sat
down there in her kitchen, which was a very disorderly
kitchen. The remains of breakfast were all over the
table. She poured out some coffee, and we sat there and
had a long chat.

The Hambourgs really had a small group of friends.
Like some others, their home was rather restricted, but
they gave delightful dinners. Isabel Hambourg was, I
think, a schoolmate — at least she was an old and very

592

warm friend — of Willa Gather. I always regretted that I
never had a chance to meet Willa Gather, but so often
people would come to Paris when we were out of town. Ve
always went away in the summertime, and very often interesting
people would visit Paris in the tourist season or too
late in the spring for us to meet them. Also, I never
met John Quinn, and I would have liked to very much. I
had heard a lot about John Quinn before I knew Joyce,
because my first wife's sister had married John Kieffer,
whose brother was Quinn 's law partner. So she used to
hear quite a lot about Quinn in the early days when buying
modern art was a much more remarkable thing than it became
afterwards. But it made Quinn famous. He had all these
s orange piCuures ne uougiiu in -rans. .n.x oerwaru.s, Wj-i.en
Quinn became sort of a patron of James Joyce, I would liked
to have knoT-\na him, but I never had the chance. And that's
true of quite a number of people.

Genevieve Taggard I met in New York and got to know
her quite well. I did a portrait drawing of her. She
and her little girl were living in a very simple, very
cheap little apartment at the time. Her husband. Bob
Wolf, whom I afterwards knew in Paris, _ apparently was a
man of unusual gifts. He graduated, I think, summa cum
laude at Harvard but he lost his mind, and the last I
heard I was told he was in an asylum, leaving Genevieve
Taggard and her little girl, Marcia, to take care of

595

themselves. Well, of course, she did very well. She
taught in women's colleges, and her v/riting brought her
distinction. She came to Paris and was there for a short
time. I think what impressed me most about her was her
lack of being especially thrilled by or impressed by what
she saw, on what, I think, was her first visit to Europe.
To me everything was very exciting, but she took everything
so very calmly. She wasn't going to stay in Paris;
she was going to be there a short time and then she was
going to go down to the south of France to live with
somebody for a period to do some writing, do some work.
Except for letting herself get outrageously cheated by a
taxi driver, you'd thought she was an old-timer in Europe.
one wa.tj raoiicj." uxcLfac a.DuuL/ wiicto s. uiiuug,inj wcx'c xccixx^
thrilling things to see and do.

Richard and Lillian Wallace, of course, were our
oldest friends in Paris. We had become good friends
during our Roman days, and then during our stay in Paris,
we probably saw more of them than atnyone else. I never
knew anybody who was more liked by as great a variety
of people as Richard Wallace was. People of all temperaments
and social grades took to him. He had something about
him that was extremely attractive, and he was also a very
helpful man and was very kind. But that wasn't especially
the reason. He had something about him; there was a sort
of magnetism that seemed to influence people right away

59^

in his favor. He was quite helpful to the Joyces in many-
ways, and they thought a great deal of him. Gordon Craig
too profited by his good sense and business experience.
It seemed to me Craig had a genius for snarling up his
affairs. I don't remember that our circle of acquaintances
was especially enlarged through him... oh, yes, I can now
think of several instances. When I first went to Paris
and didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, whether to
enter Julian's or to go to some other academy, or what
steps to take to become a bona fide art student in Paris,
he said, "Why don't you go around to see Besnard's son-in-
law, Avy? I know him very well." So he gave me an intro-
duction to Avy, who was really an ex-son-in-law because he
and Besnard's dau<^hter were divorced = Bi.it Avv. a.-nriarentlv.
had considerable success. He was a graduate of the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts and a well-known painter. So I
went, and he was quite gracious. He told me about student
life in Paris and what he thought one ought to do. He
wanted me to bring some of my work around and let him see
it. Well, I'd just gotten to Paris, and all I had was
a portfolio of drawings and figure studies, and odds and
ends — small ones. But I took that around to show him,
and he looked at them. He said, "Yes, they're good
but too clever, far too clever!" [laughter] That
rather surprised me, because I didn't laiow they could
even be called clever. He said they were not only clever.

595

but were far too clever. Well, afterwards I knew what he
meant. He got out a "big portfolio of reproductions of
the drawings of Ingres and shov;ed them to me and said
that was what I should strive for as a model of drafts-
manship. If I could understand what Ingres was doing in
those drav;ings, I would then ufiderstand what I had to do
to become a real artist. That was not bad advice, as a
matter of fact. I accepted it and still would.

The Wallaces had a little place with a garden out
in the country for their weekends. We used to visit them
there quite often on weekends, and sometimes he would have
other guests. But as I say, I don't feel that many of
our friends really enlarged our circle of acquaintances
especially, but once in a while you'd meet somebody who
really would. There was one little Englishwoman who
would have her afternoons and teas and vms very fond of
having us come. She lived on the Ile-de-la-Cite and just
down the hall in the same building was a man who in his
way was important in the modern art movement, Emile Bernard.
He was one of the first to put in practice theories
developed by Gauguin of linear pattern and his flat color
to build on that. He was always there and was very pleasant,
and I saw some of his drawings, v;hich were very good but
not especially contemporary in style. They were rather
old-fashioned views of Paris and so forth. I never knew
that he had been a friend of Gauguin's and of Van Gogh's

596

and had corresponded with them. His letters have been
published, and now we see an increasing interest in him.
There was an exhibition, not long ago, of his earlier work,
and a critic pointed out that this young fellow in his
early twenties was in some ways way ahead of the other
members of the Pont-Aven group, [tape off]

The sculptor Emile Antoine Bourdelle I got to know
because I had occasion to call on him when a salon of
painters was founded, and he was vice president of the
group that started it. It was called the Salon des
Tuileries. I didn't know whether to submit anything or
not; from what I heard and read about it, it seemed they
were going to have a somewhat exclusive salon. They seemed
to have an idea that so many of the exhibitions in Faids
were so enormous that people got lost in them. So I had
an idea at first that this salon v/as going to be so
restricted that one \TOuld have little chance of acceptance.
However I called on Bourdelle and took some of my things
and asked him his honest opinion — was I in the category
of somebody for v;hom it would be worthwhile to submit to
the Salon des Tuileries? And he was very nice about it
and said he thought they would be interested and would
like to see my work. He suggested that I submit anyway,
which I did, and I got accepted.

The first exhibitions of the Tuileries were really
very fine ones. They showed many excellent painters. It

597

wasn't especially advanced. It was just modern painting
which was good without being what people usually speak of
as experimental.

Another sculptor who lived near us was Jo Davidson.
Jo Davidson was a very vital sort of a man. He was not
very tall and he had very bushy black whiskers which looked
fierce. But looking out of these bushy black whiskers,
his eyes had a gentle, almost sad sort of an expression,
and yet he was full of fun. He was a tremendously energetic
man, determined to be successful, and he was successful.
My mental picture of Jo Davidson is of a man with one hand
working vigorously modeling clay and with the other hand
holding a telephone receiver to his ear [laughter],
because he not only worked, but he was in contact with
every source that might be of any benefit to him. He had
a dealer in Paris, but the dealer wasn't finding
commissions fast enough for him; so he fired the dealer,
jumped on the boat and v/ent to New York and came back with
a whole raft of commissions. He did the whole thing
himself. "Stick to me, kid, and you'll wear diamonds,"
I remember him saying, when he took a girl out on the
floor to dance.

TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
February 21, 1966

NUTTING: One of the things that occurs to me more and
more as we go on with our work on this project is the
fact that there's a great deal of material which, if it
were put in the right place and the right context, would
he interesting. The problem seems to me to put it in
such a relationship so it forms part of the atmosphere and
the picture we're trying to present of Paris in the
twenties, and of our life there. If it were a book like
Stuart Gilbert ' s The Last Time _! Saw Paris , you would have
an artistic problem, not this rambling "stream of con-
sciousness" sort of thing.

But, of course, we're not doing a work of art exactly;
so it's bound to have, it seems to me, more or less, the
monotony of such things as diaries and journals. I noticed
a long time ago that when you start to read a diary or a
volume of someone's letters for a time, they're rather
boresome, but little by little there emerges an atmosphere
of a period or a personality comes to life such as with
the letters of Van Gogh, or Pepys ' diary, or Delacroix's
journal. All of them are fascinating if you have the
patience to really get into them, and then they become
really interesting. Well, that's, of course, a digression.

Before we went to Paris, we had a letter of introduction

599

to an English painter, Lowes Luard. I suppose it was a
French name originally — it doesn't sound English. But
he was very much an English gentleman in every way, in
education and manners. There was a rather amusing thing,
which I suppose is something that is dying out in England,
at least I gather it is. The person who gave us the letter
of introduction to him spoke of both him and his wife as
being warm friends. But what impressed me — although I
was more or less used to it — was that she was somewhat
apologetic about Mrs. Luard because her family was not
as good a family as her husband's because they had been
"in trade." [laughter] And that use of the expression
"in trade" I never quite got over, the feeling that
that should put you in a certain class. You might be a
very superior person and very nice, but you weren't quite
up to a person in another class.

Well, ai^yway, the Luards did turn out to be delightful
people. They had a grown daughter who was studying art
in one of the government schools of design. The things
that I saw that she did at that time were mostly textile
designs. The schools apparently gave very broad training
in art history and theory as well as in techniques. Our
own art schools, of course, have departments of that sort,
such as the excellent one of industrial design at the Art
Center here in Los Angeles.

Well, Mr. Luard was an excellently trained painter

600

and draftsman, and his especial fondness was for horses,
not in the sense of the hiinting scenes and the sort of
things of the Royal Academy, but he did excellent drawings,
paintir-gs and etchings of the drafthorses that they used
to have in the old days in Paris.

He was also a very articulate man. He was a delight
to talk to and to discuss things v/ith. And he published
quite a few articles of one sort and another. One contri-
bution that is interesting to anyone who is interested in
art education, especially the history of art education,
was a book that he published which was a translation of
some pamphlets by [Horace] Lecoq de Boisboudran, who was
a teacher, not at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but at
another of the government schools of arL. He was a
remarkable teacher, as is evidenced by the fact that he
had some remarkable pupils. Rodin was one of his pupils
and also Lhermitte, a man who is somewhat forgotten now
but who was a man of great ability.

Another man who was a pupil of his and who apparently
profited very much by his teaching was Alphonse Legros.
Legros is an interesting man, not only because he pro-
duced some interesting things as a painter, but because he
was a superb draftsman and his etchings very definitely
have a place in the history of printmaking. It would be
very hard to ignore him in writing a histoiy of the
graphic arts of the nineteenth century.

601

I think it was due to Whistler's influence that Legros
got the position of instructor of drawing at the Slade
School of Art in London. There he had a definite influence
on the succeeding generation in art education. Education
of the painter especially, in England up to that time,
was under the influence of such schools as the South
Kensington School and also of the Royal Academy. It was
■as I see it, and I don't think I'm wrong, really a German
influence. It was the influence of "dear" Albert (Victoria's
consort), v;ho was interested in cultural matters, and I
think he had quite a lot to do v;ith the South Kensington's
curriculum of art.

The Germans of that period had their national and
government schools and acadeiuies which were very well-
advanced and were very influential, hut the idea of drawing
was one of extremely laborious copying skill and minute
representation. Of course, a most interesting aspect of
German art is its graphic art, ever since the days of
Holbein and Mrer. They have made great contributions
in engraving and printmaking. Unfortunately South Ken-
sington imported some nineteenth century German ideas of
art education. It wasn't helped too much by the teaching
of Ruskin, though Ruskin himself did some rather beautiful
drawing.

In art school in those days kids had to sit before
a plaster cast, with crayon sauce and a well-stretched
sheet of paper, and they worked ad infinitum. Crayon

602

sauce is a soft crayon rubbed onto a pallet or piece of
paper. Then with the use of the stump, tones are layed
on. They didn't have rubber in those days, the sort of
putty-like rubber that we use now, but fresh bread is a
very good substitute for it. So by squeezing a bit of
fresh bread into a fine point and stippling this by the
hour you get quite a close reproduction of a plaster cast.
You read of students who were very proud, after having
worked some weeks or maybe even months on a study from
the antique, that they could still find some way to spend
an extra few hours refining it. I've seen some of the
work in Germany (I never saw any of the student work in
England of that sort). Sometimes they'd do them quite
large. We could forgive this if, in so doing, a student
learned how to draw. But he did not really. In the
nineteenth century, England produced many very wonderful
draftsmen, but they were the people who had ideas and
visions and convictions of their own and usually went
ahead in their own way, more or less unsuccessfully so
far as any recognition was concerned. Sometimes men v/ho
were not looked upon at that time as being especially
important we now think of as really being quite important,
like the draftsman Charles Keene, all of whose work was
done for Punch. His drawings are beautiful and very fine
in every sense of the world.

Well, Lecoq de Boisboudran managed to instill into

605

his pupils a sense of real drawing and an understanding
of the tradition of true draftsmanship. One thing he
stressed to the nth degree. I say the nth degree because
the results seemed so remarkable in some of the student
work of a man like Legros, but which one can also recognize
in the work of men like Lhermitte and to a certain extent
in the work of Rodin. But what he stressed was that the
tradition of drawing in the Western world, and still less
in the East, is not a matter of making meticulous copies
of nature. That means more than I think most art students
realize, that the cultivation of knowledge and memory
was vastly more important to the artist of the Renaissance
than we realize. They had to understand the foxm that
they were using.

I remember once when I was a boy reading somebody's
article or book on Michelangelo in which he spoke of the
tremendous knowledge that the man had of the human body,
but he seemed to think that that wasn't altogether
necessary because all he had to do was to have a model
up there on the scaffolding posing in a position. Here's
Adam holding out his arm. He'd look at it and draw
Adam on the ceiling, [laughter] Well, even then that
struck me as absolutely ridiculous for two reasons: you
cannot have a model posing up on the scaffolding when
the figure is being drawn up on the wall. You'd have to
look over your shoulder to where this fellow would be

604

perched on another scaffolding, which would be absurd.
In the second place, Michelangelo's figures, as any
draftsman who has worked from life knows, are not copies
of a figure. The knowledge that he used is ybtj much the
same sort that Delacroix used when he said that nature is
a dictionary. He went to nature for his pictorial
vocabulary. It wasn't to make a color photograph of
nature, but to see, to understand, to feel and to translate
into graphic or plastic terms. That's not so obvious in
the case of the realistic painters such as Vermeer and
Rembrandt, especially the earlier seventeenth century
Dutch painters. Sir Charles Holmes, who was director of
the National Gallery and also a good painter and an
excellent writer, wrote a very interesting book on
Rembrandt in which he analyzes his work from the very
beginning, and one can see, as he points out, by a study
of his drawings and his etchings the progress he made in
his work from his boyhood on to the end, that so far as
his means of expression was concerned, it was a continual
alternation between the close examination of the world
airound him and its phenomena and a storing it away in
his mind for rumination and understanding and then to be
given out into his work. Although in the beginning one
can see very easily the studies that he made directly from
nature and from the model, and one can contrast them with
those done from imagination or memory, fairly early in

605

his life you come to a time when you cannot tell: Is
this done from a model or done from memory? Is this done
from imagination or was this some analysis of something
he happened to see before him? It merges that completely.
The subjective and objective experience of the man becomes
integrated and becomes one of the secrets of his great
power. This is in contrast to the faith of simply having
a completely "innocent eye" and copying nature faithfully
and making it look as much like nature as possible, that
it's going to be a beautiful picture because it's a beauti-
ful thing in nature.

So Alphonse Legros went to London and for many years
was head of the drawing at the Slade School and made the

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The people who came from the Slade, without exception —
those who made any name for themselves — draw beautifully.
Augustus John was a renowned product of the Slade School.
And Augustus John was, I feel, one of the last of the old
masters and one of the first of the new ones so far as
England was concerned. His draftsmanship is the nearest
thing to the drawings of the old masters as anything that
England had produced.

France had gone further — usually, though, in the
somewhat self-taught people like Daiimier. Someone in
seeing the Michelangelo frescoes in Rome for the first
time said, "Tiens, Daumier!" [laughter] And he wasn't

606

too far wrong because Daumier had done these cartoons for
the Paris papers with a draftsmanship that I'm sure
Michelangelo would have admired.

That reminds me of one of Degas' witticisms. Somebody-
said something rather disparaging about Daximier's drawing
and Degas said, "Well, if Raphael looked at Daumier' s
drawing, he would say, "That's good, that's all right.'
■But if he looked at the drawing of Adolphe Bouguereau,
he would say, 'That's my fault.'"

Well, to go back to my friend Luard, we had talks
very much along the lines that I have Just outlined in my
conversation. He had done some research and unearthed
some pamphlets that had been written by Lecoq on this
probleiu of drawing aiid the functioii of memory in art and
its relationship to the study of nature. Luard trans-
lated these pamplets and also found some drawings by
Legros and by Lhermitte and other students. They look
like good, old-fashioned art school drawings, but they are
drawings that only an advanced student in the old antique
class could do, directly from the object. But they had
been made to do those drawings by studying the object
first, then going away and drawing, then going back and
learning some more, and then going back and drawing.
That's how they had done those drawings. They'd done
them from the antique and also from some paintings of
the old masters. It was amazing how they could memorize

607

a very complicated thing. Well, one can see right away
how much that meant to a man like Rodin, for example. It
gave him a marvelous language, idiom, a trained memory and
profound knowledge that enabled him to do such an enormous
amount of work, which is the same thing which impresses
us about a great Renaissance man. Along with this
translation of these pamphlets and the illustrations,
Luard wrote a very interesting essay on the subject. Of
course, the book Memory in Art is out of print, but I
have seen it in the libraries very often, and I think if
any art student would like to run it dov,Ti, he'd find it
quite a- valuable little thing to study. I found Luard to
be not only a valuable man to talk to and discuss things

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were full of fun, and we used to have delightful times.
One thing that we enjoyed was the charade. He made
fine art of that old game. He very quickly could con-
struct a scene to illustrate, instead of simply acting an
idea out. His wife was a quiet little person and she
enjoyed the performances, but she didn't take part in
them.

Another of our English friends was a young poet by
the name of Barnaby. He was quite talented and once wrote
a good sonnet in a taxi on his way to our house.

At that time I was very much interested in the
Russian ballet and some extraordinary decors v;ere being

608

for Diaghilev by Picasso, Derain and important modern
artists. The presentation of feeling and mood through
stage setting was an art that I would have liked very much
to practice. Afterwards I did a little of it and found
it fascinating. But one of the strongest stimuli, curiously
enough, was Luard's doing charades. I remember he and his
daughter chose a word and it called for a pastoral scene
with moonlight. Well now, just off the bat, to put on a
pastoral scene with moonlight sounds a little bit difficult,
doesn't it? But doggonit, he could do it! He got two of
the people who were playing the game to lean over like
you do to give the idea of a horse, you know, but I think
the person in front held his fingers up to suggest horns
and then the^ had a sheet over them which gave the semulance
of a cow. The cow walked slowly in follov/ed by the milk-
maid. Luard had taken one of the lights in the room and
tipped it over and hung a thin piece of stuff over it so
it subdued the light. It made a soft sort of a glow
which was very much like moonlight, [laughter] It really
was quite a dramatic little scene. The milkmaid milked
the cow in the moonlight and somebody did little croaks
for frogs. Anyway, when they did a charade it wasn't just
to make you guess something. They put on a scene, and
they could do it so quickly that you didn't get bored
waiting for it. They'd have battle scenes and assassinations
and pastoral scenes and all sorts of things, usually with a

609

hint at least of a decor or set. He stimulated my interest
in the theater and provided some education as to what
constitutes drama. A little game of that sort sets you
to thinking how much is visual and how much is literature.

He had some recognition in France. I know he did a
mural, but I never got a chance to see it. It was in one
of the government buildings someplace. The French govern-
ment had commissioned him to do this mural. I have been
sorry I never could get to it. I've forgotten now what
the reason was that I didn't.

Another one of the English-speaking friends was the
Australian painter, Rupert Bunny. Several times since
we've been doing this taping, I've been impressed that
once a name has come up that I haven't spoken for many,
many years, I either meet somebody who casually happens
to mention the name or else I run across it in my reading.
And in the case of Rupert Bunny, I met an Australian painter
not long ago, and for the first time since my Paris days,
I mentioned his name. Sure enough, this man knev; him.
Bunny was one of the better known painters of Australia
in the old days, but he lived in Paris. There were no
flights to Australia then, but he would go back every
few years, I think every tv;o or three years. He was one
of the members of our club on the Joseph-Bara, the
American Artists' Club, and he played the piano quite
well, which is always an asset at gatherings. His playing

610

was good. It wasn't professional, but it was good pinao
playing, and when anybody wanted to have a sing-song or
something of that sort, why, he was all ready to play for it,
He painted, and in their way, his pictures were good.
He was able, very competent, very fluent. He had a very
nice sense of color. He painted a great many landscapes,
bu,t he was also especially fond of compositions of figures
•in a room, a little like our own painter, who was more
or less a contemporary of his, Frederick Frieseke. He
liked nice stuffs, and girls in flowing gowns, and gave
all sorts of textures and nice qualities to these picturep.
The sort of thing he did, he did very well. But like so
many of the older people in those days that found them-
selves between two periods, he suffex'ed from the feeling
of belonging to a passing generation. ¥e used to talk
about it at the clubs. I remember him saying something
that I thought was rather poignant. He would go to the
Automne Salon, for example, and see very modern art, and
he'd sa;}% "Think how terrible this is. What a negation
of everything that I believed in and had faith in as fine
painting and good art." And he said, "I'd feel that I
couldn't stand it. But that's not the worst of it. I'd
go home after looking at those things and look at my own
things, and I couldn't stand them either." [laughter]
What it probably boils down to is that so many of the
artists of his generation were in that upheaval. It

611

wasn't so much of an upheaval except that it was rather
accentuated by the Fauvist movement in which men like
Matisse, Derain, Eaoul Dafy, Othon Friesz and others
were doing things that seemed to many of their contemporaries to
be making fun of painting.

I think that Bunny was philosophical about his work.
He enjoyed painting — he loved painting! During World War I,
his studio was upstairs in a building over in the Q^arter,
and he could look through his window into another large
room where women were doing some kind of war work, pre-
paring bandages or something of that sort, or maybe
sewing for the war effort. The room was full of women
and he did an interesting picture of the scene. He said
that eveiy time he went to work in the morning, he would
stop on the landing and look do\\m into this big room with
all this white stuff and these women, and then the first
thing he did when he got into his studio was to do a little
work on a canvas from memory. So day after day he'd look
at this scene, and little by little,, the picture grev/ into
quite a fine picture. I imagine that in Australia they
probably have, as they do in other countries, a muse\im of
things illustrating World War I, and that picture of
Bunny's, I think, ought to have quite a good place.
SCHIPPEES: In your discussion about Bunny and Luard,
you made comments about Bunny, having a reaction to his
confrontation with Cubism. Was yours similar? And also,

612

when you were discussing Luard, you talked about memoriza-
tion and the representation of objects. Was this something
that was influencing your own creative productivity?
NUTTING: Yes, it was, very muph. In my own case, there
was something that maybe v;as unfortun.ate. The really
creative artist usually is so obsessed by what he wants to
do that he doesn't let other things interfere with it.
Take a man like Charles Russell, an illustrator. I have
admiration for him. He ' s left a body of work that I
think is important to us. Charles Russell had little or
no schooling. As a teenager, he came out West and lived
the life of the early days. First, he carried around
a little box of cheap v/atercolors with him and made
picuures^ oiien ne got some oils suid mads some more
pictures and swapped these pictures for drinks at the
saloon. He didn't think about art. He didn't think about
Giotto. He wasn't worried about trends in aesthetics and
what was good and was bad. He just liked to make pictures,
and he learned to do them. He wasn't too good a painter,
but his knowledge of his subjects was fantastic. There
wasn't a bit of anything in the way of documentation —
every element of the saddle to the hind leg of a horse —
that he didn't know thoroughly. And one would feel that
there was the same faithfulness in his characters. I mean,
that ' s the way the Indians looked at that time ; and
that's what they had on. At the same time, it was done

613

with an enthusiasm for the telling of these stories.
Frederic Remington's work is more sophisticated,, but
has the same vitality. Well, the fact that it is going
to be purely instinctive that way, of course, I don't
think is entirely necessary. A number of artists, from
Benvenuto Cellini on down,, have had much to say about
art. Cellini wrote a rousing good story of his life.
[laughter] Sir Joshua Rejrnolds' lectures, Delacroix's
journals — other painters and sculptors have been thoughtful,
articulate, and sometimes philosophically interesting.

At the Boston Museum School, Tarbell in criticizing my
work one day — the drawing of a head and the making of an
eye or the modeling of a nos,e or something — said, "You've
go u uo xearn uo u.o it. j.± you re going to be a painter,
there's only one way that you can look forward to making
your living. You have to be a 'pahwtrait' painter."
Well, I tried very hard to be a "pahwtrait" painter,
[laughter] It wasn't so much the making of the "pahv;-
traits" that I found difficult, because with sufficient
application and industry, one can get aroiind to doing it
with a modicum of talent. It was Just that as a profession
I could see before too long that I would not make the
grade; it required certain things to be successful
that I felt I didn't have. As a matter of fact, our
most successful portrait painter at that time, and really
a brilliant one, was John Singer Sargent. But practically

61^

in the middle of his career, he stopped professional
portrait painting completely. He wouldn't go on with it.
He went out and did from nature many beautiful and
brilliant watercolors. I feel that he and Winslow Homer
will be best remembered for raising American watercolor
painting from a somewhat amateur status to serious art.
He left a few other canvases done in the last part of his
life which are fairly good.

But there is always I think that conflict. I could see
it in a book I recently got,, a lengthy biography of
Delacroix, which is quite exhaustive. I hadn't realized
that he too was torn between the classical feeling and the
romantic feeling. It wasn't an easy role. He didn't all
of a sudden see the light and become a great dramatic
painter. It's something which you can see in his journal.
All through his life it had to be considered very carefully
and thoughtfully. Well, my first introduction, of course,
when I went to Europe, was to the Fauve movement which
had taken a strong hold in Germany; some of the famous
groups — J3ie Brticke and Der Blaue Reiter — had been formed
and were showing some remarkable talents. It was all
extremely new to me and very confusing, as you can imagine
from the story that I told you about my first seeing the
paintings of Matisse at the Boston Museum School, when
they had to unlock a door as if it were a Gabinetto Segreto
of the Naples museum. In those days, there was a little

615

knowledge of Matisse, but I remember a girl, a fellow
student, saying, "After all, his things are very easy to
do. We used to amuse ourselves" (she had just come back
from Paris) "by making Matisse drawings and seeing who
could make the most Matisse drawings. It was very easy
to make a Matisse drawing, no trick at all." [laughter]
But it was very, very hard to sharpen up your charcoal
into a needle-like point and make a corner of an eye.
That was real drawing. I was terribly troubled then,
because I sharpened up my charcoal and I tried to do my
"pahwtrait" according to Tarbell ' s instructions. It was
making the pieces. Then I would go over to the museum
and see some wonderful things, especially a Greco. None
of the other students thou°'ht much of the Grec^ '^■'■'■t I
thought it was wonderful. Something about that gave me
goose pimples. There is at times a definite physical
sensation to be had from a work of art when it is the real
thing. I think it was A. E. Housman who said that
one knows poetry when he feels (he quotes out of context)
"a spirit passed and the hair of my flesh stood up. "
There v;as a portrait by Rubens there that also made an
impression on me. I would look at these things, and then
I would go back and look at the things we did at the
school, and I couldn't see the connection somehow. That's
what really worried me. I thought that there must be a
thorough understanding of what it was to make a painting.

616

I thought that Tarbell knew it and [Frank] Benson knew it
and [William] Paxton knew it, and I was sure that my
anatomy teacher, Philip Hale, a son of Edward Everett
Hale, knew all about it. This young fellow from the
West must just keep his mouth shut and listen and pay
attention, which I tried to do. But it didn't work too
well; so on the one side, I found myself trying to do
the things I wanted to do, but not doing it with a
conviction, a faith that Charley Russell had when he did
his Indians out there on the plains [laughter], with
nobody to bother him — if they liked it, he could get a
drink for it. I felt there must be some sense of values
that I didn't know anything about. What one does later

"little sensation, " as Cezanne called it. Even if they
do lead one over the cliff, go ahead, risk it! In
Germany, there were just avalanches of things that I
had never seen before. They're all old hat to students
nowadays, but then much was confusing.

Then there was World War I, and in a way that took
quite a chunk out of some of my development during my
life in Italy. Though Besnard was not a great painter,
he was a brilliant one, and his encouragement for me to
go ahead and get a big canvas and paint a picture, I
think, is one of the best pieces of advice I had. It

617

did me a great deal of good. Modern talents had increasing
meaning for me. I was a long way beyond Alexander Harrison,
who thought that modern art stopped with the Impressionists.
By myself, I did a great deal of work, most of which I
destroyed. Not to make too big a step into modern art,
I went to the Hanson Academy where Maurice Denis and Paul
Serusier taught. I didn't accomplish too much there. I
felt it would be very interesting to work with someone
who was really one of the Fauves, and Othon Friesz taught
there. But I had not yet learned to understand French
too well, and it's rather a bore to have to find somebody
in class who could translate for you. They're not always
available, and in the second place, Friesz wasn't at all
articulate. He would rub his hands in an embarrassed
sort of way before his student's work and then whisper
something. You didn't know what in the dickens he was
trying to say. Then he would shrug, smile in a diffident
sort of way, and move on to the next. When you'd think
of the vigor and force of his painting, it was very
strange — this shy guy trying to teach people and seeming
not to have anything to say.

I was still trying to find a guide and next chose
Andre Lhote. Andre Lhote was a successful teacher for
many years. He died not so long ago. He was one of the
few teachers in Paris that made his teaching a real project.
In other words, he had a school to which he gave a great
deal of attention. Most of the schools v/ere like the

618

Julian Academy which were run by somebody who just owned
the school and the professors simply dropped in once a
week for criticism. In most cases, they did it because
there was more or less a tradition — at least there was
then — that if you had acquired a certain amount of success
or esteem among your fellow workers, you had some obligation
to pass on the torch so to speak. If you had a group
that thought, "Well, I think so-and-so is terrific. Gosh,
if we could only study with that man, we'd learn something,"
the first thing you know, you'd get together and form a
little committee and go down and call on this guy and tell
him how much you liked his work. Likely enough, he would
say, "Well, you find yourself a place to work and get a
model, and I'll come ai-ound at ten o'clock next Friday,"
or something like that. That would happen with the French
more often than in other countries. I wouldn't say about
England because my student days weren't spent in that
country so much. When I think of Besnard and Bourdelle
and Raoul Dufy and others, I'm impressed as I look back
by their patience and friendliness that they could spend
their time with some strange American barging in on them,
and do it so nicely and so generously.

TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
February 28, 1966

NUTTING: The atmosphere in which I found myself in Paris
seems to have been quite different from what I hear it
is like these days. But I haven't talked to many people
who have been living there or studying there who have had
at all the same sort of experiences. Every year, friends
would go over and come back, and so often they didn't
find the atmosphere in France too pleasant. It certainly
contrasts greatly with my own experience when I was there
in the twenties.

I found that people with the real French character,

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modern movement, were simple dedicated workers. They felt,
it seemed to me, that they had work to do and they did a
day's work simply and without pretense. They got up and
worked all day and did their best to do a good job. The
men whom I saw something of, who really had a reputation in
Paris, official recognition, v;ere never "high hat."
Besnard was as v/arm and cordial and friendly as though I
were a fellov; student. Bourdelle was the same way. He
was vice-president of a society called the Salon des
Tuileries, " Besnard v;as president, and

he was vice-president. I understood that it would be a
rather selective exhibition and it wouldn't be nearly so

620

large as others. They had the idea that they wanted to
get the best talent of the younger painters without having,
as the Salon d'Automne did, the more advanced and experi-
mental sort of things, and, not nearly so much of course,
as the Salon des Independants did. They wanted it to be
more representative of French art. So, I took my paintings
around to show to Bourdelle, and I asked him if he thought
that I ought to send them to the Tuileries show. He had
a number of large studios very near to where I lived,
back of the Gare Montparnasse. I felt rather diffident
about it because in the first place, my French at that
time was limited, and I'm not one to really barge in very
easily and seem to try to get influence. I didn't want

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was the kind of a salon in which my work would be acceptable.
He was cordial, very nice. He said, yes, he thought they
would like my things. As a matter of fact, I did get a
couple of canvases in the Salon des Tuileries. But he did
it all so very simply and so very nicely and so very
warmly as was characteristic of the other men, the artists,
in the art world that I met there. The lack of pretension
seemed to be characteristic of all of them.

Jean Paul Laurens wasn't living when I got to Paris,
but Wallace told me that he used to see him and his wife
very often. He was then very famous, very well-to-do.
He built a beautiful home over near the Luxembourg

621

Gardens, a big house with large studios. Wallace said
he'd often see them in the streetcar going down to the
band concerts someplace in that part of Paris and that
they would be sitting back in the second-class section (in
those days, there were first- and second-class sections of
street cars). And here was this old couple sitting there
looking very bourgeois, very simple, going to their band
concert. I would see a similar sort of thing once in a
while. I'd see a man in a funny old-fashioned, semi-militaiy
costume, riding back in the second-class section of the
car, and when it got down to the Institute, he'd jump
off. He had one of these fore-and-aft hats v;ith feathers
on them and braid on his coat and a little sword. Well,
I knew that he was a member of the Academy who was going
to a meeting in uniform, [laughter] I wonder if they
still do that, because it seems so strange, especially
this little sword which is a relic of so long ago.

Another man that I didn't know but that I would see
in the same way was a very distinguished sculptor. He
is rather an indispensable figure in the history of
sculpture in that period along with Rodin, Maillol,
Bourdelle and the others. That was [Charles] Despiau.
I didn't know him by name for quite a long time, but I
knew him by sight. There was a little restaurant, very
cheap, near us, but the food was quite simple and good,
and we used to drop in there for lunch quite often. Here

would be this man in work clothes sitting at a little
table over in the corner. He looked as though he was
oust a workman who has knocked off for lunch like any
other workman. Eventually, I discovered he was Despiau.
But he seemed to be a very quiet and very modest and very
hard-working sort of a fellow. When we went to Corsica
with Favory and Lemercier they were very much excited
about their vacation. You thought they v;ere going to just
have a lark — and they did have a wonderful time — but they
were workers. I mean they got up in the morning and they
went out and they worked all day. When they came in, they
unstretched their canvases and stretched new canvases and
then had dinner and a lively conversation. They'd go to
bed and get up early in the morning. I never worked so
hard in my life in the summertime, because you just
couldn't help it. With such an example, you felt silly
if you weren't doing something. So I did a whole bunch
of canvases, and at night I used to draw quite a lot.
But I was inspired by these fellows who simply and quietly
did their Job. They discussed art, of course, and some
interesting things, but there was none of this bohemian
atmosphere that is ordinarily thought to be characteristic
of the artist's life. They were intelligent, hard-working,
dedicated men in every way. So that was one very wholesome
influence on the beginning of my life in Paris. I don't
say that it contrasts too much with what I found in New
York.

625

In Munich, my German didn't get anywhere at all. I
didn't make any progress in German, largely because I
was too timid about using what few words I knew. So
I didn't know the German painters at all. I just had a
little bit of experience in the art school in Munich.

In Rome, I felt very much the same atmosphere to a
large extent, but not nearly so much as I did in Paris.
The first school that I went to impressed me very much,
the Julian Academy, because one of the things that the
"nouveau" (that is the new student in the class) always
did was to treat the crowd. He was expected to. They'd
knock off at the model, rest, and go across the street
to a little cafe. You were supposed to buy them all a

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forgotten what the French call that sort of a thing.
Well, I went with the crowd. It was a pretty big class;
I think there were about twenty of us in the class that
I joined at the Julian Academy. It was a painting class.
At that time, on account of our exchange, the Americans
had the reputation of having plenty of money. So I thought
that I would be rather in for it because they'd think,
"Oh, he's got plenty of money," and so_ they'd get them-
selves a good drink for once or buy themselves maybe an
especially good bottle of wine or something of the sort.
I had visions of my bill being rather large, but to my
amazement it was very small. They didn't take advantage

62-^

of me in the least. A great many of them didn't take
anything alcoholic, not even a beer. They took chocolate
or they took a coffee and a croissant or a little some-
thing. And it seemed to be perfectly natural. So that
made me feel a little bit more at home. I wasn't quite so
much of a stranger. And the boys weren't, as I say,
taking advantage of the fact that it wouldn't mean any-
thing to me if I spent more money than they were used to
spending.

Of the French people that I knew best, Andre Lhote
was probably among the better known people. Andre Lhote
was again one of these serious workers. He ran his school
in a business-like way, and he was developing it into a

it was just after the war and he was just starting it. He
had a very large studio, [and to get to it], you had to
cross the backyard of the place which was often rather
muddy. You went across on boards that were laid down to
make a walk to the stairv;ay of the studio. Instead of
the usual weekly visit for giving criticism, he gave his
group frequent attention. I think he was there several
times a week, and he gave very good, very clear explanations
instead of simply stopping and giving a little demonstration
and talk at an easel. At the Julian Academy, it might
be that only half a dozen of the boys would get a criticism,
and the rest of them stood around and listened and tried to

625

profit by what the professor said. Then the very common
thing, the usual thing, in art instruction was not only
that the professor would explain what was wrong with your
work, but that he would proceed to show you. He would
take a little piece of your work and a brush and would
commence to render a modeling of a forehead or some
transition tone or color and show you how to do it.
That sort of thing seems to be gone completely now. The
art student is so afraid of having his personal feeling
and his special talent being interfered with, that you
never touch a student's work. You mustn't do anything to
it. You talk about it. I can understand that to a
certain extent, but 1 think it's rather unfortunate. In
some ways the old academic teaching" had a certain advanta~e.
You weren't allowed to be an artist at first, anymore than
a person learning to read and write and to spell correctly
and to use good grammar was to immediately suppose himself
to have the elements of a Shakespeare or Keats or a
talented novelist just because he was learning his craft
and his medium. I think that was the attitude they had.
If you drew correctly, you were getting along all right,
and if you drew incorrectly, why, you'd better get busy
and learn how to draw correctly. And the same way with
mastering your mediums — your techniques. You might not
want to paint like your professor, but at least he showed
you what could be done. It was quite wonderful when you

626

had a man with great skill, after you had been sweating
over the construction and modeling of a knee in paint
and it looked perfectly horrible, and he'd pick up some
color, seemingly more or less at random, and all of a
sudden this thing v;ould loom up on the canvas. I often
found it a thrilling revelation. So, although I had a
strong feeling in many ways towards developments in
modem art, I also still had — and cultivated by this
sort of an atmosphere — a feeling that a lot of them lost
out because they did not really learn their craft. I had
great respect for men who maybe didn't interest me too
much artistically because they knew how to do a good job.
I think that is fine. Use your medium with skill, ability,
and knowledge. Andre Lhote went much further, and I
went from Julian Academy to Andre Lhote, because he v/as
definitely one of the modern painters of the time. He
was also a listened-to theorist, but in class, work v;as
almost entirely before the motive, nudes, still lifes
or maybe from motives brought in from outdoor work. But
in a way he was a very good transition, because he would
use, as an illustration of what he was talking about,
maybe a painter like Ingres or even David to illustrate
a point, painters that seemed far removed from what we
were trying to do. The pictorial idiom that he used was
more abstract, but just as intelligent and just as severe
a discipline as it would be with men of the academic

627

tradition from Ingres and David. That helped me along in
that sort of a conflict of feeling between the painting
that I had learned in Boston and in New York, which
were still completely without any influence of any of
the modern movements. The very latest movement would be
the Impressionist painters, and even there they insisted
on the basics of drawing — the kind of drawing that I found
very difficult to learn. It took me a long time to really
assimilate it. But with men like Lhote, you sort of
looked both ways. You looked ahead and back to what
could be gained from what had been done in the past and
you applied it to what might be in the future.

What I started to say was that I was rather relieved
L>o xinu., later, that what would seem to me a certain
timidity on my part [was not uncommon] and that the ones
that seemed to be doing things were simply the ones that
jumped off into deep water without worrying about anything,
getting out there and doing something. That has a great
deal to be said for it, but in the biography of painters
like Delacroix, for example, you find, it seems to me,
exactly the same sort of a struggle to find themselves in
relation to the current of thought and development, so
that their work would not be simply a purely shallow,
personal expression, and so it would have depth and
meaning.

Another example is Renoir. The oft common idea of

628

Renoir as a painter is that he just painted for the pure
joy of painting. That is largely true. When he was a
pupil of Gleyre, Gleyre looked at his work and he said,
"I see that you paint for amusement." And Renoir was
cocky enough to say, "Monsieur Gleyre, I assure you that
if I didn't enjoy painting, I wouldn't be doing it."
[laughter] But from his learning the business of china
painting at which he earned his living as a boy and then
through his academic work with Gleyre and then his associ-
ation with the Impressionist painting, he grew naturally,
like a good healthy plant would grow, into the new atmos-
phere of his time and talent around him. And his early
things were very excellent Impressionism. The Frog Pond,

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Impressionist pictures. He and, I think, Monet went out
together and painted this park scene of the little lake
and the boats. But I think because of the simplicity and
the sincerity of his dedication to his art, he, like other
painters of his time, found that Impressionism, though it
had so much to contribute, was in some way a blind alley.
The only painter who really followed it through consistenly
to the end of his life, or with a certain degree of con-
sistency, was Monet, who was an old man when he did his
very powerful things of the water lilies. He had a pond
made on his little estate outside of Paris and planted
water lilies and painted huge canvases of these, which

629

are quite stunning. But even there — looking at that rather
wonderful show of Monet's that they had a few years ago
at the museum — I was impressed that he v/as still trying to
push further with what he was doing and really anticipated
what you see in such forms as Abstract Expressionsim.
Whereas, a few years before, his landscape might be simply
the translation of these tonal and color values as he saw
them in this supposed innocence of the eye. The signifi-
cance of painting, little by little, gained the upper hand
so that he went from nature into a deeper sense of real
painting, or at least a strong tendency toward it, although
he never gave up that dedication to nature and to the
immediate visual experience.

Tiie other experience that I had was with a very fine ,
teacher, Maurice Denis, again a man of very superior
intelligence. Although he was a little colder we really
became quite good friends. With Lhote he used to come
around to my studio and have tea with us, and we'd chat
and discuss things. He was the only one of my teachers
with whom I really established a friendship outside,
largely because he was the only one 1 stayed with for any
length of time. [I would stay with] the others for only
a few months, and then I would want to get some other
kind of experience, so I'd go someplace else.

Maurice Denis was not only an important mural painter,
he was also an excellent writer on art. I didn't learn

650

too much from him, but another teacher who was at the
Eanson Academy at the time was Serusier. I didn't know
it at the time, but Serusier was a far more important
person thsin I had reason to know. Maurice Denis advised
me to study v;ith Serusier. Probably if I had a few months
with him, he would have given me a quicker linder standing
of Cezanne than anybody living, though his own work is more
influenced by the Pont-Aven School — Gauguin and that group
in Brittany — and also by the Gothic. His woodcuts and
illustrations show much of that influence. I used to
watch the work of his students. His class painted still
life and did things very "Cezanne-ish, " in compositions and
style. I think that I really ought to have worked with
him. I would have ccctten insi'^ht into the si°'nificance
of Cezanne's art much quicker.

There were three Russian artists in Paris in those
days. 1 think all three of them were persona non grata
in Russia. Jacovlev was in China on a scholarship from
the St. Petersburg Academy when the Revolution started,
and I think that Jacovlev and Shoukaiev also were prize
students who were traveling at the time. They were
associated with the government on the wrong side of the
fence, so they were expatriates. 1 think Jacovlev,
especially, felt rather keenly his expatriation. He was
a remarkable draftsman. I never knev; anyone with such
dazzling facility. He went down through Africa after he

631

came back from China. The Citroen automobile people financed
an expedition to advertise their cars. They had a caravan
of all sorts of cars, and they organized a group of anthro-
pologists and botanists and people who would study Africa
from various points of viev;. It was a long trek from
North Africa and down. In those days, I don't know how
far they could go with cars, but it was quite a long trek
and gave the automobile a tremendous amount of advertising.
Jacovlev came back with a great number of large drawings
and tempera sketches of natives and landscape, mostly of
people. He could do these Conte chalk drav;ings very
quickly. I met him quite often. He used to be at the
teas of the Ciolkowskas. Muriel Ciolkowska was the art

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American magazines. Her husband was an artist, more or
less of the Aubrey Beardsley sort, but he also wrote for
art magazines and did correspondence. They used to have
afternoons, very small groups, and Jacovlev was there
quite often. I asked him once how in the world he could
do these things of these natives — he did them from life;
he didn't do them from photographs as illustrators very
often would do — I asked him if he had difficulty getting
natives to pose, and he said it wasn't difficult. These
drawings (which are quite large, on about 20 x 24 inch
sheets of heavy drawing paper) were so complete. They
weren't fussy; they v;ere done very directly with great

632

completeness. Not only were they beautifully drawn, but
they were superb as documentation. If a native had
scars or welts on their bodies, such as they make for
decoration, he had a way of suggesting it, you know,
without tickling it up or trying to render this minute
detail. So they were fine illustrations, but were also
thrilling because the man could handle his material so
easily and so directly. He said he had no special diffi-
culty in getting natives to pose. I asked him how long
he'd take to do a drawing like that. He said an hour and
a half or two hours. Heavens, for most of the people I
know, it would be two or three days of work to do one of
those things, but he had a technique which he developed
and was very effective. He used a hard- rubber ink eraser
that he could buy there (they were in little squares),
and by putting the broad side of his crayon on the paper,
he could then swipe this eraser over the tones, and it
was amazing to see him model a form. He didn't use it as
a stump, which gives a more opaque tone, but this gritty
eraser would give beautiful transparent tones to the red
chalk. The only one other man that I knew who used that
technique was Shoukaiev. Maybe the two of them invented
that on their own, because I've never seen it before or
since. He could also use pastel as simply and with an
effective and very fine quality.

I v;anted to find out more about that, and after

655

studying with Maurice Denis, I went to this Shoukaiev
School. I say Shoukaiev' "because Jacovlev was then gone
on some other expedition or was traveling somewhere,
which he was always doing. He spoke English fairly well,
in a deliberate sort of a way, and I asked him if he'd
learned English in Russia. And he said, "No, I learned
it in China." [laughter] He was only in China for a year
or so, but he learned English very satisfactory. He said,
"I-am-a-too-rist-paintaire. " [laughter] He was very
modest about his work. His Chinese things are quite
fascinating. He did a number of large compositions in
tempera. He was very fond of tempera. He thought that
he was using the original Byzantine technique of tempera
painting of the icon painters, which may have been ti-ue.
He certainly had great facility in using it. Very few of
his things I saw were in oil. But tempera was very finely
suited to his way of working, because, after all, it's more
of a draftsman's medium than a painter's medium. He did
large decorative things on Chinese scenes, of Chinese
characters, and an immense number of small drawings in
his sketchbooks. I always had a feeling that he had a
nostalgia for his own country and regretted very much
that his work couldn't be shown there and that he couldn't
be represented in the future by having works in Russian
museums. I don't think that they ever gave him any
recognition. He came to this country afterwards (I didn't

65^

see him after I left Paris) and v;as head of the Department
of Drav/ing and Painting of the Boston Museum School of
Fine Arts. He died in Boston not long after. Shoiikaiev,
as I say, also drew in that same way and I was glad to
have a new and interesting experience.

There was a very large colony of Russians in Paris
in those days and from all classes of society. Everyone
in the class working with Shoukaiev, with the exception
of myself and one other, were Russians and that in itself
was an experience. Some of the boys — and girls, too —
were doing quite good work. But my most vivid memory
of that short stay there was an almost Dostoevski sort of
a scene. You know how Dostoevski will start v/ith something,
and then there's a little more tx'ouule, and then further-
in the story you find a little more. When you got to the
climax, my, there's a whole lot more; then, all of a
sudden, there's a terrific uproar and then it dies down.
I can't think of a specific instance, but I remember
years ago when I read Dostoevski that was one thing that
impressed me — the way he'd develop an emotional situation
until it got out of hand, and then all of a sudden, it
would die down. Well, that exact thing happened in the
school one day. A girl came in and nobody paid any
attention to her. She looked very sad. She sat down on
a bench over near the door, and the students kept working
away, drawing the model. When the model rested, one or

635

two of them went over and talked to her, and she started
to cry and sniffle a little bit. Somebody sort of com-
forted her and apparently gave her a little word of advice,
and then the model rest was over and they went back to
work. The girl sat there, wiped her eyes and blew her
nose and looked very sad. During the next model rest,
more of them went over and they started talking. They
talked a little louder, and then they got into quite an
argument. They argued and she protested, and then the
pose was called again. They all went back and worked
hard again through the next session. At the next model
rest, they went over and started the argument again. It
got even louder. During the course of the morning, heavens,
it was biie most emotional scene. She crieo. and she wailed,
and they bawled her out, and they disagreed with each
other— "Yes!" "No, no, no!" "No, no, no, no!" [laughter]
And they all got noisy and so emotional. After they had
worked off all their steam they went back very quietly to
work. By and by, she got up and blew her nose and wiped
her eyes and went out, and everything was calm again.
But, without iinderstanding the words, Just to watch that
scene was like seeing something on stage, [laughter]

I did have a few Russian friends, and, of course,
there was also a great deal of Russian talent in Paris at
the time. There was Pitoeff and his little theater which
was quite fascinating. They put on Russian plays in French.

636

It was very interesting. His wife was especially talented.

Then I used to have models knock at the door, and sometimes
they'd be Russian. One time there was a rather interesting
looking middle-aged v/oman and I engaged her. Model fees
were very modest. One could afford to use models then,
about as much as one pleased. It didn't amount to too
much. She turned out to be the wife of somebody who had
been high up in the navy. He may have been an admiral,
I don't know, he was apparently somebody of importance.
She was a very cultivated and interesting woman. There
was another strange little creature that came one day,
and she wanted work. She was Russian, and I engaged her.
She had learned English in Constantinople. Her English
was very limited, but unlike mc, she was not at all timid
about using what fev; words she had. I got over that to a
large extent in Italy. In Germany, as I say, I made no
progress in German because I was afraid of mispronouncing
a word. Why that should be any special sin, I don't know,
but it intimidated me. In Italy, I got along more easily
in Italian and eventually in Erench. I didn't do too well
in French, but enough to enjoy life among the Erench people.
Well, this girl was Russian and was a dancer. I don't
know how much training she'd had, but apparently she was
quite good. She hadn't been well, and she was trying to
tide things over by doing some work as a model so that
she could at least eat and pay her room rent until she got

657

back again into her work. She was very funny. It was
a hot summer day — speaking about not being timid in
speaking a foreign language — and she looked at me and saw
that I was suffering somewhat from the heat (I had on my
painting blouse), and she said, "Are you hot not? Take your
dress off." [laughter] I wasn't as hot as all that!
[laughter]

Down the street there was a little Russian eating
place run by a Russian family. He had been a colonel in
the Russian army, and he and his wife and daughter v;ere
very cheerfully running a very nice little eating place.
One thing that impressed me about those people, the ones
that I met, was that they were so uncomplaining. Whatever
their past had been, they never seemed to bewail theix^
fate or talk of their misfortune. They seemed to plunge
in and make the most they could out of life. One boy told
me about a boy that he knew who had been very wealthy.
He came to Paris with the remains of his fortune and
stayed at a fine hotel, threw parties and went to the
opera and enjoyed life up to the hilt until his money was
all gone. Well, he didn't shoot himself. He got work.
He got work as a servant in that same hotel where he'd
been spending his money. He went, from having everything
done for him, to getting up early in the morning and going
around and blacking the boots of the guests. (The people
in Europe put their shoes outside the door at night to get

658

them shined for next morning.) And he went on cheerfully
leading that sort of a life. I don't know as that would
be especially a Russian characteristic, but it seems to
me it was very impressive. Among a large proportion of
the ones that I knew, it seemed to be characteristic.
They weren't given to melancholic states of mind that one
maybe would rather expect from one's reading of Russian
literature. Of course, that's very much of a digression
from what I started out with. It's a phase of the atmos-
phere, though, that surrounded me at that time, [tape
off] I don't know whether this impression that I had at
that time was because it was a period of transition —
probably not — but it was one of being impressed and rather
saddened by artists who had outgrown bheir period. I think
the first time that I felt it was when I was at the Luards
one afternoon and there was a painter by the name of
Devambez. Devambez was very well known in Paris then.
I think he had a sizeable public for his work. But after
talking to him I felt he was a disappointed man, his
youthful dreams ending in a wasteland of potboilers.
He had found a certain form that was popular, and it sold
rather well. Well, Devambez had been a Prix de Rome.
V/hen I was a boy and used to read everything I could
about artists' lives, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the
Prix de Rome always seemed to be marvelously romantic
sort of things. Here was the competition for the Prix de

639

Home which always sounded thrilling, how you made your
application and eventually so many were accepted. Then
you had to go in for a preparation which consisted of
being given a subject for a picture (in the old days it
used to be either the classical sort of subject like the
Judgment of Paris or something allegorical or historical),
and in something like three hours you had to do a
■composition. That was then stamped. I think you could
have a tracing of it, but the original sketch was then
put av;ay in a safe. I've forgotten all the rigamarole.
Then you v/ere given a loge, as a studio, and they provided
you with everything you needed in the way of models and
accessories. Everything that went in out of the studios
was very carefully examined so that everything would be
on the up-and-up and to make sure your painting was
completely original. You had to hold to the composition
you had made with little or no modification. All that
soiinded exciting. Then, finally, the great day would come,
and one young fellow out of all of France would get the
Prix de Rome and go down to work in the Villa Medici for
four years. So that was the aura the ItixL de Rome had for
me, and when I'd meet somebody who was_ a Prix de Rome, I
felt he was really somebody. Claude Debussy v/as a
Prix de Rome. Otherwise I can think of no well-known nan
in anyway connected v/ith the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Oh
yes — I believe Georges Rouault was a Deioxieme Prix de Rome.

640

He competed and won second place. And then here was this
very quiet, modest man who was doing rather anecdotal sort
of pictures and being a little bit apologetic about himself.
He said, "I was born too late; I was bom too late." V/ell,
of course, that's often true of our American painters.

Frederick Frieseke, as a young man, had great success
in this country. He was one of the American painters
when I was a kid. When I knew him, he was living in Paris
and was still painting beautifully, but you felt he was
sad. He couldn't quite figure out what happened.

The most tragic figure, it seems to me, was Frank
Brangwyn who had at one time great success. He spent a
lot of time and energy in doing some big panels for the

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accept them. And from then on, for the rest of his life,
he was really kind of a forgotten man. They had a big
restrospective exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy,
but he wasn't interested. It didn't seem to mean anything
to him at all. I rather imagine he was a rather embittered
man when he died. I was in Besnard's studio once when
Aman-Jean walked in. He had just gotten his election to
the Academy and Besnard and Aman-Jean embraced each
other French fashion. I suppose the old gentleman was
pleased to have a youthful ambition realized. But, again,
I think he must have felt he was living in a world that
had passed him by even though he had won this high honor.

641

Leon Bonnat died while I was in Paris and I remember
my friend, Richard Wallace, who had lived many years in
Paris, saying that he believed that had he died twenty
years earlier he would have been given a state funeral.

Of the academic painters another man who was an
influential teacher was Lucien Simon. And Lucien Simon
was still teaching at the Grande Chaumifere when I went to
Paris, and he had quite a lot of influence on many yoiing
Americans. I often wondered why he didn't get more
official recognition. Only long afterwards did it occur
to me — 1 don't know that I'm right or not — that the
Dreyfus Affair may have had something to do with it. In
other words, did anti-Semitism enter the picture? It's
a Jewish name, of course, but I didn't thirJk: of it at the
time. He was an instructor in drawing at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts as well as having a large painting class at the
Grande Chaumie re. I heard him give criticisms a few times
and found them well worthwhile. So those were my
influences both in the modern way and the academic spirit,
and those were the French painters that I came in closest
contact with.

I met sometimes Just casually in conversation, like
the time I had a conversation with Chagall and not knowing
it was Chagall until we parted. I went to see Eaoul Dufy
when we were still publishing Atys . Eaoul Dufy's woodcuts
were quite stunning, beautiful, decorative things. The

6^2

woodcuts that he was doing at that time were used as book
illustrations and I thought I'd at least try to borrow a
block from him. But we weren't in a position to pay any-
thing for it, and that made one rather diffident about
going to a well-known artist and asking for his work.
At that time, of course, he was not nearly as well known
as he became. I went and the same sort of thing happened
again. He received me quite cordially. Obviously he had
a lot of work to do, but he took his time, sat down and
we chatted about what we were trying to do with the magazine,
and he was very sympathetic. Finally he brought me a
little block and he said, "Would this do?"

And I said, "I'd be delighted." He didn't hurry me

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"I have a model coming, " or anything of that sort. He
opened up some portfolios to show me many of his drav;ings,
and he really gave me a sort of lesson that I wish I had
profited by. His studio was in perfect order and all his
work was in perfect order. His drawings seem very often
to many people careless scribbles, and they would think
that if some of them were lost, why goodness, he had done
so many more that there wouldn't be any great loss. I
remember his taking a drawing from a portfolio which was
rather large, one of these pencil things of crowds of
people at Longchamps. Then he happened to see one little
place where it had gotten a bit rubbed. He got so concerned

643

about that spot where the pencil had been touched and rubbed
a bit, that he immediately got an eraser and carefully
cleaned it. Then he very carefully put the drawing back
in the portfolio. I only wish his example had influenced
me more, [laughter] If I had gone out and done twenty or
thirty of those in a day, which I think v/ould be quite
possible, and they got rained on or something, I'd think,
"Well, that's all right. I'll save a few of these things,
and the rest I'll burn." But with him, if the drawing
was worth keeping, it was worth caring for and to be
treated v;ith respect. I think that was the most impressive
thing about my conversation with him, besides seeing his
work.

Lyons, and he had great influence on silk designing. And
designing was his first way of making a living after he
got back from the war, I believe, and he was quite success-
ful. From that he went on to do some book illustration,
etchings and woodcuts. He also had an exhibition of
things he had done in collaboration with a ceramist —
little miniature gardens that were quite charming.

TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO
March 7, 1966

NUTTING: In the last session, i>f I remember rightly, I
was speaiing of certain conflicts which, I think, are very-
evident in the work of all artists. There's a very-
popular notion, apparently, among people who think that
art is rather a decorative adj'iinct to life, that it's all
very nice but nothing too important and that the artist
is simply a man who likes to make pic-tures and who has
a very happy life if he can make a living at it because
he doesn't have to work. It is one idea that, to me,
is so difficult to understand, yet it is so prevalent, that
art is a product of some degree of advancement in a culture
beyond what is ordinarily thought of as among the practical
things in life. Very often people will be somewhat
apologetic about American art and say, "Oh, well, we're
a young country. We've had to do this and had to do that
and we had to settle the land and we hadn't time for things
of that sort, but nov/ that we are more prosperous and we
have more leisure, why then, we'll have more art." Now
that idea is expressed by people, it seems to me, who
have given it no thought and by people who ought to at
least question the idea a little. With a little knowledge
of history, history in the form of the monuments that
have been left in various ways by various cultures, it
seems to me to point to something quite different. In the

645

first place, it's very hard to imagine that Homer appeared
on the scene when Greece or any of the ancient world was
especially comfortable to live in. Of course, I admit that
a certain amoimt has to be granted to the idea that has
been pretty well expressed by Toynbee, that the advance-
ment of a culture and these plateaus that he speaks of are
dependent upon a certain balance. If life is too easy,
there's no advancement, and if it's too hard and austere,
as with the Eskimos, for example, you don't have a rising
to another plateau. But even admitting that, art of any
form, if of any value, it seems to me, is not the product
of a sort of a hedonistic activity. It's the meaning-
fulness, conscious or unconscious, that things or an ex-
pression has to a culture. If it were true that affluence
and a chance for the better things of life would auto-
matically bring on worthwile art, then all we'd have to
do is to have some more Morgans and Vanderbilts and
Rockefellers—patronage in short — to provide it. But
we found it can't be done. An enormous amount of money
has been spent for art that has had official recognition
but that we now feel has no very great significance, and
that the writers, painters, and composers who have
contributed most to the country have been all too often
men who have been very badly treated by circumstances.
If it were true about affluence, then it must be that the
artist, as well as the culture, must have a certain

6^6

comfort and affluence before he produces good art. But
that is not at all true. The artist who has been deeply
dedicated veiy often leads a life that is anything but
what we would call a happy one. It's not enough a part
of the desire of society for him to be completely happy.
I think for that reason that the scientist, the physicist,
the chemist, the engineer has more chance of what v;e would
•ordinarily call a happy life than the creative artist.
Well, cite Bernard Shaw, 'T am simply calling attention to
the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture."
As I mentioned, he is one person v/ho'll give you a hint
that the artist is fundamentally a subversive sort of a
person, that society has a certain amount of justification
in suspecting him.

And we can cite Russia as being not altogether vnrong,
from their point of view, in clamping down on the artist
because if you give him a free hand, he's liable to set
off a conflagration which would be very dangerous to the
status quo or to the efforts that the Soviets are trying
to develop. Democratic countries are not altogether free
of similar fears, [tape off] I don't knov; if a really
talented, honest, dedicated student in the arts v;ould
think about this too much. I think he feels them; and
although he may not verbalize them — if he's not a writer —
he may do it in his work, and he does undergo this
conflict between what are the needs of his psyche and what

647

he can get from tradition, from his relationship to
society. Neither one of them must be violated, because
it's the impact of the irmer world and the outer world
that will cause a spark to ignite something, and then
we have a poet or a writer or a painter or a musician.
If it's all on one side too much, you have the academic
and the sterile , and you have an unhappy man, even though
he may do quite good work. The commercial artist, for
example, I discovered is often, not always, a discontented
person. I mean the man who simply does the thing for
money, who manufactures a certain thing for a certain
purpose. Even though he's quite a good craftsman, as he
grows older, he can do the job, and if he's got a job,
why, he does his work. But he doesn't do his work as an
artist. He does his work like a carpenter or a workman
who simply goes out and gets a job and is content to
earn a living. But very often, of course, the men who
began with aspirations and had dreams have been crushed
by a certain routine of work. On the other hand, the
person who has no sense of society and relation to his
fellowman, and simply reverts into himself is very
dangerous too.

And that brings up another thing I feel is true.
The life of an artist is an adventurous life and has its
dangers. Among people I have known personally, and among
others I have known only slightly, there have been seven

648

suicides. The last one was Hemingway. Ordinarily we're
inclined to think — "Well, something became iinbearable,
don't you know." I don't think that is necessarily so.
They come to a point, and we don't know what it is. I
was quite impressed the other day when I saw Tennessee
Williams on TV. He was asked, "Why do you write plays?"
And his answer I found rather startling. He said, "It
makes life bearable." He said it very quietly, and it
seemed to me that was the truth. I mean he wasn't trying
to be smart; he was confessing a simple fact, "It makes
life bearable." Of course, it does more than that for a
man of his intelligence and his ability and his talent.
An activity such as his, though it may be a very important

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area, or what ought to be a very wide area, between where
life is bearable and where it's not bearable. Biographically,
I think we can find countless examples of that sort of
thing.

One rather little one, which I think is rather touching,
is Honore Daumier, who we feel now to be one of the
greatest artists of his period, but who in his time was
looked upon simply as a cartoonist and not at all a serious
painter. I suppose he must have done several thousand
lithographs for liberal papers in Paris, and he got himself
thrown in Jail a couple of times, I believe, for his
cartoons. He didn't make very much of a living. His

6^9

life was an extremely simple one; it was among the poor
people of Paris. Among his friends was Corot, who was
very nice to him. Well, when Daumier was old and blind,
Corot told him he had a little house on his property
that he didn't know what in the dickens to do with, and
that he wished Daumier would come out and live there and
sort of look after it. There 'd be somebody in the house
and that would be a help, or words to that effect.
Corot was not only kind, he had beautiful tact.

As we all know, his paintings and his drawings are
of simple people — the poor, washerwomen and saltimbanques
and people in third-class railway carriages. To him, the
whole drama of life was in it, not because he was preaching

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in that strata of life which he knew so well. And v;alking
down the street with this person one day v/ho said that it
was tragic so many people had to live such hard lives,
Daumier said, "Xou and I are more lucky. We have our
art." At first, 1 suppose some people would say, "Oh,
your art is sort of an escape mechanism, a means of going
off into your dreams and getting away from all the trouble
and reality of life." But it's not that, of course, at
all.

Just now I also think of Goya as a person whose work
contains much bitter satire and commentary, but there's
nothing preachy about either of those men. Their work is

650

not propaganda, nor do they point to roads of salvation.
The artist in his wonder is like Kepler and asks, "Why-
are things as they are and not otherwise?" That under-
standing in itself — which the artist is so deeply in search
of — is what will have influence. And I think great
literature and great art have proven that. Coming down
to the influence and function of the arts these days,
the other day I watched that long line of people going to
see the Matisse show at UCLA. It's hard to know Just
what Matisse means to the average person. And the Van Gogh
show some years ago at the museum was also jammed. It took
us an hour to get into the show. We Just inched along
with this long line of people. I suppose that is largely
because it had been so well publicized, but he seems to
have meaning for people.

A man that surprises me is Chagall. He's a very
popular painter. It's curious that he's also a very good
painter and a good artist, a very genuine one. But he
seems to have a very definite meaning to a great many
people. Now they 're bringing out reproductions of his
work. I don't know how they'd rationalize their interest
in him, but in the great movements and changing forms of
our present living — which I find rather disconcerting to
put it very mildly — it seems to me that to a large extent
people are searching unconsciously for a certain compensation
that will restore a certain balance.

65'

C- p. Snow, of course, has dealt with that in his
novels — the conflict "between the scientific and the more
intuitive mind. And, a long time ago, JiHig pointed out
that whenever that sort of thing happens, something else
is happening at that very time that will restore a balance
of the psyche. One case that I remember, which was an
argument of that sort of thing, was that at the very time
that the Goddess of Reason was being crowned in the Pantheon,
wasn't it, there was a young man in India translating the
Up ani shads . [ laughter] And then we think of the influence
that Oriental thought has had since those days, that the
stress in this way automatically brought out the spirit
in the other direction. So I think to a large extent our
mucresu in aru seems "go ue exoremexy S-Ligxiu, au xeaso
among the people of my generation and somewhat younger.
In your generation it's probably with much more under-
standing — it certainly is in your case. There is a feeling
that somehow there is there something worthwhile, and every
once in a while you get a certain reaction. Otherwise
they're rather antithetic to what's going on, even though
we have it spread around us in lots of beautiful books
and fine color reproductions. Even in magazines such as
Life and Time , you can get quite a review of art, much
more so than when I was young. And it's much more
accessible. Andre Malraux's "museum vrithout walls" is
certainly true, to the extent in which the museum can have

652

a powerful influence. In those days in Paris, we had so
much that was available. We had the Louvre. We had the
salon. The official salon was very large, and in its
way was very successful still. I wonder how it is now.
But at that time the Artistes Francais and the Society
Nationale, the two big societies and huge salons for
painting and sculpture, got a great deal of attention,
and any success in the salon still meant a lot to many
painters. And, of course, at the same time that I was
there, the modern movement had already become history
to a large extent. Certain phases of it had been
accomplished and had gone by. Synthetic Cubism and
analytical Cubism had all been worked out, had its

least it was my feeling there) was being continually torn
between the influence and a certain admiration which in
spite of myself I might feel for something that I might
think was not too good, and I might reproach myself for
it. I don't anymore because I think that veiy often when
something has meaning it may be in something that's not
too important.

A Swiss painter Arnold Bdcklin, for example, was
enormously popular in his day. I suppose an art historian
realizes, but I'm sure that the average person who gust
loves Giorgio di Chirico doesn't know how much influence
Bdcklin had on him. They will go and look at these very

655

romantic pictures of BdJcklin, and Canaday in his history
of modem art makes fun of BiJcklin. But it simply meant
that there was one facet, that there was something in
the work of Bdcklin that had meaning to the young di Chirico
and sparked something that gave him as a young man a
remarkable development for a time. Di Chirico himself, of
course, is a very strange person because he seems to have
•lost that talent very early in life; all his good work
was done when he was quite young.

And among the people that I mentioned, Eaoul Dufy,
just to take one at random, was not a man who suddenly
thought, "Well, I will capitalize on making something
that's very chic and decorative." He started out with
xEtpressxonism, anu. xroin -Linpressiomsm to i^eing ens Cj. txj.c
Fauves, and then he was very much excited by Matisse.
I'm sure he didn't kid himself that he was a very great
artist, because although he was always a very delightful
and a very charming one, he was not one of the great ones,
but he knew he had a certain serenity in being himself
and in making the most of his talent.

After the war, he began first of all in making his
living as a designer of textiles, of silks for the Bianchini
Freres. Then he did some beautiful etchings and woodcuts
for the illustrations of Bestiare by Guillaume Appollinaire
and some other books, and from then, to great popularity
of his watercolors and painting.

654

That a person simply pours out art without any
trouble is a fallacy, as in a little satire I read once
of Elbert Hubbard. He spoke of having this colony of
artists where they all "worked without toil and achieved
beauty. " Even for a man who seems to be as spontaneous
and fantastically productive as Picasso, all he has to
do is to pick up his materials and start working at a
moment's notice and with everything just going fine. He
just pours things out and in an almost volcanic sort of a
way throws out canvases and etchings and drawings and
pottery and all sorts of things. But Man Ray, who was
out here for some years, knows him quite well and said
one day that Picasso really had periods of complete
inactivib^, when he was completely stumped. He was in
a sad state of mind, but finally he'd pull himself together
and would go back. And the struggle that Renoir had when
he found himself in an impasse with Impressionism would
be quite a typical experience of the creative mind,
[tape off]

One memory of my life in Paris was meeting Durand-Rael,
And anybody who has read the very fine book of John Rewald
on the Impressionists [ The History of Impressionism ]
will know what I mean. He did a very wonderful job for
modern art and was one of the great dealers of modern
painting. It came about in a rather curious sort of a
way and a rather amusing one. I went to the George Petit

655

Gallery to see an exhibition of the watercolors of
Cezanne. They had quite a large exposition of his
watercolors. Maybe it is not known to most people, unless
they're especially interested in Cezanne, that he did a
great many of his studies in watercolor. Many of his
researches in color were done in watercolor; he left quite
a body of work in that medium. As I went into the gallery,
•I spoke to the man in charge there, and I said that I
understood that Monsieur IHirand-Ruel would admit visitors
to his apartment to see some of his collection of
Impressionist paintings. At that time, he owned some
quite famous ones, some that are now in important museums.
He was quite liberal in letting people come. I believe,

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gallery that would introduce them if they didn't have other
introductions to him. Well, the director of the gallery
was very nice. He said that, yes, ordinarily it wouldn't
be too difficult to arrange a date to be admitted, but he
said he was sorry that Monsieur Durand-Ruel was ill, and
had been for some time, and had ceased having any visitors
at the apartment. And so I thanked the man and I said
I understood perfectly and that I was sorry. Then I
went on to look at the exhibition. As I went from one
watercolor to another, I came to one that rather puzzled
me. Then I realized why it was puzzling. It was upside
down. I looked at it again and, sure enough, it was upside

656

down. And Just then this man passed behind me and I
stepped over and spoke to him. I said, "Monsieur, this
watercolor is upside down." He said, "Oh, no! no! That's
impossible!" And I said, "I assure you, it's upside
down. " And he walked over, he looked at it and he looked
at it very carefully, and he said, "It's not upside down."
I said, "It's upside down. Now, the articulation of the
branches of a tree into a tree trunk run a certain way
and this would be impossible if the tree were not pointing
upward. These lines should be going upward instead of
downward, no matter v;hat kind of a tree it is." He said,
"I think you're right." He took it right off the wall
and went off with it and said, "I'll have this reframed.

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Then I went on with the exhibition. On the v/ay out,
he stopped me and said, "I telephoned the apartment of
Monsieur Durand-Euel and he'd be glad to see you on a
certain date." So I thanked him very much for that. It
was quite a surprise. So at the appointed hour, my wife
and I went over, and we were received by a young member of
the family in an officer's uniform. I think he was a
lieutenant. He was a very charming young fellow, and he
showed us all over the place, and we discussed and talked
about things, and it was very pleasant indeed. There were
paintings all over the house — in the bathroom, halls —
the walls were covered with masterpieces. I think that

657

famous balcony thing of Renoir's was in his apartment at
that time. It really was quite a thrilling collection of
the paintings of that period. There were Renoirs, but
there were also other great Impressionists that he owned.
So it was quite an afternoon of seeing fine painting.
After we got through, he said, "I'd like to have
you meet my father." I said I'd be delighted to, so he
took us into a room. The old gentleman was in a wheel-
chair and a nurse was pushing him around, and he said,
"Tou are a painter?" And I said, "Yes, I am a painter."
He was very pleasant and wanted to know what I had been
doing, where I was studying and so forth and so on. He
was quite cordial. So I left with quite a nice memory of

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He supported the Impressionists; he believed in them; he
nearly wrecked his business with the Impressionists. A
very courageous, very understanding dealer of the finest
type, [tape off]

Rather naturally, the painters that I knew in those
days were not the famous ones. I met a few, but the
people who really influenced me had not yet made any
very great success. A few of them later did. I only
think two or three times have I been suddenly inspired to
call on a man whose work that I liked specially. I never
did it very easily. It alv/ays seemed an imposition on a
person for me as a perfect stranger to go and say, "Hello,

658

I like your work. I thought I'd like to come around and
meet you." [laughter] But sometimes the impulse was
strong enough, so I would do it. And one day in the
salon I saw this painting by someone who, to me, was quite
an unknown painter. His name was Bos shard. There v/as
something about it that made me think, "By Jove! I'd
like to know that man. He has something. We have something
■in common." It's not that in an exhibition my work would
look at all like his work to an ordinary person. But I
could feel in the way he was making this thing, and things
he was searching for — the relations of form and color and
design and a sense of nature — it was something that I
was also working with, quite seriously at the time; and
I thought he v;a3 very genuine and that v;e would have
feelings in common. I looked up his address and thought
it wasn't far. He lived on the Left Bank, not far from
the Gare Montparnasse, as I did; so I dropped around. And
it happened as in the very few times that I've done that
sort of thing, that it was very successful. I was quite
right. And we got along beautifully.

Bosshard was a young Swiss painter, and I won't say
that he had any direct influence on me any more than anybody
else did, except the stimulus that you get in the exchanging
of ideas, in seeing each other's work, and in the criticism
that goes back and forth. He interested me not only because
of his ability (he had a very good training in Switzerland),

659

but because he had developed a style which was his own,
quite his own, in Paris. He said he had done this to the
extreme disgust of his teachers back in Switzerland. But
they were very v;rong, because they had no reason to be
disgusted. He wasn't a person who was simply jumping on
the bandwagon of Cubism or Synchromism or some other kind
of an "ism. " He had evolved a feeling that was not
especially impressive from any point of view. It was gust
sincere and good and had a very genuine charm. It's rather
a dangerous word to use, but it was winning in its honesty
of decorative qualities and color and accomplishment as a
painter.

He stands out among a lot of artists that I knew in
one rather curious sort of a v/ay. It was very obvious
that he could not paint without a feeling that there was
a cooperation between himself and his motif. At that time,
he used a figure a great deal, and that's when I first
noticed it. But it would be true, I think, no matter what
he painted — still life or anything else. It's not simply
something out there, out of which you'll make something,
but rather that he and this landscape, or he and this
motif, or he and this model must have a rapport. The
only way to explain it was that in the case of nature,
he had almost a pantheistic kind of a feeling. I don't
think that he would admit that himself; it's Just that you
got that feeling from the way he reacted.

660

I used to meet him quite often after his day's work.
We'd go down to a little cafe and sit there and have an
aperitif, and he'd bring his model along with him. Well,
he didn't have too much money, and I don't suppose he could
pay as much for the use of a model, but he needed to use
them a great deal in his work. And so he'd have these
poor little creatures that v;ere rather undernourished and
rather wan. He didn't have any sentimental attitudes
towards his models, but he always gave the girl the feeling
that she had a certain importance in his work. And he'd
turn to me and say, "Don't you think that she has beautiful
hands? Just look at that line of her face." The poor
little creature was probably very unattractive — a very
goou- model Vcjry often xsn't especially attractive in the
ordinary sort of a way — but she'd come to life, and she
felt that she was important and contributing something to
a great artist's work (he'd do it in a very nice, nice
way; there was nothing phony about it at all); that he
enjoyed his work and v;as doing good things; that he v.-ouldn't
be doing good things if she hadn't helped him, cooperated,
done her work well; that he was appreciative of it and so
forth. I think that that feeling about him has stuck with
me. He afterwards did quite a lot of decorative work.
And as a great many of the artists in Europe do, more so
thsin in this country, he did book illustration.

Ambrose Vollard made book illustration something
really worthwhile in France. To a certain extent there

661

has taken place here a definite split between commercial
art and fine arts. We put them into tv;o categories, and
then we forget that one of the greatest influences in
poster design, for example, was Toulouse-Lautrec. There
has been in Europe much more of a continuation of a
tradition that really goes back to the Renaissance. The
Renaissance artist had his bottega, and he did what v;as
asked of him. If they came into the shop and they wanted
a painting on the wedding chest, why, he did a beautiful
painting on the wedding chest. If they wanted a fresco
in a chapel, and if they had a reputation for that sort
of thing, they got the job. Hans Holbein, for example,
did some very fine designs for metal work before he
became a portrait painter to Henry VIII. And it wasn't
something that was separate. I don't think they had any
idea they were doing something that was not as much a
work of art as anything else. They had a certain modesty
about making a good thing, whether you did a little
woodcut for a book or a huge fresco in a church. A certain
job had certain problems. And that spirit is more prevalent
in Europe than it is here, or certainly it was at that
time. Here the feeling is that — and it is true, too —
if you do too much commercial work, as many of the boys
have had to do to make a living, or even illustration,
which can be something quite superior and fine, you have
to be very careful or you'll find yourself in a rut out

662

of which it's very hard to extricate yourself, [tape off]

Another man I knew in Paris when I first went there
was Diaz. At that time, I knew no French^ and my Italian,
which is more or less nonexistent now, at that time was
fairly fluent. This man was in Paris for a v/hile, but not
very long. I've forgotten how we met, but we hit it off
quite well under certain difficulties, and that was the
one of language. He was Spanish, and he could speak
Spanish, of course, and French.

I said, "Do you know Italian?" And he said, "No,
I don't know Italian." But we struggled on. I could
tmderstand Spanish to a certain extent, and I could some-
times use a Spanish word. The rest of it, I spoke in

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to have really quite a lot of fun and interesting talk
with one another.

After our first meeting, walking down the street with
him, I said, "I thought you said you didn't know Italian."
Because in a curious sort of way, I could understand him
quite well. It wasn't Spanish, and I knew it wasn't quite
Italian, but there was no difficulty, and we talked about
all sorts of things. And I said, "You said that you don't
know how to speak Italian, but you're speaking Italian now."
And he stopped in the middle of the street and in his
enthusiastic and loud way of speaking, he tossed his hands
up in the air and shouted, "No. Non parlo Italiano!

663

Improvise Italiano!" (I don't speak Italian, I improvise
it.) [laughter] He was another one of the very genuine
painters that I fortunately met quite a number of. He was
unpretentious and very much dedicated. He had a lot of
sketches that he brought from someplace where he had been
staying in the south of France. He had been spending the
summer there and was stopping off in Paris for a month or
so before going back to Spain.

His work at that time did have an influence on me.
Up to that time, I felt that in working out-of-doors,
you didn't get anything out of your study unless you
really produced a canvas. I would spend hours and hours
to really produce a picture. Well, those were still the
days when it was taken as a mattei- of course LhaL evexy
painter would do a certain amoiint of work out-of-doors. I
don't know when I've now seen a painter painting out-of-
doors. They do it, I know, but it's been quite a long
time since I've seen much of it. But in those days,
part of your education as a student you felt was lost if
you didn't get out before nature and paint directly from
the landscape and things out-of-doors.

This son-in-law of Besnard's that^ I spoke of, Avy,
when he was giving me advice about drawing and showing me
the works of Ingres, he told me of his own student life
and how he used to go to the Beaux-Arts at eight o'clock
in the morning, and then when the days got longer in

664

spring, he'd leave his classes at four o'clock and jump
on a bateau mouche (the little passenger boats that go
up and down the Seine), to some place in the suburb, and
get in an hour or so before sunset of painting from nature
before he went home for dinner. But Vasquez Diaz gave
me rather of a different feeling — he was one of the first
ones to do it. He had a great variety of studies from
nature, but most of them seemed, at first glance, to be
rather slight. But then you saw in them the continuity
and analysis of nature. He didn't try to spend his summer
painting salon pictures; he was really using his mind as
much as his materials. That changed my thinking. I
don't know why I had that idea up to that time, but I

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part of their regular work to budget their time and get
out and paint from nature, and when they didn't bring home
something which was exhibit able, why, it was time largely
lost. You had to do that, which was, I suppose, for them
a certain practical point of view.

I didn't see anything more of Diaz after he went back
to Spain, but then I'd see his work reproduced in the art
magazines; so his success grew. The last thing I saw
was what looked like a very excellent portrait of the
king, Alphonso. Apparently it had been commissioned,
and it was successful in a special v/ay. Almost inevitably
a commission portrait of that sort is a kind of a

665

"spot-knocker" — as we used to call them. It's the sort
of thing you have to do. Official portraits and portraits
of royalty are often typical examples that you see in the
Royal Academy catalog. But this had all the virtues of
characterization, of fine portraiture, and also you could
see from the reproduction, a very good painting. Since
then I don't know what he's done. I haven't seen his v;ork
in magazines anymore, [tape off]

Two sculptors were young men at that time and were
just getting a reputation. One was Lipchitz. (Ve had
that wonderful show of his out here not long ago.) In
those days, he was Just making a name for himself, and
I used to meet him at Lhote's. I used to go to Lhote ' s
afternoons quite often; he made me welcome along v.'ith some
of his other students. Then his friends would drift in,
and sometimes they'd be very interesting people. Lipschitz
used to come in to see him, and although I didn't talk
with him myself very much, I foiind it very interesting
to listen to him talk with Lhote. They would look at
things, discuss things, criticize works and bat ideas
back and forth. I wish I'd had a little of the Boswell
in me in those days and filled some notebooks.

The other sculptor, Zadkine, I used to talk to a
great deal. The most important thing I know of that
Zadkine has done is a big monument at Rotterdam, a monument
in memory of the destruction of Rotterdam. In those days,

666

he was a very ambitious young fellow and spoke English
very well. Apparently, he had been sent to England as a
boy for part of his education, so maybe that was one
reason that I remember him more, because in my first years
in Paris my French wasn't very fluent and his English
was very good. We'd argue and discuss things. He seemed
to think that his career was going to be very short.
Somebody said something about, "Well, I'm thirty years
old now — getting old." "Oh," he said, "don't mention it,
don't mention it." He seemed to be in terror of grov/ing
old. He had to hurry up and get something done before
he'd die. His life was going to be short and all that
sort of thing. Well, I know he's still living. I guess
he must be about eighty now and he's still working.

TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE
March 21, 1966

NUTTING: I think I spoke once before of the fact that as

a boy I had this enthusiasm for painting but that it
rather puzzled me, and in a way, I resisted it. I don't
think that people generally realize what a great change
there has been in the attitude tov;ards the vrork of the
artist. The feeling persists to a large extent in many
people today, which is more or less a survival of some-
thing that was much stronger at one time. Various things
occur to me that rather illustrate what I have in mind :
some of the stories of the early experiences of American

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the nineteenth centrury in this country as something that
was rather superficial, something that was all very nice,
but not a serious part of life. I remember a boy in my
class was not very bright and of considerable concern to
his family. Like numberless kids he liked to play with
a pencil and his father, thinking he wasn't good for
anything else, thought maybe he could become an artist.
There was, maybe, a certain puritanical idea towards
luxuries. The evaluation of art among people as a whole
can be expressed or understood in some of the expressions
that were used. For example, an expression that's never
heard nowadays but that was very common when I was young:

668

the thing was "pretty as a picture." [laughter] Now it
doesn't have any special meaning. We don't think of a
picture essentially, as being something "pretty. " Of
course, in colonial days and through all the history of
this country, there have been people who had a certain
nostalgia for European culture and wanted nice things
and even had quite a fine feeling for them. But the
rank-and-file American felt that a person who went in for
anything of that sort was wasting his time. It wasn't
real living; it wasn't serious. It was something rather
superficial.

I remember a friend of mine speaking of a painter
that he knew, a young fellow who vient out in the summer in

and he was a very serious painter. He'd get up very early
in the morning and work all day, knocking himself out to
accomplish something during the good weather. One day he
was painting and a thunderstorm came up. It loomed on the
horizon, and there was the lightning and thunder; and a
farmer drove by and saw him painting (he had his easel
set up near the road in a field), and he called out to him,
"Well, son, I guess you better pick up your playthings and
go home." riaughter] That Just about epitomizes, I think,
the attitude of a lot of the people in the early days. For
that reason, it's all the more remarkable that we did
produce such excellent talent — boys who had so little chance

669

to see anything or to be inspired by. They had no
galleries or exhibitions. The only chance they had of
seeing a good painting would be in the home of some
wealthy person who had things that they had brought from
Europe. That would give a certain stimulus, and even if
they were to be seen, they were probably at some distance.
Earely could they see anything of importance.

For a man to develop as much as Benjamin West did,
I think is quite fantastic. There are all sorts of
apocryphal stories about his getting colors from the
Indians and making brushes of hair from the tail of his cat —
it makes a nice story — in his efforts to learn to paint.
He had poor engravings, mediocre sort of things, that could
XHspire iiim oo draw anu. uo pamu, uUu in spzLue Oj. lu aj-o.,
he accomplished really a great deal. He became president
of the Royal Academy in England and received great attention.
Nowadays, vie find his work pretty dull and not too competent.
But that the drive should be so strong [is surprising].

Another painter who really led a fantastic life was
Chester Harding, a man born in the latter part of the
eighteenth century. He died about the time of the Civil
War. It's just an illustration of how much meaning an
art can have when it's genuine, what a force it can be in
a man's life. Chester Harding was a backwoods boy who
lived a hard life on a farm and practiced various trades.
He made chairs, I think, at one time; he tried to keep a

670

saloon. He had a dickens of a time making a living.
Nothing seemed to succeed very well, until one day an
itinerant portrait painter came through. Those were the
days when people wanted likenesses, and they were provided,
to a large extent, by people who traveled around. They'd
take a canvas and paint a figure in costume, more or less,
a general sort of idea, and left a blank place for the
face. You'd pick out the pose you wanted [laughter] and
have the clothes somewhat modified and the face painted in,
and there you had a picture. I suppose that was the sort
of a painter he was, and the first one that Chester Harding
had ever seen, and he was bowled over by the fact that
you could actually take some paint and make something
that looked like somebody. That was a very exciting idea
to him. I am not sure, but I think that among the other
things that he tried to help him make a living was sign
painting. Those were the days in which you could teach
penmanship and paint signs and give a few lessons on the
flute or something, maybe throw in a few lessons in
dancing, and in that way you could get by. If I remember
rightly, he had his materials for sign painting — paints
and brushes and equipment — so he tried a portrait of his
wife. And to his amazement, it looked something like
her. His own words were the equivalent of simply going
wild with joy. He was so excited; it opened up such a
new world to him. It was fantastic. So he spent all his
spare time painting portraits, and before long he could get

671

five dollars apiece for them. That helped quite a lot,
and then he went to bigger towns. He went down the Ohio
to cities and got some commissions. Gradually he increased
his prices because he got more and more proficient, and
it's surprising how proficient he got. His things aren't
too good, but that he could do anything at all with so
little training or inspiration is amazing. When he v;ent back
home, quite pleased because he was getting fifty dollars
apiece for a portrait and was really making a rather
decent living, his father, instead of being pleased, was
scandalized. He thought he was asking fifty dollars for
some kind of a bunco game or some kind of a fraudulent
enterprise, [laughter] He was very much ashamed of him.

C tiCCiUCU. L.U XCCX iJ.J.Ci tDUll iiclU. OUX'ncU. UUU XJ-OOXC tSiiU-L'O UX

being a common swindler.

Incidentally, Harding went on to England and really
made a success of portraiture over there. He did some fairly
good things, likenesses at least, of some of the political
figures of the day.

It is not that we didn't have some successful land-
scape painters, and painters of other sorts, but a good
portrait painter had the most chance of a livelihood.
At least that was sort of the spirit of the art school
that I went to. So I struggled at being a portrait
painter but without too much success. I think I could
have done much better in a somewhat different atmosphere

&72

than I was in. The Boston School, though in its way-
excellent, was for some reason not sympathetic to me. I
think it was because I took it too seriously and worked
too hard. I really did work hard. They used to have
these four-hour stretches of drawing from the model, v/hich
is a pretty long pull, and then the rest of the day I
spent working and studying. So I didn't really have the
energy to put into my work. I had a sort of breakdovm
and couldn't work at all for a week. Nothing was wrong
with me. I simply seemed to be exhausted. And then I
went back and whaled away again. But it was inching along
where it ought to have been much plainer sailing.

At the same time was this feeling of the career. From

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know more about it, I would absorb all the art books in
the little libraries that I got in contact with. In
St. Paul, they had quite a good art library and books
that I thought were perfectly marvelous. I'd never seen
anything like them before, and I used to rush down after
dinner and spend my evenings in the library pouring over
these things. And the idea of mural painting seemed to
me the grandest career that one could embark upon. I
got more and more enthusiastic about mural painting.

My only contact with real mural paintings were the
paintings in the capitol at St. Paul. They have those
of Blashfield and some other painters. What are their

675

names? I've forgotten now. And in the supreme court
rroom of the capitol] , big lunettes of JohnLaFarge.
The room wasn't very well lit. The light was rather weak
in there, but in a way, it gave a certain mystery and
majesty to these huge things ofLaFarge. I thought they
were perfectly marvelous, and I believe they are quite
good. So for a long time, I dreamt of mural painting.
But there were certain difficulties. One is the fact
that there was a period, inspired by the Chicago Fair of
189^, in which sculpture and painting was very much used
by the architects. That really was the beginning of the
spirit of mural painting that was exemplified by the work
of Edwin Blashfield, , Kenyon Cox, and half a dozen others
who made a reputation for themselves doing things,
especially in public buildings and the new courthouses and
statehouses.

When we were students, Puvis de Chavannes v/as looked
upon as one of the great men of the period. He's somewhat
less known now, but he seemed one of the great ones at
that time. The fact that he had a sense of the wall and
didn't paint big realistic historical pictures, such as
we see in the Capitol at Washington [which were done] by
some of our earlier painters, seemed to be something
extremely modern, rather revolutionary. As a boy I
enjoyed Puvis de Chavannes very much and I used to look
at his murals in the library in Boston a great deal.

67^

I wasn't altogether happy with his work, I think, for the
reason that although they were very beautiful in design,
and certainly from the point of viev; of decoration they
fiinctioned veiy well, they seemed to me not paintings .

On the other hand, in the library upstairs was
Sargent's famous prophets and there are big panels by
Edwin Abbey, who was an excellent illustrator and who
■painted some fine illustrations on the wall. But that
again didn't seem to be quite right. So I would look
back to the things that really inspired me and could not
figure out exactly what was ahead, what I could shoot for.

When I got to Europe things clarified quite a bit.
Certain artists were terrific experiences to me in the
way oj- waj-j- pamuing. x onxntc prouauxy uij.e j-iirst; one was
Giotto. His work I had known since a youngster through
a bunch of Perry pictures I bought. So I knew the
pictures quite well, but I was quite amazed, and it was
a revelation to see the real paintings. Then I did see
things that were the quintessence of v/hat I would like to
do. They made me long to have been born in the days of
the late Renaissance, in Venice, for example, when Tintoretto
and Titian and the real painters could do these magnificent
big canvases. At the same time, the days of Blashfield
and Cox were drawing to a close, and there was nothing
very much to inspire one to become a mural painter until
the influence of the Mexicans — Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros.

675

And it is interesting that in spite of a lot that I find
quite tiresome about [Diego] Rivera, he did have a sense
of fresco painting. Although quite a few things have
been attempted, especially under the Federal Art Project
in pure fresco, the ones I've seen seem to fail from the
point of view of being painting. But Rivera's good things
have really a nice sense of painting. He could often use
the medium with real feeling. In fact, unless you're
really born in a period of great fresco painting, such
as the Italian Renaissance, I doubt if you could do too
much with it. And there's no special reason why we should,
because we have the technical means of getting so many
effects now that in the early days was limited to pure

[Jose] Orozco had a definite sense of the painter.
But outside of that, what distressed me was that, from
what little I could see or learn about, architects were
not as interested in mural painting as they had been.
They wanted pure architecture, and that was disturbed by
stuff being put on their wall. And if they did, they
wanted it to be flat and decorative, and not at all the
work of the real painter. I always feel that Giotto was
a real painter; Gn!inewald was a real painter; and El Greco
certainly was. That big canvas of his in Toledo, The
Burial of Count Orgaz , is a wonderful thing on a wall, in
that architecture and in that setting. It combines

676

everything one could dream of. So what I was suffering

from was a yen for the monumental, which in the case of
a Rubens got full expression. And Rubens, although
he did quite a number of small things (some of his most
beautiful things are his sketches for his large canvases),
he said he did not enjoy doing what he called little
curiosities, and he spoke of the easel picture as a
"little curiosity." V/ell, I think the painter all along
has felt a little bit the sense of the easel picture as
somehow not being quite the real thing. But in spite of
that, of course, some of our greatest things are quite
small, and they're really sort of "little curiosities."

Rembrandt ' s Supper at Emma us in the Louvre , which
X think IS one of the mos"C temfic paxntings, as a
painting , a small picture that could be carried around
and hung any place in the house quite nicely. So, to a
certain degree, I felt that, after all, there are plenty
of fields without going into anything on a very large
scale.

I enjoyed painting portraits, but it didn't take me
very long to feel that as a career it v;as something that
I would not be too successful in. I mean I didn't have
the temperament for it. The profession of a portrait
painter is felt just now, I think, to be more or less a
commercial art. When I was a boy, we never sav; an
exhibition that didn't have portraits in it. Portraits

677

were quite an important part, especially in the shows in
Minneapolis-St. Paul. If they had portraits by [Robert]
Henri and [William] Chase and other of the well-known
portrait painters from the East, we felt they had something
really worthwhile in the show. And now, of course, we
never see anything of that sort at all. That doesn't
mean that we haven't some excellent portrait painters,
and we have a great many portrait painters. It's
interesting that there's as much of a demand for the
portrait as there is, but people love the painted portrait
for some reason. And if you can do one halfway decent,
you can usually find a public for it. And if you can do
them very well and like to do that sort of thing, you
can have quite an interesting life. But it involves
being with people much more than some painters like to be.
You have to be socially agreeable.

I noticed in Paris some of the painters that I met
there who were portrait painters — and not very good ones —
did very well. They were sociable fellows. They liked
to be out. They liked to meet people. They were good
storytellers, and they could give nice little parties. And
the first thing you'd know, somebody would give them a
commission for a portrait.

Sometimes it's quite difficult to understand. One
case I remember was in Sicily. There was a man there who
had a very nice old place v;hich he fixed up and he put in

678

a billiard room. He was a watercolor painter, a rather
amateurish one. But for some strange reason everybody v;ho
went to his parties would buy a watercolor [laughter],
even though they'd swear they didn't like his work, and
they wouldn't have one of them for anything. But the
first thing you'd know, you'd meet them, and they'd
rather shamefacedly confess that they had bought one of his
watercolors. I wondered how he did it, but I could never
figure it out. He never seemed to use any salesmanship;
he didn't talk them into it or anything. But, you know,
he hypnotized them into going away with it. A lot of
portrait commissions, I think, are the same way. Of
course, that was something that didn't fit in too much

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pleasant it might be.

Another reason that I found difficulty in practicing
as a portrait painter was that more and more I found it
difficult to work if I couldn't work alone. The presence
of other people, even of the sitter, I found disturbing.
If I could freeze the sitter and make him unconscious for
a few hours [laughter] and then bring him to life, why,
I think we'd get along beautifully, because then I could
work in complete solitude.

Sometimes in the history of art you can recognize
people who had this same difficulty. George Frederic
Watts, who was a much better portrait painter than many

679

people recognize, would not let the sitter see what he
was doing iintil it was finished. Well, I think that is
rather hard on the sitter because they're curious to see
how the thing is coming along, you know. And they're
sjmipathetic if you're in difficulty. So I don't see any
special reason why you should try to isolate yourself in
that way, but that was his way of working. And so they'd
come sitting after sitting and they'd have the boredom
of sitting there and then go away vdthout knowing what
had happened.

The story that I rather like and really brings Watts
to mind as a portrait painter is his portrait of Carlyle.
It's quite a fine portrait. Finally it was finished, and
he turned it around for Carlyle to see. Carlyle looked
at it, and it seems Carlyle used to fall back into his
Scotch speech in conversation very easily, so he looked
at it silently for a while and then he turned to Watts
and he said, "I'm in the habit of ^^^irrin' clane linen!"
[with a Scotch accent] He saw tonal values of grays on
this white shirt, which was something he couldn't appreci-
ate — it was a white shirt and should be painted v^hite.
[laughter]

Sometimes the talented people get by in another way.
The other extreme was a woman in Paris. I'm not sure but
I think she won the Carnegie Prize. Her work was excellent

680

in its way. I know she did get quite substantial recog-
nition for her portraits. I used to see her once in a
while. She was, I think, Polish by birth. Boznanska
I think her name was. I used to go up with some of her
friends sometimes and drop in to see her. She had a
big studio. What made it difficult for people was that
she wanted a great many sittings. She seemed to take a
heck of a long time to paint a portrait. Ordinarily,
of course, that would tire a sitter out. You can go a
few times, but it becomes an awful bore if a painter wants
a great many sittings because for most people it's rather
hard work, sitting still. But she had the ability to work
with any number of people around her. So she'd have the
samovar going and cookies and things on a table and
people would drop in and meet each other there and conver-
sation would be going on. I think the sitter probably
found it quite amusing. He could sit there and listen and
join in once in a while, and all this time, this little
old lady was working away on his portrait. When she got
through there wasn't too much on the canvas, after maybe
months of work. It'd be a very delicate tonal sort of
thing, as though seen through a haze, but with a very
fine sense of character. It really v/as a very genuine
portrait painting. Out of this mist, a personality v/ould
emerge which was very convincing, very good.

That is the opposite extreme of a person like myself

681

who likes to have silence or maybe some recorded music.
But I'm not able to do my best work if somebody's there
and has to be amused. And even if I had good stories or
anecdotes to tell to keep a live expression on their
face, why, I wouldn't be in the mood to do it.

So the idea of mural painting was in the back of
my mind all of the time I was in Paris. I was always
•thinking of it. One of my teachers, Maurice Denis (I v;as
only with him a short time), was a Catholic and did many
things for churches quite a lot. He did many murals. He
did the Theatre des Champs Elysees, which was then somev/hat
a new theater in Paris. Incidentally, it has some very
fine examples of some of the painters of that time, in-

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excellent small panels. Then there are these large things
by Maurice Denis which are very decorative.

Maurice Denis and George Desvallieres formed a school
for painting, especially of a religious nature. I went
down one day to the atelier where they had the school,
thinking that maybe here was my chance. They didn't seem
to feel that they wanted students who were not seriously
interested in the Catholic faith working in church
decoration, church painting, and church art. They rather
discouraged the idea of my joining, so I was rather
disappointed because I might have wanted to do something
for a Catholic church. After all, Chagall is doing

682

windows for Christian churches now. Hov; did they know
that I wouldn't turn out to doing some very fine things.
Some of the Renaissance things were done by some very
irreligious people and were looked upon as very successful
religious paintings. But that was the only chance that
I had, then, of learning some of the techniques of
mural painting and getting experience.

The great inspiration I had for that sort of thing
started with Giotto. If you know the work of a man only
through reproductions and prints, you often get a surprise
when you see the original things, and so it was surprising
to see the beauty in color of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
ceiling. In spite of Greco, who described Michelangelo
as a vex-y estimable man but that he wasn't a painter —
which was not altogether I think fair — one knows what
Greco meant. Greco's early training was Byzantine. In
Venice he became a painter in the Western sense. Of course,
anything Venetian is completely absent from Michelangelo's
painting, especially his fresco painting. The fresco
technique, except for fresco secco , is not one especially
in the spirit of Venetian painting. The quality of
painting in Venice is really expressed much more in oil
painting. I have Titian in mind and Tintoretto maybe
above all. He painted the enormous Paradise in the Council
Hall of the Doges' Palace. It's not Just a design, it
is great and profoiind painting. On a smaller scale, the

685

Griinewald altar in Colmar is also an example of what painting
meant to me. And, of course, the Burial of Count Orgaz
of Greco bowled me over completely.

The man who in those days — much less so now — was
rather disparaged was Tiepolo. I enjoyed Tiepolo because
no matter how many acres of wall he v/orked on, he main-
tained a spirit of the true painter. He was not just a
man making beautiful patterns. It was gorgeous painting.
In many ways it can't be compared to the real giants,
but he was certainly fantastic. He had marvelous ingenuity
in his compositions, in his design and form. His color
was sometimes superb, and always with the feeling of a
real painter. That spirit of painting is a rather curious
thing. It occupies a country for a while and seems to
move on and take up its abode someplace else. It starts
in Handers and gets tired and goes down south to see
what the weather's like down there and we have the
Renaissance (the techniques of Venetian painting really
come from Handers), and it visits Spain, not very long,
and makes the acquaintance of Mr. Velasquez and El Greco,
and it later paid a short visit, and we have a Goya.
There are no great Spanish schools, but a few geniuses.
But it liked France very well. It hung aroiuid France quite
a lot and brought forth some wonderful things. It had no
sympathy with Poland or Russia or that part of the world,
and not too much v;ith Germany.

684

Germans are great draftsmen — their Ho lb e ins and their
Diirers and their [Martin] Schongauers — and a few startling
cases of art like the painting of Mrer and Griinewald.
But I suppose that after that early period, the economy
of life in Germany was not favorable to much development
in the arts.

Holland had a short period of great painting. Before
her Eembrandts and her Hals and her Vermeers and her de
Hoochs there's not too much. And then after that you get
a sudden sort of a flight by the boys who trekked down to
Italy and, not being Italians, they brought in a spirit
which made it quite a descent from the extraordinary
talent of the painters that I just mentioned.

MJTTING: Well, literally speaking, I sold my first portrait
in an art school, in St. Paul. I did a portrait of a
model and the woman v;ho was posing was quite impressed
by it, and she offered me five dollars for it. So I was
delighted to take five dollars for my portrait, which I
painted rather quickly, as a matter of fact. As I remember
it, it was quite a long time before I did anything as good.
It was quite freely done; it was nice in tonality, and the
drawing wasn't bad. There was quite a bit of likeness
there .

In art schools, of course, I worked from the model,
doing portraits. I don't remember selling any — or even
trying to — until I went to Europe. I was quite surprised

685

to find two things in Paris. I think it could have been
true also in Rome, but I especially noticed it in Paris.
All of a sudden, I had pupils, and I had people who
wanted their portrait painted. In both cases, I don't
think they'd have studied art if they'd been at home.
I think that they were gust traveling and thought it would
be nice to take back a portrait. And would I paint their .
portrait? I found quite a lot of people were doing that
sort of thing. I mean they really systematized it by
meeting people who came to Paris and by going to teas and
parties and getting acquainted and throwing a little
dinner. All of a sudden it would happen. But that is
something I never did. In spite of that, every once in
a while somebody v;culd v.'ant a portrait. I didn't charge
too much, two or three hundred dollars for a head. So
I got those to do and then someone would say, "Oh, my
daughter is going to spend the summer in Paris. Couldn't
you give her some drawing lessons? Couldn't you. give her
some painting lessons?" And somebody else would say,
"Well, while I'm over here I think I'd like to learn
something about painting. Would you teach me?" Here were
schools v;ith a thousand, it seemed to me, teachers and
painters and places to go, but maybe there was a kind of
shyness about going where English wasn't spoken or taking
the trouble to find somebody who spoke English at the
schools, so they'd take the first one who could. It

686

seemed to work out quite successfully. They enjoyed
themselves.

It's curious that I don't even have photographs of
any of the things that I did in those days. There vras
hardly anything worthwhile. I have no record of them.
After I left Paris, while I was in Milwaukee, I did some
under the Federal Art Project. I did things mostly for
schools and places that wanted a portrait of the principal
or director or somebody. One time I had to do it from a
lot of old photographs, which was pretty difficult. Another
time I did a portrait of a professor of medicine at
Wisconsin University, a charming man who used to come
around. I did the portrait for the university under the
projects But I didn't try for commissions; I didn't
encourage it. [tape off]

Another thing that rather had its implications, I
think, and that is environment and relationship of a vrork
of art to its environment. We all rather hate to show our
work in a bad collection of art, in a gallery that shov;s
poor things, or in an exhibition which is not up to
scratch, because it seems to pull your work dovm for some
reason. It looks like the rest of the stuff unless you
really look at it. The fact that people don't see a thing
except in terms of the surroundings as a whole puzzled
me at first. Now that was one thing that bothered me
about doing an easel picture. How do you do a serious

687

thing like Rembrandt's Supper at Ernmaus ., a small picture
in the Louvre, which Rubens would call a "little curiosity,"
maybe because it's a little canvas. But it ' s a very, very
grand thing. That being used as a decoration on a v;all in
an apartment or something, there would seem to be a lack
of ability to integrate it. You don't have tremendously
serious music going all the time, and yet you're perfectly
willing to have something that a man has spent a great
deal of time on. Well, obviously, Rembrandt was rather
a slow worker, and he obviously spent a long time on that.
It was a very serious problem to him. He did it very,
very beautifully. But it wasn't done as an ornament. It
wasn't done as a decoration over a mantel or anything of
that sort. It was a veiry profound work of art.

Well, I got a little clue in Rome, when I noticed
that I would do something and it would be on the wall
maybe for a month, but nobody would ever notice it. Then
I chanced to rearrange my studio, and I put this over on
another wall someplace else, and people would come in,
"Oh, you've done a new picture! I never saw that before."
[laughter] That's puzzled me, but I find it's very
common. I had people here not long ago who said, "Oh,
when did you do this? I never saw that before." Great
Scott, again and again and again, they sat right opposite
it and never saw it. Well, I think it's rather a good
thing because you can see it in terms of the environment,

688

and then if it appeals to you, maybe you'll suddenly
realize that's a great thing. I'm sure that you could
take a great masterpiece and put it in a window on Vilshire
and watch the crowd, and mighty few would stop to look
at it. But maybe somebody would get excited, "Where 'd you
get that? Where did that come from?"

Once in Paris — apropos of that sort of thing, that
it's when you see it in an environment in which it's not
appropriate or it is appropriate — I suddenly discovered
that one of my cufflinks was broken. In those days I
had sort of a fetish of never wearing anything that cost
any money in the way of Jewelry. Cufflinks of a good size
and shape and color was all I wanted. The same v;ay with
evervthine" else of the sort. I had few things of value.
So when I found my cufflink was broken, I went into the
Printemps, I think it was, a sort of department store,
the Macy's of Paris, and went around until I found a
coiinter where they had five-and-dime stuff. A crowd was
shoving about at a sort of bargain counter next to it, so
I edged my way into it. These women were pawing for the
stuff and grabbing this and that and working their way in
and working their way out. As I was looking over this
stuff, I glanced up, and over in the corner, I saw a section
that was partitioned off to a certain extent where there
were pictures. Well, that didn't surprise me because
department stores have their sections where you can buy

689

framed pictiires. I didn't pay any attention. Then I
glanced up again, and I thouglit it rather strange. When
I found what I wanted, I went over to see what it was.
And here was a collection of pictures, and in the state
of mind that I was in, I could not bring myself to believe
that they were paintings, because in that atmosphere of
this old store (I mean it was not like the elegant stores
we have nowadays) and with all these middle-class women
pawing over their lingerie and one thing and another,
making a lot of noise, and the people milling around, the
general atmosphere v/as anything but the spirit of the
Salon Carre at the Louvre, [laughter] And so my first
idea was, "My, these are wonderful reproductions. Goodness

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seemed to be a real painting. Well, seriously, I still
couldn't believe that they were real paintings. I thought
maybe I had taken too long a walk, or it was the heat or
something [laughter] that affected me and that I was
seeing things. I went up to the canvas. It was a jewel.
One of the nicest little Courbets I ever saw. Up in the
comer, it was signed Courbet. I got close and I looked
at that thing and it was paint. It was not a reproduction!
I went to the next picture and it was a beautiful Pissarro.
They were all smallish sort of pictures, but it was a
fairly good-sized collection of the Impressionists — of
Courbet and of Manet — and each one of its type was just a

690

knockout. Well, I thought to myself, I am dreaming. I
went out and looked over the room, with all the activity
there and the noise and the bustle and the people
shopping for their goods, and I turned back and looked at
these things, and they were real! I di-dn't know what to
do about it. I looked around and here v;as a tall fellow
in -uniform standing nearby. So I v/ent up and spoke to
him. I cooked up some kind of a question, I've forgotten
what it was. I didn't know what to ask him, but I said
something about this collection of pictures. He said,
"Yes, Monsieur, that is a private collection of Monsieur
Chouchard." Veil, Chouchard v/as the owner of the store,
and afterwards, I think, he provided a special museum or
endowment for the collection someplace, and it really
was a famous collection of painting. But to meet it all
of a sudden in a different atmosphere was an experience
that I have often thought of. I think it does have cer-
tain implications about the function of the small picture
in the life around your house.

In my Saturday evening group — as I've said before,
it's all worthwhile — v/e are very v;illing to discuss a
picture simply from the point of view of decoration,
because it's going to be that first of all. It's going
to be simply an object on the wall of a certain color
and have a certain place. In your home it has a certain
texture and quality of its own. It takes on its meaning

691

from the way you dispose of it. You could have the
finest thing in the world and you could v;alk into a place
and feel that, the person v;ho owns it has no feeling for
the subject at all because of the way it's used and the
way it's placed. But somehow another person v;ho really
has a feeling for the graphic arts or for painting can
take a mediocre thing and use it in their surroundings
so that it has meaning. That person understands. That
person feels.

TAPE NUMBER: XIY, SIDE TWO
March 28, 1966

MJTTING: Although I never got to know Gertrude Stein at
all well — I only met her — her brother Leo Stein was to me
a very interesting man, and I used to meet him quite often,
especially at the Rotonde. He loved to talk. He talked
very well, and I have an idea that he's not given enough
credit for the Stein participation in the modem art
movement. I remember he told a story of the first Matisse
that he bought, and I had the idea it was one of the first
painters of the modern movement that he had acquired.
And the way he told the story, he was the man who really
discovered Matisse, although he didn't say so. He said
that he went to an exhibition (I don't know whether it was
the Autumn Salon or the Independants) and v/as very much
interested in the contemporary modern painters being
shown there. He saw this thing of Matisse and liked it
very much, found it extremely interesting, and he jotted
it down along with some other names. When he went out
at the desk there, he asked the price of the Matisse
painting, among others, and he was given the catalog
price Matisse had set on the work. For some funny reason,
the person at the desk inferred that probably he could
get it for less if he wanted to make an offer. I don't
knov; whether that v;as the practice or not, but I can't

695

imagine it was. The price was very modest, as a matter
of fact. So he left an offer which was something below
the catalog price. He went back and found that Matisse
had refused the price. He said it didn't make any dif-
ference to him, especially because the price wasn't too
much, so he gladly paid the original price Matisse asked
for the picture. Afterwards, he found that at the time
they presented this offer to Matisse, Matisse was not well
and also was not financially at all well-off. But, in
spite of that, he felt that he had put a fair price on
the picture and he simply refused to come down on it.
Anyway that was his story of his buying his first Matisse.
He didn't mention his sister as being in on the interest

and made his choice and acquired the picture. So that
gave me the idea — and from his conversation, too — that he
was a man who had good understanding and good insight,
the kind of a person who would do very well in appreciating
what the modem painter was trying to do.

I never heard Gertrude Stein talk, but I've read what
she has to say, and she didn't have at all that kind of a
mind. She may have had an intuitive feeling that was
good, and a lot of feeling for it rubbed off on her from
other people. And I'm just wondering, I simply don't
know, if maybe Leo wasn't really the man with the brains
and the understanding, as well as having a sensitivity and

69^

an intuitive feeling about modem art. Anyway, that's
the impression I got from the stories he told and also
from the very long conversations [ I had with him] .

I met quite a few people that way who gave me the
idea that they were working on something, that they were
writing something. I never read any of his writing,
come to think of it. I'm sorry I haven't. I'd like to
look it up and see what he did. But he gave me the feeling
that he liked to talk if a person was at all sympathetic
and a good listener, [laughter] I mean he v/asn't a man
to talk just for talking' s sake, because in talking, he
put his thoughts into words, and maybe in the conver-
sation, he could shape things in his mind preparatory to
wri uing.

Two or three times, I've met people and I was quite
sure they were doing that. I remember once, up in the
Abruzzi Mountains where we stayed in a little hotel
during a vacation, we met an English Journalist, a writer.
He was taking a little time off for a rest and staying
at this same hotel. He was an interesting man. But he
was apparently writing, even on his vacation, and at
dinner or after dinner, he would talk very interestingly.
Well, I'm sure he wasn't especially interested in informing
me on world affairs, of the Balkan situation or that sort
of thing. It v/as just what he had on his mind. He was
interested, and if his talk could have been taped, I

695

think it could have been published with very little
modification or correction. I think that in a way this
was one of his techniques, and Leo Stein was another one
of those people.

Leo Stein was one of Paul Burlin's wedding party.
Paul Burlin married a buyer for Carson Pirie Scott & Co.
in Chicago. She was a very handsome Jewish girl, tall,
black-haired. When they were married, Paul asked me to
be best man. Well, best man simply meant he wanted some-
body to be a witness when he went dovm to the mairie to
get married. But they had a very nice wedding breakfast
with some quite interesting people, and Leo Stein was one
of the guests. And his wedding present, I thought, was
a very handsome thing. It was quite an expensive book,
apparently, and it looked to me like practically all of
the metal engravings of Albrecht Mrer were in it.
They were very well reproduced. I remember him giving that
book, and it stuck in my mind because it is one that I
would have loved to have had. But the wedding present
and our conversations are about as much as I remember of
Leo. [tape off]

As I said, I went to Europe without any definite idea
of how long I was going to stay or what I was going to
do. The course of events — my marriage and the coming of
the war and my war activities — put any idea of coming
back out of my mind for some time. But, always, in the

696

back of my mind was the idea that pretty soon, or in not
the too distant future, I must get back home and get busy
with whatever I was going to do in the way of some sort of
a career. One evening at the Rotonde cafe, I met a [Jean]
Paul Slusser v/ho was head of the art department at Ann
Arbor. We got into conversation, and he was staying a
little time in Paris, so I invited him up and we had
drinks. I saw something of him during his short stay there,
and one evening sitting at the Rotonde, I talked to him
about life in Paris and how much I enjoyed it and how
much my years in Europe meant to me, that I always thought,
from year to year, that pretty soon I would be going
home, but in some way, I put it off. We could manage to
stay on for another year and there were things we wanted
to see and things we wanted to do, so we'd wangle another
year's stay. And I said, "This can't go on forever.
I've got to go back and start something, but I don't know
what to do." I hadn't been showing at home, and although
I started out in art school with the idea that in some way
I must make a living, there were only two things that we
as students thought of as a means of livelihood to be at
all substantial: One was portrait painting and the other
was magazine illustration.

In those days, illustration was much less of a
commercial art than it afterwards became. That is to say,
quite a number of our best painters started out in doing

697

work for magazines, even mural painters like Kenyon Cox
and Blashfield. I remember one very excellent thing that
was done by John La Farge in the early part of his career
for one of those magazines. The magazines in those days
that really did nice things were Harper' s and Centur^;^
and Scribner ' s Magazine . They made an effort to have
really good work. The result v;as that the good illustrators
like Fyie, and especially Pyle ' s pupils, could consider
themselves as very real artists. They didn't v;ant to do
ephemeral things; they did the very best they could as
artists, and especially as painters. Some of them were
excellent. Harvey Dunn, to mention a name, was a pupil
of Isle's, and so was N. C. 'Wyeth. Another reason my
enthusiasm for Howard ?yle increased as a yoiingster was
that when I went to the capitol at St. Paul [I saw a mural
of his] . They were rather ambitious for mural decoration
in the building of the capitol, and they had a number of
our best known mural painters — the large lunettes of John
La Farge that I admired enormously. In the governor's
reception room, there was a good-sized picture, not a
mural but a large canvas by Howard Pyle set in the paneled
wall of the reception room — The Battle of Gettysburg .
I'd like to see it again. But I wasn't prepared to be an
illustrator. I hadn't done much work of that sort in
Paris. I had done some, but in a rather slight sort of
way. I made drawings for a paper there.

698

Curiously enough, a friend of ours persuaded me to
do fashion drawings. I didn't do them very well, but she
liked them; and the paper didn't complain, so it was one
little source of revenue — the weekly drav;ings. She'd
bring material and also take me to openings. I'd make
little sketches and draw up the fashions, and I'd do a
group of things that she wanted done. I also used to do
things for her for other magazines that she represented in
England, none of which were over in this country. That
was, of course, not at all up my alley, and I was amazed
that they wanted them. However, it was a good thing for
me. It gave me a Job, a very definite problem and technique
for working for reproduction. So I enjoyed it.

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illustrator, and had done excellent work. What I was
regretting was that in pursuing my own work, I had not
tried to get some sort of a start in that field. But it
is Just as well I didn't, because I don't think that I
would have had any very great success, especially in the
magazine field. I still would have enjoyed doing things
for books. I never did except for one book of poems
by Edward Storer that was published by the Egoist Press,
and I've lost my copy of that. I had some little woodcuts
in it, but not very many. But I enjoyed doing them
very much.

I mentioned these things to Paul Slusser, that it would

699

take some time if I were going to make a career of portrait
painting. I didn't know exactly where to go, or how to get
started, or how to make the contacts. So I said, "So
far as I can see, what I must try to do, the very first
thing, is to get a Job teaching iintil I can see which
way to find myself, because I've been away a long time. A
lot has changed. It is a different world than it v/as
•when I left home." He said, "If you want to teach I
know a job for you." And I said, "That's very interesting.
I certainly would consider it." He said, "We'll see
about that." He didn't say anymore about it. Well, a
few days later, I got a letter from Biarritz in the south
of France, from a Charlotte Partridge, and she explained

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that she and Miriam Frink were spending their vacation in
the south of France and also that they were directors of
the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee and would like very
much to interview me for a position as instructor at the
Layton School of Art. "Would it be possible for me to
come down to Biarritz?" I wrote back, "Yes." I took the
train to Biarritz and met them. I found them very
pleasant people. We had a conference, _ and they explained
that the salary wasn't very much (I've forgotten what it
was now), but it was adequate.

I went back to Paris and talked it over with Helen,
and we decided to pull up stakes and go to Milwaukee. We

700

started right away trying to dispose of our lease on our
apartment and disposing of things that we didn't want to
bring back home. Miss Frink and Miss Partridge stopped
in Paris for a few days on their way back home. We went
around with them quite a bit, and it was kind of funny:
I'd take them out to a cafe or to dinner or something,
and as always happens most anyplace you go, if you've
lived there for a long time, somebody comes in that you
know. I would hale them and then introduce my friends.
Miss Frink and Miss Partridge, and then I'd say, "Well,
I'm leaving, you know." And they'd say, "What? You're
leaving Paris? Why, that's incredible. You've been here
such a long time. I can't imagine you'd ever leave Paris."

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of the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, and I'm going
to teach there." Well, the almost embarrassing thing
was that, again and again, they'd burst out into a great
guffaw over the idea that I would leave Paris to go to
Milwaukee, [laughter] It was something that they seemed
to think rather grotesque. They couldn't imagine that
after my life in Rome and Paris, all of a sudden I'd go
to Milwaukee. With Miss Prink and Miss Partridge sitting
right there and hearing their city laughed at, it was,
as I say, somewhat embarrassing.

Then came the Job of subletting the lease. A man and
his wife turned up, Garrett Sinclair and his wife Catherine.

701

He was the painting teacher at the Layton School of Art.
He had been with the school since its beginning and was
talcing a year's leave of absence and was going to live
in Paris, so he and his wife came up to the studio, and
before the evening was over, we had subletted our studio
to them. He thought that was wonderful because he was
wondering what he was going to do in Paris about finding
a place to live and work, so he was very glad to take
over the rest of our lease for the year. We were all
set.

After we'd disposed of everything we could that we
didn't want to take back, we had the rest packed. During
the packing, we had to entertain people who came in and
ou o — txiey u.earu. we were leaving Parxs — so it was a very
busy time. Quite towards the end of our preparations for
leaving, Edward Titus, the bookdealer, came up with a
friend of his. [tape off] Well, our furniture was all
gone practically, and we had nothing but packing cases
and the general confusion of a place that's about to be
vacated. But Titus and his friend sat down, and we
brought out drinks and sat on the boxes and really had a
very delightful evening. Titus was a quiet but a very
interesting sort of a man, and his friend was quite
charming and seemed to enjoy himself very much and talked
very well. Titus gave his friend's name when he introduced
us to him, but he didn't make too much of an impression,

702

and it wasn't until towards the end of the evening, or
after they were gone that we realized v/ho it was. It
was suddenly made plain that he was a man v;ho at that
time was extremely well known as a writer because his
novel, The Green Hat , had been very successful. So that
was one of the last of our contacts with the people in
Paris who were contributing to art and letters.

In the meantime, we had been trying to find passage
home. But it was the end of vacation time, and I found
it was extremely difficult. We went again and again to
travel agencies and offices to find some passage to get
us to New York. Finally we found that the only really
satisfactory passage that we could get was from England.

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pleased to have one more look at London before going
back home. So we went to England, stayed about a week
in London and again I got to see some of my favorite things
in the National Gallery — Tintoretto's Origin of the Milky
Way , Velasquez's Venus , and Titian's Bacchus , and other
things that I was especially enthusiastic about. We
also enjoyed the city, because London is such a contrast
to Paris, but at the same time it has its ovm charm and
interests.

We got a steamer that sailed from Plymouth, I believe.
From New York we took the train to Milwaixkee. We got to
Milwaukee on a weekend and school started the following

703

week, on Monday. I called on Miss Partridge and foiind
that they had been in a terrific dither. Miss Partridge
expected that I would be in Milwaukee well ahead of time
to get acquainted, you know, and here I had arrived
practically the day before the school opened, [laughter]
They didn't know whether they were going to have a teacher
or not. So they were vastly relieved that I finally
turned up. Of course, we stayed in a hotel for a while
and then we found an apartment, quite a nice one, over-
looking Lake Michigan, and our life in Milwaukee began.

Well, it was, of course, a tremendous change in lots
of ways. I was especially impressed with the changes
that had taken place in the idea of an art school. The
only art schools that I knew before I left for Europe were
run on what I suppose they would call the atelier system
of the European academies, largely because the people who
were the teachers in the schools, and who in most cases
managed them, and organized them, had their principal
art training in Europe; so they used the same idea. In
the schools of art where you studied sculpture and painting,
the course would be conducted under that idea and would
especially concentrate on working from the model. The
regular course would be to work from a plaster cast and
then on to life drawing, and then from life drawing on
to painting. The painting class sometimes would be a
day's work or sometimes it would be half the day, with

704

the morning spent in drawing, and painting in the after-
noon. In the late afternoon they'd have perhaps an hour
or so of sketch class, of quick poses, and then for an
evening course, maybe lectures on perspective and on
anatomy. There was nothing ever specially required in
any of the ones that I knev; very much about. In drawing
or painting, the professor would have a day for criticism —
usually, as I remember, on Friday. He vrould come and make
his rounds and give individual criticism and that was
your teaching.

When I was shown around the Layton School, I found,
to my amazement, something quite different, just what the
art schools now are. The teacher did not have a criticism
day. He was right there with the class during working
hours. I found that a bit difficult because, although
the classes were quite good-sized, once you had gotten
them started, given your talk and maybe a certain amount
of demonstration, why, there wasn't very much else to do
for a while. I would have liked to have gone to the
library or taken a walk or done some of my own v/ork,
something of that sort, but that would have been a very
bad precedent, especially at the Layton School. They
were quite concerned about their teachers.

They used to have another thing that I wasn't at all
used to — these conferences. They'd get the faculty together
and have meetings to discuss this problem and that problem

705

and this problem kid and that problem kid, one thing and
another. That was all new to me. I didn't know that they
were going to take a personal interest in the psychological
condition or the moral behavior of their youngsters, and
I felt like I was running some kind of a kindergarten
school in a way. It was strange that these adults, at
least they were all supposed to be graduates of high school,
should be treated in this way. Of course, in the older
art schools and academies, if you were serious, you were
there on time and you worked hard. And if you v/eren't
serious, why, you came in late and nobody bothered you.
In Paris, the quality of the work was measured by the
monthly concours . The teacher would pick out certain
things to hang on the wall, and then at the end of the
month, the things that had been selected were given a
grade. You'd win a concours . If you could win a concours
month after month, you were really good. But it was up
to you to work for it. You didn't have to follow any
special schedule. The same way with other things in the
school. If you could pass the examination in anatomy,
you took it, but you could simply take the course and not
take the examination. It all depended, of course, on what
you were vrorking for. They never bothered you.

But here, heavens above, the bell rang for you to go
to class and the bell rang for you to break up and the
bell rang for you in the afternoon and the bell rang for

706

you when it was over, [laughter] I had to get used to
that and also to the fact that every month I had this
mountain of stuff I had to go through and grade. Why,
heavens, I didn't know how to grade kids' work, and I
didn't like the idea. But I finally found what they were
after, and I went through it more or less to their satis-
faction.

My work was primarily the teaching of life drawing.
Then I did a certain amoiint of teaching of painting, but
in that school, they didn't do too much painting from a
prolonged pose of the model. When they got into painting,
it was more compositions and things of that sort. They
had, of course, as all art schools do nov;adays, other
things — commercial design, for example.

That's another thing that I discovered when I got
back, that the career of the commercial artist had changed
quite a lot. You could work for advertising agencies,
and there was a special life for the kid who went to the
art school to prepare himself for advertising, whereas,
when I was a boy, I don't remember anything like an adver-
tising agency employing artists. I know it was true in
St. Paul and was, so far as I know, also true in Boston
at that time, although I don't know whether I'm quite
right about Boston, but a lot of the young fellows would
learn layout and lettering. Those v;ere the two things
which gave you a chance of supplementing your income.

707

And the way I see that it started was that the engraving
houses that made halftone and line cuts for advertise-
ments in newspapers and publications would employ people
to make layouts and to do lettering, because if someone
would want to put an ad in the paper and he v/ould want to
have a nice effect and he'd like very much to have a
picture to go with it, a drawing of what he was selling
or some sort of a splash, he would go to the engraving
house to have his cut made. That was his primary reason
for going there. They'd say, "Oh, yes. Now, we can
give you this kind of a thing, and we have so-and-so v/ho
will do this and that for you." So either a boy who
worked there on the job in the backroom making a layout
for a fashion drawing or furniture drawing or something,
or else someone who worked at home would come aroiind and
pick up his Jobs and take them home.

I knew one boy in New York who supplemented his live-
lihood quite well that way. He seemed to have contacts
with a number of places. I'd be out with him, and he'd
say, "Vait just a moment. I'm going to go in here."
He'd go in and come out v/ith some little job they'd given
him. And that evening I'd be with him in his room,
and he'd be sitting at his drawing table working away on
some little thing. He'd take it back to the engraving
house the next day. Well, that was all gone when I got
to Milwaukee; I could see that there was something quite

708

different.

And here were courses in lettering and layout
techniques — in other words, in commercial art. The
division between fine arts and commercial art had become
much more marked in the training for it. The disciplines
are not the same, except in the case of basic drawing and
a certain amount of work in color, but color was always
studied with the idea of reproduction processes in mind.
They also had a class in sculpture and modeling, that
they don't have so much in schools of commercial art.

The second year I was there I gave the course in art
history; I gave weekly lectures. I was very well fixed
for that because they got slides for me from the Art
Institute of Chicago. At first, I used to make out quite
careful lists of the material that I wanted, but sometimes
the slide wouldn't be quite satisfactoiy and would be
somewhat of a disappointment. But whoever it was at the
Institute (I never met her and only knew her by corres-
pondence) did a very good job. I'd tell her what my
subject was and what idea I had in mind, mentioning maybe
some things that I wanted especially but left the rest up
to her, so I'd get a bunch of excellent slides. I enjoyed
that part of my work very much, except that I couldn't
do too much with the students.

I remember the first year I lectured on art history.
In the little high schools that I went to, ancient and

709

modem history were required studies and I supposed any
high school graduate had the elements of history, that
you could speak about the Renaissance and mention some of
the historical atmosphere, or at least refer to it with
some meaning. So I sailed gaily in and would talk about
Michelangelo and maybe remind them of the time and at-
mosphere of Rome and Florence then. But before Michel-
angelo, they didn't know a thing. My course took two
years; I had up to the Renaissance one year, and from the
Renaissance dovm to modem times the next year. I had
gotten as far as Byzantine art in Italy and was talking
about that period — fortunately, it was very early in the
game — when to my amazement, I discovered by accident that
there wasn't a yo\ingster in the class that knew anything
about the Byzantine period of the Roman empire or art or
anything else. They didn't seem to know the meaning of
the word. There may have been a few, but my impression
was that on the whole they drew a perfect blank. I had
to back up and outline my course all over again with that
definitely in mind. Also if I did refer to anything like
Byzantine, I had to briefly say something about the church
in Constantinople, why Constantinople was named after
Emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and that
was why we had the Oriental influence in Italy, v/hich
seems rather strange because you would expect to find that
much further east. I'd try to do that in a few words, and

710

not simply refer to what I thought they would already
know. So it was a very good discipline in teaching — to
be clear and not to confuse them, not to assume that
they knew.

Some of the students liked the course very much.
I had quite a few followers. But it's not the kind of
thing the boys who went there for commercial art, for
'example, were especially interested in. It was difficult
to give them enough information to pass an examination in
art history, because they had to do that to get the
certificate.

For my own teaching, I also had an awful lot to learn,
and that first year was really quite an experience. I
sailed in quite gaily with the idea of teaching life
drawing. I thought that was just no trick at all. After
all, I had been more or less through the mill and thought
that isn't too important — I mean, the fact that you could
draw very well or not, as long as you understand it, and
I felt that I did. After all, I had been looking at
drawings and reading about drawings, and drawing had been
a tremendous interest. Every little thing about becoming
an artist was something that has always interested me.
So I thought I had it all at my fingertips, and all I
had to do was to go around, sit down and say, "Well,
that is very good so far, but now if we'll be a little
bit more logical about it, it will be much more successful."

711

Well, sometimes that would work, but very often it would
not work, to my surprise.

One thing always puzzled me very much. I had always
learned a great deal from my teachers v/hen they showed me
something. If my life instructor, which was quite the
ideal in the old days, v/ould make an analysis of a form or
a structure on the side of my sheet or illustrate what he
was talking about with a sketch, that was extremely helpful,
The same way with painting. In those days, the instructor
in painting would come around and look at your work and
criticize it. Then he would maybe pick out some little
part on the canvas, maybe a piece of an arm or hand or
a bit of the side of a head, and he would mix up some
color, put it down and find this to be quite a different
color. William M. Chase was quite a whiz at that sort
of thing. He loved to do it. He loved to show off, as
a matter of fact. It was always inspiring. You would
be sweating over a canvas, and then he'd do the thing so
easily, you know, just brush in this color and that
value and that tone, a little turn here and a sharpness
here and a softness there and here was something miraculous
happening. And he'd go away and leave you all enthusi-
astic to try it, to see if you couldn't do it, too.
That is something that's largely taboo in art schools
nowadays. Never touch a student's v;ork! That might
disturb their individuality. You mustn't do that. I

712

didn't, but I did try the demonstration. Sometimes I
would even work rather hard when a kid was having a lot
of trouble. I'd say, "Now, if you would only go one
step at a time. Now this is the first step, and if you
see you can do that with not too much trouble, then, if
you have that established, you can move on, but don't
hurry. This doesn't have to be a highly finished work,
but it should be right as far as it goes. Do this and
then go on to this, then to this, and I think if you'll
do that, you'll find that it's all right."

In the meantime, I'd be making this drawing. One
day, I got a shock when a boy who really had a lot of
natural facility looked at my work after I had gotten
through and instead of being stimulated as I hoped he
would be and pleased that this problem had been simpli-
fied for him, he looked perfectly helpless. "You know,"
he said, "I'll never be able to do that as long as I
live." By Jove, I don't think he did, and he could have
done it so easily. It was a psychological block that
I never could break down.

Of course, the really important things that I remember
took place later, because I was always getting surprises
and interesting problems. One was that sometimes a
student will have very definite talent, but they can't
use a method. All this logic that I was giving them
about drav;ing didn't mean anything. There was one boy.

715

especially, who v/as one of my early students at the Layton,
and I was veiy much concerned about him. His life
drawing from the model was pitifully poor, and I v;ould
try to explain things very carefully. It didn't need to
be that. That difficulty was quite unnecessary. He
was working v;ith a degree of confusion which could be
easily straightened out, and I would shov/ it to him.
"Yes, Mr. Nutting, yes. I see." He'd be so eager and so
anxious to learn. I'd go away and feel, "Well, now maybe
he'll catch on, and it won't be so hard for him." And
I'd go back, and here he would be in the same condition
that he was before. I knew that he was making quite a
sacrifice to go to art school (his family was poor),
that it meant quite a great deal to him. He was so
earnest. He was trying and working hard. I got quite
disturbed, and I used to go out in the washroom and
walk up and down and smoke cigarettes and think, "What
am I going to do for Al?" For quite a long time nothing
happened at all. Then one day I was walking across the
park in Milwaukee, and I sav/ Al coming toward me. He
had in his hand a sheet of yellow paper — a second type-
writing sheet, you know — and so I hailed him and said,
"What have you got there, Al?" He was rather shy about
it. I could see it was a drawing that he was holding in
his hand. He gave it to me, and I looked at it. I think
that he'd been so self-conscious about his drawing up to

71 ■^

that time that he was rather ashamed to show it to me.
But I was quite astonished when I saw it. It was really
a very interesting drawing. And I said, "Al, now you're
getting someplace. This is all right. You just stick
to that feeling that you have there and push it just as
far as you can. I think you'll find everything else I
said to you will clarify itself. You've got your foot on
'solid ground, and all you've got to do is keep on. How
did you come to do that drawing?"

He said, "Well, I'll tell you. I was on my way to
school this morning" (I met him on his way to school,
as a matter of fact), "and I started out early, so I sat
down here in this park and I was thinking about my work.
I felt very discouraged. I sat down^ sitting on that
bench there and worrying about my studies, and while I
was sitting there, I suddenly saw myself sitting on that
bench looking discouraged. So I kept the pose exactly
without moving and started to think — how am I sitting?
Here I am. I'm leaning forward and my chin is in my hand.
My elbow is on my knee, and I tried to imagine what I
must look like in this state of mind sitting on this
bench. And then I made this drawing. '.'

Well, from that time on, his drawing did improve
very much, and then he started to paint and developed
very steadily. I lost track of him after I left Wisconsin;
but last year I opened my copy of Time magazine, and in

715

that column where they have all these notices, I read
of the death of Alfred Sessler, professor of graphic arts
at the University of Wisconsin, where he had been for
quite a long time. Also, I opened an art magazine with
illustrations of the work of a young fellow, quite a
promising man from that part of the coiintry, and among
other things, it mentioned him as "being a pupil of Alfred
Sessler. So, apparently, he made a considerable success
of his life and was known not only as a teacher but also
as a painter and as a printmaker.

But that was a tremendous eye-opener to me — how to
treat a student. It wasn't just a matter of laying down
your knowledge — "_I know all about it, just do as _! say" —
and that sort of thing. Unless you have some intuition
of what's in the kid and can succeed in bringing it out,
you are not very much help.

Another boy, at the same time, was a Kansas farmer's
son, and he had so little to spend that they let him
sleep up in the attic of the building. It was against
the law, kind of bootlegged, but he was very poor. He
was very earnest, and we were quite fond of him; so, for
a while, he had a cot up there and he did Janitor work
around the school early in the morning to help pay his
tuition. He also seemed to have a lot of trouble, very
much like Al. I had the same feeling towards him because
I liked him very much and also felt that he was really

716

trying. That was the same sort of thing.

I found him one day during lunch hour sitting off by
himself on the floor in the corner with a little book.
In those days, we could get at the five-and-dime store
little blarik: books called "scribblin' books," with pages
of unruled paper. They were quite serviceable. They
were pocket-size, and you could get them for only ten
cents. That sort of thing costs about fifty cents nowadays,
[laughter] But in those days, they were quite cheap and
they made good little sketchbooks. He was sitting on the
floor doodling away in this book, and I said, "What are
you doing?" He said, "1 was just doing some sketches."
He handed them to me, and here were a whole lot of little
urawings m ink ^T think he had some kind of coajrse fountain
pen that he was working with) , but they were all characters
that seemed to have to do with the Kansas farm somehow.
There was real feeling of farm life. Maybe the kid was
homesick. Anyway, they seemed to be some of the charac-
ters and people he knew. They were not well drawn in any
conventional sense, but with the same quality that I
spoke of in Al Sessler's [drawing]. In all its crude-
ness, his stuff was based on real feeling and real
experience. And I felt all you had to do with him was to
give him faith. Whereas he felt he was doing these things
on the side, but if I could make him feel that what he
was doing in that book was an integral part of his work

717

in the school, that it wasn't something different, it
could be made part of his lifework.

TAPE NUMBER: ZV, SIDE OIJE
April ^■, 1966

NUTTING: I spoke about finding Floyd Pauly sitting in
the corner expressing his homesickness by making strange
little caricatures and drawings of farm life in Kansas.
I foimd right away that there v;as something here that
was analogous to the sort of experience that Al Sessler
was having. So I looked at the drawings and told him I
enjoyed them very much, that I wanted him to do a great deal
of that sort of thing because it would help him greatly
in the development of his talent. I was right. Instead
of trying to make him base his drav/ing too much on theory
and the intellectual, to have him fellow first of all
his natural feeling and intuition, and gradually lead
him into solving more difficult problems of figure
drawing, was more successful.

Well, Floyd appeared on the scene, I think, the year
before I left Layton School, but I would drop into the
school ever once in a while to see what the students v/ere
doing. One day, I was in the watercolor class — the
students were out, but their v;ork was around on the
easels — and I said, "Well, that's rather a stunning thing.
Who did that?" Miss Partridge said, "Floyd." I was quite
amazed that the boy v;hose work used to be so timid and
cramped such a short time before now had freedom and

719

vitalit;)' to it. It wasn't too accoinplished, but you
could see that he had made tremendous progress.

The end of the story was that later he had a
watercolor accepted at the watercolor show in Chicago.
That being a rather important show at the Art Institute,
it was quite a feather in his cap, and he was very much
pleased. But still more than that, the Studio Publi-
cations in London got out a book of watercolor paintings
in various countries, examples of France and Germany and
America and Russia and Italy and so forth, and in the
section on the American painters, here was Floyd's water-
color as one of the examples of American watercolor painting.
So we were very happy for the boy, because his life ^vasn't
easy and he was getting his education iinder difficulty,
but he was making excellent progress and was such a
likeable kid.

The tragic thing was that he got appendicitis towards
the end of his period in art school. Apparently nobody
knew what was the matter with him. He didn't complain
\intil he v/as really quite ill. The operation was
successful but rather late, and they didn't stave off
peritonitis. He was very ill for a long time and died.
So that's one of the sad notes about the boys that I
knew there and worked with.

Those two fellows really opened my eyes to some of
the problems in dealing with talent and how one must have

720

sympathy and understanding of various approaches. The
attitude of one and the method of going at it will be
quite different from another. In order to be successful,
you simply cannot lay down a law and say you must do this
and that problem and expect good results. So teaching
became more interesting to me, more than [I expected].
At first, I thought it would be more or less routine, that
you'd go in and pass on what knowledge and experience you
had to individual students, that it could be nothing
that you could worry much about if you felt sure of what
you were saying and the value of what you were teaching.
But there was something deeper than that, and it became
quite a serious thing. I felt that teaching was a
creative thing. It was an art in itself as much as the
other arts. I knew that, of course, before, but I didn't
realize that in the actual dealings with human beings,
the ups and downs in feelings and strange behavior,
made my work not only interesting but very rewarding.
So from then on, I commenced to take a greatly increased
interest in my work.

I can't flatter myself as being too successful except
with individual cases. I felt that I lacked what the
directors of the school had, and that was experience, not
only in teaching but also in theory and practice of
pedagogy — how to organize work for a large group and to
get the most out of the group as a whole and all that

721

sort of thing.

The school itself, the Layton School, was started
by Miriam Friiik: and Charlotte Partridge. The school v;as
in the Layton Gallery, and the Layton Gallery was next
to the Milwaukee Art Institute. It was rather amusing
that the Layton School was run by Miss Partridge, the art
institute by Mr. Pelican, [laughter] But it made their
•names easy to remember. Miss Partridge had been an art
teacher at Downey College, I think it was (I've forgotten
really), and Miriam Prink was an English teacher. They
had decided to start an art school on their own, and
after World War I, they had the advantage of having a
great many of what were called in World War I, doughboys —
soldiers, veterans of the army — on government educational
projects and one thing and another. And the ones that
took up art there in Milwaukee had this school. So it
provided them with quite a crov^d of boys just out of
uniform. The school was started in the basement of the
Layton Gallery by Miss Prink and Miss Partridge. They
had it reconditioned with suitable class rooms and
equipment. They got Garrett Sinclair (who took over my
studio in Paris when he was there on a year's leave), as
instructor. Miss Partridge herself did teaching, and
Garrett Sinclair taught drawing and painting. They had
quite a good course in painting and composition and art
history and commercial art. I think they had some local

722

people and one or two other instructors, none of whom
seemed to have stayed very long.

One was the sculptor, Boris Lorsky, who was there
for a while and afterwards came out West and became
successful as a sculptor. He was extremely able and
seems to have been quite an interesting character. Others
who taught there for a while and then left, either came
out to California or went to New York, which most did.

When I went to Layton School the future seemed to be
rather rosy. They expected an endowment by a wealthy
man who had helped them a great deal in starting the Layton
School, and they expected he would leave a substantial
sum of money to help them carry on. That didn't
niaterialize .

My work there at first was mostly Just drawing, figure
drawing, which I went there especially for. There was
not very much painting, but it wasn't long before I had
other courses; the one in art history I especially liked,
being a subject that appealed to me, and I enjoyed preparing
the lectures.

One or two other courses I taught were some painting,
and I started a course in industrial design. But I
realized that although that was an important study I'd
have to take a course in industrial design myself before
I could really prepare a course for them. So I didn't
go very far v/ith that. That, of course, involves a study

725

of materials and techniques and modes of manufactiare in
order to teach it properly. It's like teaching architecture:
if you don't know building materials and available sub-
stances for making this, that and the other thing and
sources and relative costs, how are you going to teach
architecture? Just to design a building is not nearly
enough. So I reneged on that course, regretfully, because
•I wished I knew enough about it to teach it, because it's
a very interesting thing and related to architecture.

I haven't been back to Milwaukee. I'd love to pay
a short visit there. Apparently there's been quite a
big change. The Layton School was in the Layton Art
Gallery which was a rather small but rather ambitious

UUa.XU.XiJ.g, • J- U WcXB iiJ-l^CXJ UCOXgjllCU. cUlU. UJ. O uOiiC CUJ.a. WJ-OXJ. CL

number of good galleries and a collection made by Layton.
I don't remember what his first name was. He was a success-
ful meat packer, I believe, in Milwaukee, and he seemed to
have been quite a lover of art. The galleries, of course,
were full of old-fashioned pictures. Some, though, were
very good for this sort. They had an excellent one by
Munkacsy. Unfortiuiately, M-unkacsy, like many nineteenth
century painters, was either careless or ignorant of
technical procedure in making a lasting painting, because
the thing had turned very dark, but there are passages in
it that are excellent. And there was a very good Abbott
Thayer — the American painter. There were a number of

72^

German paintings, quite a good Bouguereau, less annoying
than most of Bouguereau' s things. It was an example of
very accomplished academic painting of its period and I
rather regretted that the students didn't appreciate
it more. They were, inclined to sniff at it. It all
looked so old-fashioned and out of date that it was diffi-
cult to get them to see that there was anything in it.
There were some passages in the Hunkacsy that were
reminiscent of Courbet, for example. The man had quite a
sense of painting. Well, they didn't know who Courbet
was and so, of course, it was rather a slow business of
getting them acquainted with it. They'd want to do
something that was either saleable or else something that

no-o uiwvu.ej.xj. cLx u. ^o-io. u -i. b lAij-iuXc oOiiic ow o. LLCgjXCC uu.o xca.oxj.cx

too narrow.

The school was well equipped. It was all artificial
light but consisted of a good suite of rooms for the
school. The office was upstairs, but the understanding
was that only the basement should be used for the school
rooms. But it wasn't too long before they got very crowded.
So they Just frankly overflowed into the galleries. Then
they were all right. The school grew rapidly and really
was quite a promising school.

Both of the women were extremely capable. Hiss Frink
especially from the business point of view and organization
of the place. Miss Partridge was an excellent director.

725

She was herself to a certain degree an artist and also had
a talent as an executive. It looked as though they were
going to go places with the school. Then, what happened
was that the Depression hit, and there was a long period
of difficult struggle for the school. Attendance naturally
fell off all of a sudden, and then they had to economize
and it was with only the greatest difficulty that they
•survived. It was only the genius of Miss Frink that
really kept it alive and finally got it onto its feet
again.

I've forgotten how long I stayed with this school,
but I could see that I was superfluous in a way. I was
the last one to he added to the faculty, and they were
xorccu. uO iCeep cuuuxng niy saxary ratxiSr tij.an to increase it
as they had promised they would and expected to. That
was very hard on some of the teachers; so I resigned. I
said, "You don't need me. You can get along very v;ell
without me and I don't think it's fair to the other
teachers who have to have their salary cut. What you
give me can at least put off the evil day of reducing
theirs. "

Well, by then, I had teaching in my blood, I guess,
so I looked around for a place to have an evening life
class. I thought I'd at least keep that going and have
some pupils. I had a certain following among the older
people, some commercial artists and others who used to

726

come to a night class that I had at the Layton School.
I looked around for a place to have a class. First I
rented a rather small room and had a small group of
private pupils. That wasn't too satisfactory because they
were amateurs and society people who wanted to do a little
drawing and a little painting and that sort of thing,
which was very pleasant, but it wasn't too interesting.

While I was teaching that little class, a man came to
Milwaukee from Chicago by the name of Lanner and opened
a bookstore. He was a tremendously energetic little
fellow. (He is out here in Los Angeles now.) He had
had a bookstore in Chicago, and he moved the one from
Chicago to Milwaukee. He had a good selection of art
books, and also he started an idea — and 1 don't know if it
was very successful or not, but at least it was good
advertising — and that was that he would rent his art
books. He used to put covers on them made of brown paper.
He had a very neat way of doing it. He would rent out
quite expensive art books to art students and artists
and they'd get a chance to take them home. That was one
of his activities I enjoyed. I spoke to him one day and
said I was looking around for some way I could have room
enough for a life class. I believe that I could have
quite a good-sized life class. "Oh," he said, "have it
here in the bookstore." I said, "Why, good gracious, I
can't do that. You can't move yoiir things out of the way

727

to have a crowd of art students, and besides there's the
equipment and that sort of thing that would be necessary."
"Oh, we can furnish that," he said. And by Jove he did.
He was very capable in all sorts of ways. He could
do electric wiring or even lay bricks. He built himself
a brick fireplace which was quite handsome in his own
home. He could do carpentry, and he was a good printer.
As a matter of fact, one thing he started there was a
little publishing business. He had an old press downstairs
that clanked away and which he ran quite efficiently, and
he got out some quite nice books. He said, "We'll
manage perfectly well." So, he, himself , made me a model
stand and something for benches v;hich was inexpensive.
lic anu. some Oj. my boys got together one afternoon and we
made benches, which was simply a matter of cutting an
eight-foot board into three pieces, putting them together
with angle irons and a little strip to hold the drawing
board against the upright in front. It's very practical,
very simple and very good. So there we were equipped,
and there was someplace out back where we could stack them
up in-between times. And, to my amazement, it worked out
very well. All you had to do was to move not too much
out of the middle of his store, which was quite a good-sized
room. He already had a curtain division between the front
and back, the show part of the store and the storerooms in
back of this place; so it was Just a matter of the lighting.

728

which he also installed. In no time at all, he had some
excellent light for the model and for illiiminating the
room. So I spread the news that I was starting this life
class, and I had quite a large one right away. I was
quite surprised that the reputation of my night class at
the Lay ton had spread so much. People seemed to enjoy
it and got a lot out of it, so that I had my weekly life
class.

The first night was very funny. I met Lanner out
here not too long ago, and he still tells the story about
it. At least he told it to another person who in turn
said, "Oh, yes. Mr. Lanner told me that story about your
life class in Milwaiikee and the first night when you
opened it." what happened was that we got all installed
with the model, and we started work on time. Everybody
had their drawing boards and charcoal and paper and the
model posed, and I was starting my rounds when the proprietor
of the building came rushing in, in a terrific state of
excitement. I didn't know what in the world was the matter
with him. He was all of a dither. Well, what happened
was, when I had started the pose, I turned on the strong
lights for the model. There were cotton curtains across
the front of the store that were drawn, and with the
ordinary light inside the room, they were adequate, per-
fectly all right, but once you got this powerful light on
the nude model in the store, the curtain became abou,t as

729

transparent as cheesecloth, [laughter] And there was
a very enthusiastic and admiring crowd of people outside
watching our class in progress, [laughter] So we had to
hastily turn out the light. I've forgotten v;hat we did
that night, hut I guess we worked with a dim light. I
don't remember that we broke up the class. I think we
managed somehow. After that, heavier curtains were pro-
vided, and the class went on successfully. I've forgotten
how long I kept up that life class. I was, however,
rather ambitious to do more than that.
SCHIPPEES: Did you collect fees for this?
MJTTIITG: Oh, yes. I've forgotten how much. It was the
normal price you would pay in an art school for evening
life classes. It would seem as though I was pulling
patronage away from, the Layton School, but I don't think I
did too much. The people that I had were mostly older
people. There were a number of people who worked on the
newspapers and wanted to get in some work from a model,
and commercial artists who wanted to get in more life
study. They were working during the day as commercial
artists and illustrators, and in this way, they'd get a
chance to do some figure study. So I don't think that I
really hurt Layton very much. I think I had rather of a
different sort of a following, [tape off]

I had the idea in mind that I'd like to have a place
where I could have a broader activity, not just an

750

evening drawing class, but a day school as well. I talked
this over with my friends. I had a friend, Frank Kirk-
patrick, who had come to Milwaukee from Philadelphia.
We had become very good friends, and he made and lost a
fair fortune in the Depression. He had done very well
in Philadelphia in real estate, and, for awhile, he wanted
to follow some other career. He lived on very little
•and started doing some writing for the newspapers. He
had an idea of entering politics and didn't want to go
hack to the business world, but, after a v/hile, he
decided that he would, that he was not going to make a
great success in politics or that he had no special
talent as a writer or commentator. At least it was not
sufficient to look upon those fields as careers. He had
a natural talent for business, and it was appreciated by
some well-to-do people in Milwaukee who backed him,
especially in property and real estate.

When he started his business, he took an old building
downtown. He rented the whole building, and, although
it wasn't very large, there was one floor that he especially
wanted for his offices. The top floor of the building had
an old-fashioned photographer's studio. In the days
before artificial light — it really was rather an ancient
setup — they had a big skylight and did their portrait
photography in daylight, using the skylight. Well, this
big room and its skylight was not being used, and I made

751

a deal with him for the use of that for an art school.
He was interested in what I was trying to do, and he
didn't have any intention of renting the room anyway,
so that the amount that I would pay for it all depended
upon my success. We made some kind of an arrangement by
which I'd pay rent according to the success of my teaching.
At first, it was a little discouraging, because although
it was a huge room, it was used as kind of a lumber room
and was a dirty and dusty and ratty-looking place.

Some of my pupils, two or three boys, were quite
excited about the whole thing, and they wanted to help
me. There was a girl who had been in my life class who
was also interested; she was a wonderful worker. We all

_^jxoCij.cu. j-ii cuiu. awGjju J. u Ouu, Cxcaneu xu Up. liien wx uii sOffit;

plywood and a few nails and good will, we partitioned
off an entrance and made a little office and fixed the
place up. I already had the benches from my other life
class. One boy was very clever, and he made an easel very
cheaply. He had all the specifications for it. The
material he got from the hardware store, and he made a
rather ingenious use of certain spring bolts and one thing
and another. And, in an amazingly short time, we had some
regular studio easels that worked very well. Then we
made a number of ordinary easels, the three-legged sort
of things which you use in drawing classes. The others,
of course, were more practical for those who wanted to

752

paint, because they're more upright and you co^ld raise or
lower one's work more easily. You don't have the occasion
to do that quite so often when you're drawing, hut usually
when you're painting, you want to be able to raise and
lower the canvas easily. I was really quite surprised
that I had this enthusiastic support and got so much work
done in such a short time.

Dolly Dunn, this girl who was in my life class,
offered to be my secretary and manager in return for tuition,
which pleased me very much, and she was very efficient.
When we got the place cleaned, partitioned and painted,
I went down .to a wholesale paper place and picked out some
varieties of paper, and also got a few basic materials.
(Students are always running out of something they need
right away; so even in a small class it's a good thing
to have some material that they can buy on the premises.)
Dolly looked after that, and she kept the books and she
took in the money.

I worked out a rather different system for classes
than I was used to. As I said, I got quite a jolt when I
came back and found what had happened to art schools since
I went to art school. At Layton we had a tardy bell and
you had to have a bell ring when the class was over and
all the routine of regular schoolwork, and I decided I
was going to go to the other extreme — I wouldn't do that.
I had cards printed with a certain number of spaces on them

735

that you could buy for so much, which in turn would give
you so many evenings. In that way, although they paid
for, say, twelve evenings, they wouldn't have to be con-
secutive. If for one reason or another they couldn't
come, they wouldn't lose anything. So the person coming
in would have the card and Dolly would punch it. When
it was filled with punches, they would get another card.
•It worked out very well. It was a very simple way to
work it. It was a good place for the class. It was
quite successful and very well attended.

I was the principal life teacher for a while in
Milwaukee, outside of what was being done at the Layton
School. But so far as the other activities were concerned,
oj-iere were some people w'lxo coulu. worxc in txj.e daytime anvx
who, for one reason or other, didn't want to take the
course at the Layton School or any of the colleges there
but wanted to go to an art school where they wouldn't
have the requirements they had at the other places. To
a certain number of them, most of them as a matter of
fact, I gave keys to the place. There weren't any special
hours. They came to work when they could work, and if
they wanted to come down at night and work, why, they
could. Each one more or less worked out his own course.
We'd have long discussions about the problems, and it
was up to each one to solve it in his way. It was a
delightful kind of a setup. It wasn't too profitable, but

734

it was all right. But it wasn't really a going business
concern or as well organized as a conventional school
would be, because I left so much up to the students. But
I think that they enjoyed it very much.

I didn't have a very large crowd. The group was gust
about right to handle properly given the facilities, and
every Saturday after class, we used to sit around and have
a little lunch together and everybody would talk about
their work. A typical thing was a discussion we once
had about the fionction of anatomy in the artist's work
and its importance. (Incidentally, that's one thing I
also taught at Layton; I gave the weekly anatomy lectures.)
I said that it was up to them to decide that, and if they
would read the lives of the artists, they'd find how much
it varied. For one thing, in the days of the Renaissance
so many of the artists had a marked enthusiasm for all
scientific subjects. Da Vinci being the outstanding but
not the unique example of that type of mind. You'd find
they studied anatomy very seriously. In the case of a
man like Michelangelo he is said to have practically
ruined his health by doing it. That study was for a very
good reason, because works of the figure on a very large
scale, as in fresco painting, required a knowledge of the
body that the painter, such as the Dutch painters, would
not need to have. Rembrandt, for example, I don't imagine
knew very much about anatomy.

735

Well, some seemed to think that anatomy didn't mean
too much to them, and I said I certainly wouldn't cram it
down their throats, but if they wanted to know anatomy
and found it useful, I believed that wherever they find
anything that's useful, they should go after it, no matter
what it is.

There were two or three of the girls who thought that
it would be an interesting and a valuable study. So,
again, I had a different idea. Before, I had taught anatomy
the regular way, with big sheets of paper, beginning with
the construction and movement of the body, and, bit by
bit, going down to its anatomical organization. But I
told them that when I studied anatomy at the school in
Boston, 1 felt that it was too diagrammatic. I said, "It's
going to be really interesting and useful to you if you
feel the function of the forms, the machinery. How does
it work? It's not so much what the thing i_s. What does
it do ? Then I think you'll find it interesting. At
least I did. When I shifted my point of view from simply
saying, 'This is located there and this muscle has its
origin here and its insertion there' — to — 'What is it
doing and why is it there?' — then it took on more life
and meaning. I commenced to enjoy it." I also said,
"Anatomy is something that somebody said you learn and
forget three or four times, and the last time you forget
it, you know it about right for your purposes." [laughter]

736

And I have to confess that I have forgotten. I mean it's
not easy stuff to keep in your mind, and you really don't
think about it. Whatever you really need seems to come
to mind automatically. And I said, "Well, we can't
dissect a cadaver. That's rather an impractical sort of
an idea. But there's a very strange thing. In the animal
world the forms are analogous. You have biceps and triceps
on the bird and the whale and the horse and the dog and the
cat, gust as you have in our own arms. When it comes to
the skeleton, the giraffe has seven cervical vertebrae,
a mouse has seven cervical vertebrae, and we have seven
cervical vertebrae. I think it's really very fascinating."
I said, "If you go to the butcher shop and get a chicken,
get a rabbit- or some other small animal and dissect it,
you'll learn more of what a muscle is, what a tendon is,
what an aponeurosis is and why it's there and what the body
really is, than by looking at any number of charts in a
book."

Well, there was one girl who had taken biology in
college, and she got enthusiastic and she and one or two
others went to the butcher shop and got a chicken. Well,
we had that chicken around the place for several weeks in
formaldehyde, and they did a whale of a good Job [studying
it]. I was delighted. I was sorry I couldn't give them
some college credits or some reward. Of course, I didn't
have anything to offer but the pleasure of accomplishment.

737

The others, by association, learned quite a lot.

Another time they wanted to know if they couldn't
do some sculpture. I said, "Why, I'd be delighted if
you'd do some." There was one girl who thought that would
be wonderful. She had seen some work in stone, and the
direct cutting in stone, she thought, would be exciting.
I said, "I'd be very glad to have you do it if you feel
like doing it. We'll go into this question of sculpture
and look at sculpture and the history of sculpture and
what the modern sculptors are doing and the technical
procedure. I myself haven't done it, but I think v;e can
get along quite well." So she went off someplace and
found this stone outside of Milwaukee and nearly killed
herself getting that stone back to the studio on street-
cars and up the stairs. But she worked hard and did a
good job. And that was another thing that was spontaneous
combustion and worked out very well.

In the meantime, of course, they were doing some
steady work; they worked regularly from the model and
direct painting from life, the study of composition and
the regular things. Then someone would have a brainstorm
about something else, and maybe it wouldn't go very far.
Other times it would.

That was a period when the enthusiasm for the Mexican
mural painters was more or less at its height. Orozco and
Rivera and Siqueiros v;ere doing things that made an impact

738

on the yoiing American painter and his desire to do miiral
painting. So my students decided they v/anted to do mural
painting. I said, "I don't knov; anything about fresco,
but if you want to know, I'll see if we can't find out."

Well, it happened when I first vrent to the Layton
School, a young fellow from Texas was one of my students.
After he finished school I didn't see him for a long time,
but when I started my school, he had come back to Milwaxikee.
In the meantime, while he had been in Texas, he'd worked
with a fresco painter. He had been doing murals in true
fresco and had learned the technique, and so I said to
him, "Won't you come down and show the kids how you do
frescoes?" He said, "I'd be delighted." I said, "I can't
pay you very much for it." V/ell, he wouldn't talce any
money. He'd be glad to do it. He said, "It's very simple
to do a demonstration, " and that he would fix up everything.
What he did was to put chicken wire on a frame, and then
the plaster in that. The other coat came last. So he
came down and set up this frame with chicken v;ire, and his
materials and carried through a small fresco.

He developed it as it would be done if on a large
scale — the preparation of the wall, the preparation of the
plaster, the second coat, the cartoon, then the final coat,
and the painting of the fresco. It was really quite an
exciting thing for them to watch. It was for me, too. I
enjoyed it very much. "Well, now, where are we going to

759

paint the walls?" That was their next problem; they just
had to do something. Frank Kirkpatrick was very cooperative.
"Oh," he said, "you can have the walls all the way down
to the street. Why don't you do the hall walls. There
are three floors. Do anything that you want." I thought
that was veiy generous of him because they weren't accomplished
artists or experienced mural painters. They hadn't even
learned to draw or paint professionally as yet. But they
pitched in, and each one took a different medium. They
didn't do any true fresco because that would have been a
big job to get the old plaster off the wall and putting
on a proper plaster would require an expert. They did it
in egg tempera and in oil. I've forgotten what, but there
were one or two other ways. We parcelled out panels and
areas on the stairway and the hall all the way down to
the street, and so they painted up the place fairly well.
They were very ambitious murals in these various techniques,
and they worked hard. Goodness, I'd go down there and it
would be getting so dark I could hardly see, but here
somebody would be up on a ladder tiying to finish up this
thing because he or she had an hour to spare and could
get down there and do a little more work. [ laughter]
I often wondered what became of those things. I don't
suppose they lasted very long because they weren't
masterpieces. Some of the kids were talented, but they
hadn't arrived as yet at doing anything much worth

740

preserving. Anyway, I think that although it wasn't maybe
too practical, it was a good antidote for some of the art
education they were having. If it were overbalanced in
one way, at least I felt that the ordinary courses in
the art schools were inclined to be overbalanced in
another way. I sympathized with some of the talented boys
who [in the art schools] were restless and sometimes
difficult, which I think was unnecessary if they had had
a setup that provided for different temperaments.

I forgot to mention the name of my little school.
It was called "The Atelier. " Every once in a while I
still hear echoes of it or get a letter from somebody —
"those wonderful days in the Atelier." It's still remembered

: x.i_ _x»x»_ _j_^

W-L Oil a.JLXt;C UJ-Ull.

TAPE NUMBER: ZV, SIDE TWO
April 11, 1966

NUTTING: I was somewhat surprised to find myself in
Milwaukee, and it was something I didn't anticipate
because I had never thought of coming West. In the years
that I lived in Europe, whenever I thought of taking up
my life in my home co^ontry again, it was with the idea of
probably going to New York, that being the center of
things. So going to a place about which I knew nothing,
though I did have a certain amount of familiarity with the
Middle West, I didn't know what to anticipate. But I
found Milwaukee a surprisingly charming city. I say

" r> In a Tnm' n cr " "hor-cmoo T Viottq crv iriQ-nTT Vicn-v-mT- Tno7noT''i ^ c n f i +-

Of course, this is some thirty- five years ago now, and
I've often wondered what has changed in the atmosphere.
There was change taking place while I was there. You
felt much of the old spirit of Milwaukee and also something
of what was happening in the new atmosphere that was
developing there.

The first thing that struck me was the spirit of the
old families of Milwaukee. Miss Erink and Miss Partridge
had very pleasant social connections in Milwaukee; and we
immediately met a number of delightful people. There
were two streams, it seemed to me, of thought and feeling.
One was from the German atmosphere, the old German families

7^2

who preserved much old world charm. Their homes had the
atmosphere of Germany of the days of our grandparents,
something I didn't often see in Germany itself. Also,
they had a love of good living and an interest in the
arts. They were a cultivated and intelligent people.
They loved the theater. They loved music, of course, as
Germans do; so we always had good music in Milwaukee.
And the families of English and New England heritage and
ancestry seemed to form somewhat a complementaiy sort of
an atmosphere. So, soon I commenced to appreciate my
good fortune. The life had some reality to it. Also the
fact was that there seemed to be surprising vitality among
the young people.

At the time that I lived in Milwaiikee, although I
didn't realize it, there was an unusual number of talented
young artists and musicians, people who have since ac-
complished things, more so than in almost any other
community that I have lived in.

One of the activities there that I took part in was
with the Wisconsin Players. My interest in the theater
was strengthened by my friendship with Gordon Craig.
It's not that I didn't have a real interest before, but
he was a friend of such charm and erudition in matters of
the theater and had such a creative mind in his sense not
only of the drama but also in theater production that I
began to have a yen to do something in the theater. Also

7^5

that was largely because when I was in Paris, the Russian
ballet was more or less at its height. The great dancer
Nijlnsky v/as before my time, but Diaghilev was doing
remarkable things. I saw rehearsals of his work in Rome,
and I met Bakst, the famous designer for the Russian
ballet. Then, when his performances were given in Paris,
I was quite in attendance there. He also influenced the
ballet and other companies. There was the Russian ballet
company called the Kamerny Theatei; which had a very
modem and interesting approach to the ballet, and the
Swedish ballet also did some quite remarkable work. The
fact that the ballet was more a combination of the talents
of the musician, of the actor, of the dancer, of the
producer, and of the designer than it had been in olden
days was to me a fascinating idea. It seemed to me to
be a wonderful art from which you could look forward, to
something new and vital. The work that Diaghilev did when
he was daring enough to get people like Picasso, Leger
and Derain to do decor for his ballets seemed to me to
make a field that I would love to be working in.

When I got to Milwaukee, I found that the Wisconsin
Players did some quite excellent work. It was a small
theater which, I think, was really backed by Laura Sherry,
who had had some renown as an actress. She was then
married to one of the Milwaukee industrialists. There
was one young actor in Milwaiikee, Edward Franz, who has

7A4

since been successful. I've seen some excellent work of
his filmed for TV, though he has also worked in the movies.
He was in Milwaukee at that time, and I think he was the
one who on a trip East met a Russian by the name of Boris
Glagolin. Eddie Franz met him, I think, in New England
just after he had done some work for Carnegie Tech in the
production of plays there. He thought it would be great
to get such a good director for the Wisconsin Players
and, sure enough, they brought Glagolin out. He gave me
a great insight into what the talent of a real director
is like. Hardly without speaking and with occasional
suggestion, he could bring out the talent of a young
person surprisingly.

That activity, of course, didn't take up too much
time, but the work that I did had repercussions on my own
ideas of art as a whole. Experience with another art,
I think, always helps one in understanding what the
significance of what one's own work may be. I'm dead
against this idea of an art being isolated, that it's
something that you have to understand by itself. There
is such a thing as a creative instinct — whether using
this form or that form or this material or that material —
that is common to all the arts. I think the theater is
an excellent field in which to develop and broaden in.

What I felt was going to be a great art of the
future — the combination of the talents of the painter, the

745

musician, the actor, the writer, and the dancer in some
kind of new art form — has not materialized. Those of us
who were working with the Wisconsin Players had rather
special feelings for the stage as a visual experience.
After all, you're looking at a stage performance; you're
looking at color; you're looking at form, design, and
movement. The more literary-minded person might not
feel this. So the poetry and the drama might be emphasized
in a way that it wouldn't get its full value because it
was not well related to other aspects of good theater.

The most ambitious thing that I did was Lope de Vega's
The Gardener' s Dog . We had to use quite a little
ingenuity there because the theater had been a little

not very large. We felt The Gardener' s Dog ought to be
put on with at least a suggestion of the opulence and
somewhat the grandeur of the Baroque period. I got over
part of the difficulty by bringing the decor down into
the orchestra and partly by the use of what would
ordinarily, I suppose, be called false perspective by the
layman. By having the vanishing points of a building on
the side, it looked as though you saw a long way into the
distance. If you have the backdrop painted so that your
horizon is way off there, even though it's only a few
feet away, it can look like miles away if you can arrange
your forms properly. Of course, it involves problems for

746

the actor, because in moving to the wrong part of the
stage the actor might suddenly look rather colossal,
getting into a place where he doesn't fit in the per-
spective. But that was all worked out nicely, and I
think that it was a fair success.

It was a valuable experience in my own field, that
is to say, composition, design, use of form and color.
On the strength of that, the president of a club in
Milwaukee wanted me to do a backdrop for a sketch that
was going to be given for one of their performances.
It was an old German club, associated in some way with
similar societies in Germany. It was a club partly social
and partly cultural. I was never quite clear as to what
the function of the club v;as, but the members were mostly
people of German families in Milwaukee. I said I'd be
delighted to do a set. He said he'd provide the materials
for it. I went down to do it, and I was quite horrified.
He had huge pieces of wrapping paper on the wall and some
watercolors. I thought from what he said that he'd get
me some scene painter's material, you know, and have a
cotton drop and it would be all ready for me, because he
seemed to know exactly what he wanted. I expostulated
with him that I couldn't do very much with just some
ordinary v/atercolors and wrapping paper. I said, "In
the first place, the wrapping paper is going to get wet
if I use the watercolor at all freely. It will all get

7^7

buckled up. I don't think I can do anything at all."
He said, "Of course you can. I'm sure you can."

Anyway, there wasn't time to do anything else. I
had to do that or nothing at all. So I said, "Okay,
I'll try." He told me what the sketch was going to be,
and we agreed on a suggestion of a landscape. I sketched
out a small thing that he thought would be a good idea.
There 'd be a road and a field on one side and some trees
and then a body of water, and beyond that, some blue hills.
It was a very simple sort of thing for v;hat I think was a
musical number. When I got through, I looked at it and
thought, "Well, this is certainly hopeless. He'll have
to do something else." But he didn't seem to be at all
disturbed, which surprised me. It turned out he knew more
than I did, in spite of my now having had a little
experience with what can be done with light, because
when the performance was put on and I was waiting to see
what in the world he had managed to do at the last moment,
and expecting some sort of makeshift substitute, the
curtain went up and to my amazement there was my painting
and it looked just fine. I just couldn't believe my
eyes. It looked so good that the audience applauded.
It was the only set that they applauded. They seemed to
like this landscape. I couldn't figure out how so much
was made of it. Afterwards I did, of course. But that's
one of the delightful things of working with a thing of

7^Q

ttiat sort. You can talce such extremely simple materials
and make them look like a million dollars if they're
used in the right context and with the right light and
atmosphere.

I would have been very happy to work for the theater
if I'd had the training and the talent for it. To have
been something like a Reinhardt or an Appia or a Craig and
work for the theater would have been a wonderful experience,
I am sure I would have enjoyed it very much indeed. Well,
that and my little stabs at various kinds of acting were
what occupied me at the theater.

The theater itself, apparently, had always had very
good direction and had interesting talent. Eddie Franz,
for example, has since become a successful actor, and
before my time, Angna Enters, I was told, practically
began her career in the Wisconsin Players. It v/as an
intelligent and talented group of people who worked in it
and who patronized it.

The other activity which I took part in besides the
Wisconsin Players was an old society called The Walrus Club.
In those days, they had quite a tradition for promoting
things of cultural value — music, art, literature. But
their principal activity, at least what they were best
known for, so far as the city at large was concerned, was
their annual ball, the Walrus Ball. It was one of the
events in those days in Milwaxokee. They had a big ballroom

749

in the Hotel Pfister, and all the artist members of the
clubs would work for days beforehand on the decoration of
the place, and they usually did a very good job. I, of
course, contributed my part to the decoration. For some
strange reason, I did only one thing, but it v/as rather
a big job. I seemed to have more nerve in those days
than I think I would have now. The motif of the ball that
year was Dante's Inferno, so that gave quite a chance
for the people to do rather grotesque cutouts and all
sorts of fantastic things. I had an idea of painting a
large thing, a sort of descent-into-Hell picture. They
stretched a piece of cotton for me, the scene painter's
sort of stuff. I've forgotten how big it was, but it
must have been at least ten by twelve feet. I thought
that would be rather nice if I could have a descent-into-
Hell scene at the end of the ballroom. [ laughter]
Doggonit, I did the thing, and it came out all right. I
don't know whether I have a photograph of it or not. But,
of course, it was a job. I had a number of figures in
it, and it took quite a lot of time and real work. But
it was fairly successful and people liked it.

Ify other contribution that year at the ball was a
dance that somebody persuaded me to do. I loved to
dance, although I don't think I ever showed off or any-
thing, but I always liked to go to dances and loved it.
So somebody said, "Why don't you do a dance for the Walrus

750

Ball?" I said, "Well, I couldn't do anything. > You have
to have training and ability to perform in public, to
say nothing of talent, and I have none of these." "Oh,
I think you'd be wonderful." They buttered me up, and
so I fell for it. I got a young dancing teacher in
Milwaukee there to give me some ideas about pantomime
and steps.

But the better influence was from a woman who had
been on the stage with a group of girls that at one time
had been quite famous. I can't recall the name of it.
But she had a much better idea I think. She said, "In-
stead of learning some pat sort of a thing which a dancing
teacher will teach you, just go ahead and work up your
own pantomime. It will be much more amusing and much
better than if you depend on lessons." I finally agreed
with her.

Well, the end of that little story is that I had a
niuQber in which I made myself up as an African and did
some kind of a voodoo dance effect. I managed to get my
whole body coal black, put some gold around my middle
and had a strange kind of thing built up on the top of
my head. My face was painted in a mask sort of a way
which made me look rather inhuman. Then I had a little
partner, one of the members who was rather short, and
all he had to do was to trot around after me with a big
umbrella, [laughter] We worked this thing out with a
couple of these things from a children's playground in

751

which they slide down a chute, you know. What do you
call those things?
SCHIPPEES: Slides.

NUTTING: Slides, yes. We set those two things up in
the middle of the floor, and with beaverboard and one
thing and another we made a huge mask and the slide came
out of this huge grotesque mask like a tongue. Here was
an opening of a mouth, a mask and a slide. There was a
very good orchestra, and all of a sudden, what the
audience saw, after the orchestra started playing the
"St. Louis Blues, " was these two guys shooting out of the
mouth of these huge masks — one, a coal black, naked
creature and the other, a little guy with a big umbrella
made of palm leaves or something. Then I went into my
routine of the "St. Louis Blues," and believe it or not,
it was a great success, [much laughter throughout]
SCHIPEERS: Oh, no! ^e greatest picture. [laughter]
NUTTING: Our appearance, I think, was very sudden.
We sort of shot down and up off this slide onto the
floor and went into all these strange movements.

Well, my costume wasn't exactly appropriate for
ballroom dancing^ but I had prepared for that beforehand.
We took a room in the hotel with a bath. This served a
double purpose. It not only gave me a chance to get
washed up and put on another costume, it also gave us a
place to gather with our friends for drinks. You see,
these were the days of prohibition, and we had to depend

752

on our hip flasks when going out in the evening. It
turned out that I lost quite a lot of the conviviality
because I was in the tub trying to get the black off of
me. I would be afraid to say how many tubfuls of what
looked like gallons of black ink I emptied before I got
myself looking anywhere near like a white man. I then
put on a pseudo-Florentine costume, I've forgotten just
what, for the rest of the evening. I still remember
what seemed like hours of struggle with the black paint
while hearing the laughter and gaiety of our nice friends
in the next room.

The following year they put on another ball, and a
woman who had charge of that sort of thing [laughter]
bedeviled me so to do something of that sort again.
SCHIPKIBS: [laughing] Tou could follow a dog act. This
is too much!

MJTTIIJG: I'd thought I'd shot my bolt, so what actually
happened was I happened to get a vacation alon^ about
that time and went down to Chicago to escape importunities
from my admirers.

I did do one once for a smaller gathering. I parodied
a whole lot of dances, including a Russian dance. The
way we figured the thing out v/as that a fellow appeared
at the end from behind the wings and whacked me over the
head and dragged me off by my heels. That was quite
successful too, but that was a smaller occasion, [laughter]

753

Well, let's pause in our mad career, [tape off]

I arrived and started my work in Milwaukee in 1929
and everything was going very smoothly, very happily,
until the banks were closed and the Depression fell on
us. It was out of a completely clear sky, though I had
one friend who, for some days, seemed to have some inkling
of the closing of the banks and kept urging me to see to
it that we were financially fixed. She said, "You know,
the banks are going to be closed and you won't be able to
get any money from your bank, so be sure that you've got
enough money." I thought that was very strange and
I wondered how she knew about it, but she didn't say,
or wouldn't say. Sure enough, there was this unbelievable
event and so far as we were all concerned, completely
unexpected.

One of the first things that happened was that the
Layton School was extremely hard hit. However, I stayed
on for some time. There was, in the spirit of the
artists at that time, understandably, a veiy definite
change. It wasn't so much a change as an intensification
of a certain feeling that we had as a sort of a movement
in painting, that is, more and more emphasis on the
American scene and more emphasis on the feeling of gaining
freedom from foreign influences.

That thing really started with the Ash Can School,
with people like [George] Bellows and [Robert] Henri and

75^

[Everett] Shinn and [George] Luks and those painters who
promoted that sort of a feeling very much up to that
time. But with the Depression and with the violent
change in attitude towards life that people v/ere forced
to adopt, young painters developed a great enthusiasm
for a "social significance." Well, I don't think that I
felt that any less than they did, but I didn't interpret
it in terms of art as they did. It may he that I was
wrong. As I look back now, maybe I ought to have taken
more part in it and thought of my function as an artist
in society more in those tenns. But instead of that,
I was always arguing against a lot of the ideas that they
would bring up. Thej would cite a man like Goya, for
example, or Daumier, but I would try to point out that
Goya and Daumier were great artists, but not because they
were commentators, not because their things were propaganda
or gave comments on the life of the time or the society
of the time in the same way that a cartoonist's work does,
for example. With all respect for a cartoonist's work,
once that period is past, its interest is usually
historical — the comment that was made at that time. [Sir
John] Tenniel, for example, had a drawing in Punch called
"Dropping the Pilot." Emporer Wilhelm is dropping Bismarck.
He is going down the gangway to his boat, and it epitomizes
something in history pictorially. But it's not a great
work of art, though it's well drawn and a classic cartoon.

755

But Goya and Daumier were great artists, not because the
material that they happened to use were the horrors of
war in Spain or the somewhat drab and melancholy feeling
of the poor in Paris. That is, it was a sublimation of
experience. It wasn't simply giving expression to that
experience. So that may have been, as I look back now,
a certain rationalization on my part for a more abstract
feeling in painting, things that I had enjoyed and had
meant so much to me up to that time in my love of painting.
I was interested in Michelangelo, for example, not because
of what he had to say about the Last Judgment. I didn't
care too much about The Last Judgment, but I foiind much
of his work very moving. If you could paint something
because of your experiences with the Depression, that's
great, but at the time I wasn't going hungry, even though
it wasn't a very bright prospect. But I wasn't giving
expression to my sufferings, and to do it vicariously by
simply illustrating somebody else's experiences wasn't
something that I felt was true to my concept of art. Well,
the only thing that resulted from that was that I felt
out of step with my fellow artists to some extent and
especially with the ones that I would have enjoyed most
being more heartily in sympathy v;ith — the yoimger artists.
Of course, with the older ones, it was rather a different
matter. So there was a certain sense of isolation that
I wouldn't have had otherwise, but it wasn't really actually

756

so much of one because I took part quite enthusiastically
in activities.

I sent to the annual show of the Wisconsin Painters
and Sculptors, at the Art Institute in Milwaukee, and I
was quite impressed with the fact that I v;as turned down
much more frequently than I would he in Paris, [laughter]
I never could quite understand it. Not long ago, I
happened to find an old catalog of the Autumn Salon where
I had four canvases in one year. But I'd send what I
would think would be my best thing to the Wisconsin
Painters and Sculptors, and as likely as not, I'd get
turned down. I didn't feel too badly about that because
I found that was true of some of the best artists who were
showing. It's an experience that they have out here in
California, too. Very well-known and very able and
undeniably quite successful painters don't feel at all
put out when their things are turned down because that
often happens. The general drive [is in favor of] what
is young, what is a new movement and what is significant.
It's not altogether the fault of the jury. I've served
on juries myself and I could see that a certain work might
be superb of its kind but that it had been done before.
It's excellent in a gallery where it meets its public,
but to the person who goes to an exhibition to see what
is germinating, what's happening, what is alive , it hasn't
too much meaning. I served on juries a number of times,

Ibl

and I learned how difficult their work is. It didn't
take long. As a matter of fact, I could see it very
quickly, which is one reason I dislike very much serving
on art juries. I always took it very seriously and
worked very hard and was never too happy with my work
after I had gotten done with it.

In spite of what I said about being out of step,
•I must say that I had very sympathetic consideration
from all of my colleagues in that part of the country
and was an officer in the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors.
For one year I was their president. Something happened
in a funny sort of way. There was some kooky kind of a
guy who used to pose at various art schools and he spread
the idea that I was a Nazi, very much to my amazement.
I didn't know it until long afterwards when somebody told
me what it was all about. But there was one group of
young people, some of whom had been my students when I
first went to Milwaukee, that formed a club at the Jewish
Center. One day they got to questioning me quite a lot,
but I didn't know what they were driving at. As I learned
afterwards, what really happened was that they became quite
convinced that I was anything but a Nazi. I mean the fact
that I was a warm friend of Ludwig Lewisohn, for example,
and things of that sort, became proof against my being
anything of the sort. So there was nothing at all
suspicious about me, and as a result, I was made an

758

associate member of an art club in the Jewisla Center.
They couldn't make me a member because I am not Jewish,
but some Jewish boys wanted to show their appreciation by
making me an associate member. I was a former teacher
of some of them.

That was in the days of the John Reed Club, and I
sometimes talked at their meetings. They had a section
of the club made up of a bunch of yo^ung artists, and they,
as well as writers and other people who were members of
the John Reed Club, would get me to talk. But I never
was able to debate very successfully on the relation of
art to politics or on the meaning of art and its social
significance. I was more of a listener than I Mas a
debater in those things. However, I apparently did find
material to talk about. They seemed to like to have me
talk. I found them sympathetic. The fate, of course,
of the artists was that few of them made any sales or could
get work during the Depression, and many of them had a
very difficult time.

There was one young friend of mine, who was quite a
good painter and had done quite well, and he knew scene
painting. In those days they did a great deal of that
sort of thing; there was a big establishment in Milwaukee
for the painting of theatrical scenery. But there was
no work to be had in that field, and he couldn't find any
other commercial art with which to make a living. He
tried opening a little grocery store to support his

759

family and that didn't work. I was rather impressed by
him. He told me about the various things he tried to do
to make a living. He said one of the most successful
things he did and that kept him going quite a little while
[was something he did with phonograph records]. One day
he walked down the street and outside of a secondhand store,
some kind of a gunk shop, was a great stack of old phono-
graph records that were worn out. He found he could buy
them very cheap, and he bought an armload of these records
and took them home. In the middle of them, he painted
little landscapes and little scenes so that the outside of
the record formed a frame for this circular composition
in the middle of it. He dabbled out these little pictures,
a whole stack of them, and took them out to a summer resort
on one of the lakes there and set his records up by the
roadside. They sold very well, and he went home with some
money for groceries. That vias just one example of what
some of the artists had to go through.

I, of course, saw this atmosphere of trouble and
difficulties, but fortunately enough did not have to meet
those problems so closely, [tape off]

Of course, there were two projects that were inaugu-
rated very soon. Miss Partridge was the head of the work
in Milwaiikee. One was the Federal Art Project and the
other which was related to it (I don't know exactly in
what way) , was the American Index of Design. They were

760

both projects that meant quite a lot to art in this
coimtry subsequently. The Index of Design was rather an
iinusual one. It's not the sort of thing that many would
think of. I don't know exactly who first had the idea.
I think that the painter Henry Vamum Poor v;as one, but
I'm not sure about that. The history of it is something
by itself and worthwhile to study for anyone interested
in art in this countiy. What it primarily did was to give
a living, especially to commercial artists who were out
of work, but it also made a very genuine contribution to
art history. First of all, somebody had worked up the
techniques for doing the drawings which were mostly in
transparent watercolor with maybe some opaque color,
depending on the motif. Then they searched the country-
side for tools and all sorts of things that had to do
especially with the crafts. One very interesting part
was to run down all the figureheads from old ships (in
the days of sailing ships, they had a carved figure on
the bow), and they made watercolor renderings of these
things.

Ity grandfather, as I have said, was trained as a
toolmaker, and I have a couple of planes that he made.
They are beautifully made, and they borrowed one of those
planes and that was rendered by one of the workers in the
Index of Design Project. You'd think it would have been
much simpler to take color photographs of a great many
things, and, of course, color photographs are invaluable

761

and in their way cannot be surpassed, but there was some-
thing about the work that they did in the Index of Design
that could not be gotten from the color photograph, very-
much in the same way that you cannot get from photography
exactly the documentation that doctors want for a medical
illustration. By rendering it, they could get into it
and give you the make of it in a way that you can't get
even with the best of lighting. Very often you get
obscured images and things are lost in shadow when you
have to deal with the effect of light. By rendering in
watercolor you get the complete make of the object and
not its effect under a certain light. Now it requires a
great deal of skill because these things were very highly
finished. It didn't take them too long. The experienced
ones could do them fairly rapidly. At the same time, to
look at them, they had almost the effect of a color
photograph in the completeness of detail, the grain of
the wood, the textures.

One girl was especially good at rendering old
samplers. In the days of our great-grandparents, little
girls had to begin learning their needlework right away
by making a sampler of "God Bless Our Home" or something
in letters and little flowers on it. They learned to
use their needle that way. So the people on the project
got a hold of all of the samplers they could find. They
had boys out ranging the whole countryside of Wisconsin

762

for anything of that sort that would be interesting from
the point of view of design. They'd borrow them and
these renderings would be made^ and this girl could do the
sampler so well that when you saw it on the v;all, it looked
like the real thing was pinned up there. She did a beautiful
job with a combination of transparent watercolor and Chinese
white. Well, offhand you would think that's very interesting
documentation, but it has rather more than that.

I don't know how much of the Index of Design has been
published. I did see a book on the figureheads from the sail-
ing ships. But it is material that ought to be accessible
to all designers, because it showed the evolution or the
changes that took place in certain forms and certain
designs. It seems to me quite analogous to what's hap'^ened
to folk music. A tune that's known in one part of the
country, you'll find in another part of the coiintry v;ith
a certain difference, and you can trace it back to an
early version. From that it goes back, and maybe you'll
find it in England, although it might be barely recognizable.
In this way, you can trace some of the artistic influences
in this country that came from the various countries — for
example, how a Scandinavian design for painted furniture
will be foiond in some other form in New England. Then
the family moves West or goes South and some other idea
is added so there's a certain change of style. The
history of design in this country is beautifully documented

763

by this v/ork.

Then, of course, the artist was put to work. They
had paintings, and he simply produced a certain number of
canvases and got so much a v;eek. Then there were other
things that were done, but the doing of murals, of course,
was the most ambitious part of the project. There v;as
a lot of awfully bad mural painting done. We have to
confess that. But also it did a great deal to revivify
the idea of mural painting and to get people to think
about it very seriously, both the artist and the public.
There was at that time a strong influence in this country
from the Mexican artists — Diego Rivera and Orozco and
Siqueiros. The young fellows who believed in the idea of
social significance were especially keen on their work
and were influenced by them. I did some murals, but
although I began as a boy with the ambition of doing
mural painting, the thought about that field more or
less lapsed during my stay in Europe. I hadn't entirely
forgotten it, but I hadn't given it any very serious
consideration. The only time that I did sort of think
of it seriously was when Maurice Denis and Georges
Desvallieres started their school of religious art, which
would be painting for church decoration. I had an idea
that I'd like to join the school, but both Denis and
Desvallieres seemed to feel that it was a school which
was really not done primarily for profit. It was really

764

a project on their part for the benefit of church art,
and they wanted students who were Catholic or communicants
that would really make a career of ecclesiastical art.
But aside from that, I hadn't thought about it, and when
all of a sudden I was asked to do a mural for a school,
I was quite nonplussed. In the first place, with all my
admiration for Orozco and Rivera, I didn't want to do any
Orozcos and Riveras, and I didn't know exactly what I
wanted to do except that I did not like the idea of simply
making a colored pattern on the wall. What I had felt
as being great wall painting can be seen even in a fresco
such as Giotto's. As early as that you can see his talent
as a painter. And what is most vivid in my memory are
the great Venetians — the Veronese s, the Tintorettos, the
Titians. Even on large scale work, they were essentially
painters. But to make mural painting real painting is a
difficult problem, and I felt that it had not often been
solved in modern time. So I didn't enter on the subject
too enthusiastically, but I was glad to have the chance
at least of doing something and having it in place.

A school in Wisconsin wanted a panel of historical
significance. Well, of course, you know what they wanted.
They wanted a big illustration which would make a very
nice background for some part of the auditorium, something
of that sort, and I'm afraid that that's more or less
what I did. I tried to give my composition a certain

765

monumental quality so that it would not be just an
illustration, but at the same time, it could be read as
one with costumes, characters, figures that would be
plausible to the general public. I did a frieze for a
high school in Wauwatosa, near Milwaiikee. Then the Museum
of Natural History in Milwaukee had an idea. The director
was very keen about having paintings to illustrate histoiy
and archeology. The idea was not uninteresting; I liked
the idea. He had a German who had been working there for
a good many years. He was a little old man who came to
this country when he was young. In those days, they used
to do big panoramas, very realistic, huge pictures as in
cycloramic form, and he stayed in Milwaukee and was
spending the last years of his life at the museum doing
these very bad paintings of Indians and Custer's massacre
and one thing and another. They wanted to know if I
would do some things for them under the project. Well,
again, I was pleased with the idea of doing big canvases,
but it didn't work out too well. I did two or three things,
and then I had this disagreement with the director of the
museum. It was not because he criticized my ability,
but because he always wanted to have something in this or
that. He wanted to have an exact picture, and after the
picture was composed, he wanted something else done to it
so as to make it more informative. In other words, what
he wanted was a big illustration.

TAPE MJMBER: XVI, SIDE OKE
April 18, 1966

NUTTING: I didn't get very much satisfaction out of my
work at the museum. When I first started the project,
I thought it would be very interesting because it would
give me a chance to do these big canvases that I had
always dreamt about. They v/anted to have some rather
large illustrations, and I didn't mind putting in the
research to make them illustrative. I thought it would be
an interesting problem to do something that had some
decorative value and that would be beyond simply enlarge-
ments of pictures. But I found that the director had no
idea of a picture except that it was something that was
completely documentary. And the fact is, most of their
stuff had very much the same feeling. An artifact is
something that must be analyzed from the point of viev; of
time, certain kinds of culture, things of that sort, and
was never looked upon from the point of viev/ of the artist,
So, sometimes, some very beautiful things would be mixed
up with a lot of junk just because it fitted in solely
according to their classification, which I thought was
rather a depressing attitude towards much of the beautiful
material that they had.

The people that called themselves anthropologists
there often had, v;hat seemed to me, an extremely narrow

767

attitude towards that sort of thing. When I finally got
a large canvas going that I really liked, I'd show my
sketches and work out the composition, and the director
would think it was very good, but when I got halfway
through, all of a sudden he had new ideas about it. When
you take a big canvas that you've worked on, have it all
laid in, then have to change it and throw in stuff that
you hadn't counted on, it just wrecks your pictures. I thought
it wasn't quite fair. If I'd had warning in the first
place, I wouldn't have minded so much, but this thing had
been going on, as a matter of fact, on two or three things
that I did there. So I got rather peevish, and I packed
up all my things and simply walked out. Miss Partridge,
who was directing the project for that region, seemed to
sympathize. She said, "Well, that's all right. We v/ant
you to keep up the work for the project. Won't you make
a contribution?" And the result was that I did a few
portraits. Of course, they were rather difficult things
to do, official sort of things, more or less the same
sort of a problem. People would criticize them because
they weren't finished enough, or they weren't quite the
exact likeness of what they thought was the man.

An especially difficult one was of a man that I
never saw. He was a founder of one of the small colleges
or a normal school — I've forgotten what it was — and all
I had was a lot of old photographs and what they could

768

tell me about the man's coloring. So it was a discouraging
kind of a job. But it was all right. I didn't mind.
It was good discipline in a way. So that was part of my
work until I left the project.

I've forgotten how much I was paid. It was a weekly
sum, and the fact is that it's rather discouraging [to
recall things] when I don't have any memoranda to refer to.
I've forgotten so much. After all, it's also rather
shocking to realize how long ago it was! [laughter]
So maybe it isn't altogether too surprising that things
that I haven't thought about for a good many years are
not clear in my mind in detail. However, I think they
did some quite excellent work on the project. Some of
the boys did some very good mural painting, and it's too
bad that more of that spirit of mural painting hasn't
been carried on. I suppose, of course, in a way it has.
It gave us stimulus and brought forth some excellent
talent that has developed since.

The other project that I mentioned, the American Index
of Design, I think was really a magnificent thing. It
put the whole spirit of American design [before us] and
made us feel there was such a thing as American design.
Although it was derivative, it was interesting to see how
a certain spirit of design in New England might be picked
up and carried to the South in a different spirit and
seemed to take on a certain coloring in various things.

769

The objects that were used varied from farm tools to
needlework to all sorts of things which illustrated the
crafts and the artistic feeling and general expression
of form and color in American life. The portrait painting,
of course, was not such an interesting project. I would
have liked to have worked on the Index of Design, but it
required an extremely meticulous technique, and it was
surprising that they foinad so many people who could do
it really very well, or if they couldn't, many seemed to
learn very rapidly, especially boys who had been working
in commercial art and were used to rather meticulous
derivative sort of work and were familiar v;ith a variety
of techniques and were very clever at using their skills
in similar ways, [tape off]

Veil, during all this time, of course, I was very
busy with my teaching. I had a very interesting group
of yoTing people. I pretty well described our activities
there which, from the point of view of a school where
you'd have a large number of students, wouldn't be too
practical. In a way, it was a cooperative thing to the
extent that they had the responsibility of preparing
their own projects and making their own decisions as to
courses of study. Of course, I would gather up all
sorts of material from my own experience and the experience
of other people that I would cite: that if you want to do
this, then this sort of discipline you'd find necessary; or

770

for tills, you should improve your skill as a draftsman;
or for this, there are certain techniques that would be
required. That worked out usually quite well, because
when they found a sudden impulse, like they had for the
mural painting, instead of waiting for more preparation
they pitched right in and did it.

I was influenced in advising them to do that sort of
thing by Robert Henri. Robert Henri is pretty well
recognized as one of the really great teachers that we had
in this country because he seemed to have a genius for
bringing out the personal feelings and talents of his
student, in contrast to most teachers who left the imprint
of their own work on their students. A Chase student would
paint like Chase. A Duveneck student would paint like
Duveneck and so on. I didn't feel that was essentially
bad because we find in the history of art, that the yoiing
painter has usually been obviously a product of a certain
master, just as Raphael's vrork as a boy looked exactly
like Perugino, and the young Van Dyck painted as much
like Rubens as he possibly could and even tried to completely
imitate Rubens' compositions and did them very well.
Afterwards, he exploited his own talent and his own
feeling. A man like Turner, whose exhibition is being
held at present in New York, seems to be such a huge
success. (I see they're reproducing him in color in
several magazines; he's made quite a splash.) As a young

771

fellow he spent years playing what Robert Louis Stevenson
would call "the sedulous ape" to other painters. Stevenson
said that ' s what he did as a writer, and to many painters
the same applies. But Henri had this ability to encourage
a student to be himself, so that there were very few
students of his whose work shows any obvious Henri in-
fluence. And a number really have gone places.

I had a Saturday class. A good many had to work at
night because of their work, and my life classes were also
at night. But Saturday we could get together and work in
the morning and then have a little lunch on the model
stand, and then we'd discuss all our problems. Each one
would bring up some idea or some difficulty or some
question, and we'd throw it around, and give it the works.

I also had the good fortune to get a hold of a press,
because some of them wanted to do prints. The old-fashioned
lithographic press was falling into complete disuse about
that time. Many of the printing houses still had them
for pulling proofs. (Milwaukee, incidentally, from early
days, was a center of lithographic printing.) But they
weren't using the old processes and had these old proof
presses which they sold cheaply. So, I got one, and a
number of the students went to work on lithography. Also
we found that by using thin metal, we could even print
from copperplates. We couldn't use the standard sheet that
is used for engraving, but with thin sheets, they could

772

get some fine experience and it often printed quite
beautifully.

The principle of the lithographic press is not the
same as that used in other forms of printing but the use
of thin metal solved the difficulty and quite a lot of
quite interesting work was done. I don't know how many
of them kept it up, but they got a good start.

As I did with other things, such as when they wanted
to do fresco painting, I had this friend, who had been
working with the Mexican painters in the Diego Rivera
entourage and who had learned fresco painting quite well,
come around to give them a demonstration of the technique
of fresco; when it came to lithographic printing, I found
a fellow from one of the companies there who came around
and spent an evening demonstrating lithographic printing
and processes — preparing the stone and so forth. He gave
them professional advice and demonstration, which v/orked
out quite well because after you know the essentials of
it, there's not too much to learn. It's just a matter of
practice and study. So we were doing sculpture and
painting and mural painting and all sorts of things,
including this little course of anatomy that I mentioned
for which the girls got the chicken and dissected it.
That worked out quite well in a small school, but I could
see it wasn't a way to really build up the school, to go
any further in having a real art school. It was more of

773

a club than it was an organized school, [tape off]
I think I would have developed the school if I had stayed
in Milwaukee, because I felt it was definitely the nucleus
of something interesting, especially for older students.
At places like the Layton School, of course, they were
mostly all young people out of high school who could
spend their entire time there, but I found that there
were also many young people who were entering professional
life who also wanted to learn more. A good many people
in my night class were professional and commercial artists,
who came to study for that reason and also because the
setup there gave them a place to experiment in new
techniques and materials which they might not have at home.
I had a little art library there, and I took down quite
a number of books, so that if any questions came up, we
could have illustrations and some inspiration from
collections of prints and documents.

We held exhibitions of the students' work. We went
that far towards having a conventional school atmosphere. .
And, of course, one thing they enjoyed very much were
things like Christmas parties. Those were always a great
success, [laughter] Of course, they're bound to be,
especially if you have a congenial crowd as this one was.
But as events turned out, we left Milwa;ikee somewhat
unexpectedly, I mean so far as anticipation was concerned.
The reasons for it, v;e'll get around to later, [tape off]

77^

Coming back to my homeland was in its way as thrilling
an. experience as leaving it in the first place for my life
in Europe. So much had happened while I was away. Not
only had life itself changed, but also I myself had
changed. I didn't know exactly how I would feel. Ve
never felt that we were expatriates or foreigners in a
foreign country, partly because we both had a deep sympathy
for life in the countries we lived in, that is to say,
Italy and France. We made them really a part of ourselves.
But, at the same time, [we kept contact with our homeland] ,
a great many of our compatriots, but also because we kept
up our contact in other ways. My wife, I remember,
always was a very faithful reader of the Saturday Evening
Post because she felt that was one of the truly American
magazines. Of course, in a way, it is. [laughter]
And so she used to read it, not so much because of its
literary interest but because it made her feel in touch
with her own coiintry.

There were certain things I didn't know exactly how
I would react to. One thing that I didn't take much
interest in, for example (never have, unfortunately),
was sports. I always tried to be interested in what was
happening with the ball games, with the tennis champions
and that sort of thing, because I had friends who would
get very excited and could hardly wait to get the news of
this or that or the other thing that was happening in the

775

world of sports. I wondered if I would get excited if I
got back into contact with the people who really took
such things seriously. I was disappointed to find that
I didn't, and I rather wondered why. Baseball, for
example — I remember in high school, I used to be quite
enthusiastic about our efforts in that field.

This leads me to another thing that I have been thinking
about in going back over these times: that is, your
attitude towards the world around you is fonned early and
it will influence you throughout life, sometimes to your
advantage and sometimes making it difficult and something
to be overcome. The playing of games, the competitive
ideas were something that I did not have too much contact
with at an age when it would be quite important.

But what I started to say was that it had the
advantage that whatever was done I did because that was
what I enjoyed doing, not because I felt that I was
getting the better of somebody else, that I was ahead of
him in this or behind in that, measuring myself with
somebody else, as you would in a competitive work. That
is one reason why I never have been too happy with the
idea of prizes in art, for example, or that a person
should get a certain award just because a certain group
of people thinks it's important, for maybe if it were a
few years later, with a different spirit abroad, why, the
person would not get any recognition at all. It seems to

776

me that is measuring the value of a v;ork. If the Judges
have understanding and appreciation, that's all right,
but how are you going to measure it? Giving a medal
always has puzzled me. It also made me very unhappy
when I was teaching that I had to give grades, because I
felt I really didn't know how to grade. Just because
something fell below a certain standard and a certain
preconceived idea of what a person ought to do, didn't
seem to me to be exactly valid. But, of course, that was
necessaiy in a well-organized school. I suppose a kid
wants to know where he stands, and in certain fields, like
a commercial art school, for example, in which I taught
for a while here in Los Angeles, there is an understanding
of what the demands are and what the market is for your
work. Your ability to meet that can be measured to some
extent. In that case, I think there is something rational,
something valid about it.

In the last week, in thinking about that period and
what happened to me on my return to my own country, [I
was struck with] the difference between that and this life
that I had as a boy and an early teenager. So much of
that time I was thrown upon my own resources and did not
have too many people to evaluate my situation. It's a
little bit hard to explain. But one of the most delightful
aspects of my life in Milwaukee at the Layton School, as
I look back on it, was when I started giving some talks on

777

what you would call art appreciation. I gave these to
a group that the director, Miss Partridge, got together.
They would meet in the afternoons, and they were nearly
all women who wanted to know something about art. There
would be an art dealer there who dealt in very nice things.
He had a large collection of big color reproductions of
masterpieces. They are much more common now than they were
then. But I found it worked out very well. I'd go down
to this art dealer, and he seemed to be glad to lend me
anything I wanted. I would pick out a group of pictures
and put them upon the wall in one of the schoolrooms,
have a sort of an exhibition of them, and give a gallery
tour. That was one of the things I did for the school.

One of the members of that group turned out later to
be a very dear friend. Her husband was Dr. [Uno] Nyman,
a dentist in Milwaukee, and Mrs. [Gyda] Nyman was trying
to paint. Afterwards, she joined my school. She used to
come down and paint and do lithographs, and she worked
there until I left Milwaukee. Dr. Nyman was one of the
very interesting people of Milwaukee. He had talent
as a musician. He was Swedish born and Gyda, his wife,
was from a Danish family. But Uno Nyman had not been able
to fulfill his ambition to be a musician, and he had to
take up a profession to earn a living. He would have
liked to have studied medicine, but he didn't have the
means to get a medical education, so he took up dentistry

778

instead and was one of the best- liked dentists in Milwaiikee,
But he could play the violin with considerable ability,
and he was quite successful in his profession. He had a
beautiful home and a big music room, and he used to have
a string quartet every Saturday evening. He had a group
of musical friends, and four of them played quartet music.
A quartet evening at the Nymans was one of the charms.
They'd play quartet, and then they'd have a supper that
also was pleasant. He also entertained the musicians
who came to Milwaukee, the London Strings and other
well-known musical people. Usually, if they were in
Milwaukee for any time at all, they were guests of the
l^ymans.

The I-fymans had up in northern V/isconsin, in Door
County, a little farm, or what was really a large cherry
orchard. I suppose in the old days it had been a farm,
but when he bought it, the only thing it was used for
was for cherries. Door County being a great cherry coiintry.
The last time that I really worked on my violin was when
we stayed up there for the whole summer. We didn't always
do that. Usually it was only a month or so, but one
summer we spent the whole summer there and well into
autumn. Every morning I would get up early and go out
into the orchard and work on the double concerto of Bach.
Gyda Nyman had been a music teacher and taught piano, and
she read music very well. So that whole summer I worked

779

quite hard at my high note, [laughter] Ity musical
accomplishment was finally learning to play it, not too
well, of course, but at least I could go through it with
some understanding — and do both parts. Sometimes I would
take first and Uno would take second, and then we'd change
and he'd take one part and I'd take the other. Gyda vrould
play the piano. We did that and a nice selection of trios
that he had. It was maybe the most delightful time I
think I ever had with my music.

Of course, during these periods, I was doing quite
a lot of painting out-of-doors, sketching, drawing, as
if I were communing with nature in that way. A lot of
thought of your attitude towards these things is much more
of a matter of tradition and culture than v;e realize.
People have no feeling for nature except its practical
value, what it means to them in terms of making a living
or the degree to which the ground is cultivated. If it's
a farm, that is a measure of its beauty for them. I have
a whole collection of anecdotes that illustrate that
point. There's one about an old fellow who saw Yosemite
for the first time. (It's about one of the things that I
have noticed, and it could have been true, but it's typical
of people who look at nature with a tradition of the
attitude that it should serve only certain definite
purposes.) The story goes that a woman visited. Yosemite
and met an old fellow who was one of a party that first

780

got into that valley. She was congratulating him and said,
"What a wonderful thing to have done. Think of it. You
were the first white man ever to come to all this marvelous,
beautiful, wonderful country. What an experience it must
have been for you! What a thrilling thing to have happened!"
And the old fellow said, "Yes. Yes. If I had known it
was going to be so famous, I'd have taken another look
at it." [laughter]

I think to most people it sounds like an apocryphal
story, but I'm sure it wasn't. If it wasn't true it could
have been. [I say that] because when I was a youngster,
we were in a little town in Washington and my mother and I
were staying at a hotel while Father had v/ork out in the
wilds. He would come in weekends, and we stayed at this
little hotel during that period. It was in a beautiful,
lush valley, green, with beautiful little farms and two
streams on each side of the valley that came together at
the foot of it and hills rising on each side of the
valley. It was quite delightful. The mother of the
proprietor of the hotel came out to visit her son, to
spend the summer with him, and I can remember her standing
on the porch of this little hotel and looking at this
countiy that we thought was so delightful. She was
bom, raised, and had lived her life on the Kansas plains.
She looked at this, and said, "They tell me this is a
purty country. I don't see nawthinpurty about it. I just

781

feel like I was dovm cellar all the time." [laughter]

One of the first things that we did a year after we
got into Milwaukee was the very natural thing to do, [and
that was to visit] my father. He was retired and was
living out here in California. I had acquired a second-
hand Pontiac. It turned out to be a very serviceable,
excellent car, and we drove out to California. Father was
then living in San Gabriel. He and his sister, my Aunt
Anna, had, until he retired, lived in their hometown in
Ohio, in Kent. Upon my grandmother's death, Anna joined
my father out here, and he got a little property. He had
a rather absurd idea, that he had had since I was a child,
that he thought it would be a wonderful idea to have a
chicken ranch. I don't know why, but chickens seemed to
appeal to him. And even in Butte, he built a little
chicken house on the hill where we lived. When he'd come
home from work in the evening, he would work on this
chicken house, and then he got a crate of chickens. They
were running around and it turned out that apparently
all of them were roosters except one. Mother was quite
pleased with that little brood of chickens, because she
thought they would lay eggs and they vrauld contribute
something. Well, they didn't lay eggs. This first
collection of fov;l, except the little brown hen, turned
out to be roosters, luatil the little brown hen hopped up
on a woodpile one day and started crowing lustily.

782

[laughter] So that required more investment in chickens
until they got hens. But, I don't know, Father seemed
to find it quite fascinating, and when he retired, he
started raising chickens out in San Gabriel. That kept
him very busy, and he was a man who always wanted to
have something to do. He was a man of tremendous energy.
It didn't turn out to be very profitable, and I think he
lost his taste for it after his house burned. He moved
into Alhambra then and got another piece of property, but
he didn't say anything more about raising chickens, or
even mention it. [laughter] He was tired of them.

TAPE NUMBER: XVI, SIDE TWO
April 25 r 1966

NUTTING: I think that I said something about my work at
the Wisconsin Players and mentioned Boris Glagolin.
Glagolin probably was the most striking character that I
met in Milwaukee. He was Russian, and I think he had been
the assistant director of the Imperial Theater of what
was then St. Petersburg. He also had been a popular
actor in Russia and a movie director and had written a
great deal on the theater and the art of the theater.
His English was very poor, and as long as I knew him it
didn't improve. He used very few words and very awkv/ardly.
But the first thing that imprcGsed me was that he had
almost a Svengali sort of ability to bring something out
of a young actor or actress. So even when the material
sometimes seemed impossible, when the play v;as finally
produced, you'd think that the work was being done by
somebody who really had talent. In other words, they
seemed to be able to follow an idea without really iinder-
standing it and could give quite convincing expression to
it. And he'd do it in a way that I could not analyze.
He'd sit back quietly, half wrapped up in his cloak in the
darkness of the theater, and then all of a sudden, he'd
go up on the stage and say, "Darling, not so. Not so."
And then he'd walk across the stage and maybe, with one

784

or two gestures of his hand or a turn of his head, indicate
a mood or a piece of business or something. Then he'd
go back and disappear in the darkness and sit there and
just watch what was going on while they rehearsed v/ithout
bothering them too much. It was quite amazing to me. He
also got me on the stage and had me do some acting. But
his life must have been extremely interesting as a director,
writer and actor in Russia. Not being translated, I
don't know how good his writing is in the original. He
also had the experience of going through the Revolution,
and he was a refugee in this country. He came here with
nothing. I never did quite make out what became of his
family. He talked very little, but once in a while, he
would give just a little description of a scene or some
experience while he was in Russia and you'd put two and tv/o
together and get the picture of quite a difficult life.
He was director of that little theater in Milwaukee until
not long before I left Milwaukee. Then he came out to
Los Angeles. I rather imagine his feeling for the theater
(I don't know exactly how to express it) came from an
aristocratic attitude towards the art and the things that
he liked. He wrote on Shakespeare in Russian, I knew that.
He wrote a little book on Othello . There v;ere other things
that were not of the eighteenth century, but in many ways
I think his real feeling was eighteenth century. He liked
to do things with eighteenth century things or with Italian

785

Renaissance things. The play that I did the most
ambitious set for was Lope de Vega's The Gardener' s Do£.
So he was very much, I think, a fish out of water. He
didn't have any sense of the American scene really. The
idea of directing plays by any of our American playir/rights,
with a very few exceptions, I think, would be quite out of
his field. He had quite a hard time, but he was amazingly
■energetic and very courageous and was always very active.
And nothing would stop him once he had an idea. But he
was a charming person, and people liked him.

He had a few young people who were his pupils, and
they used to come to his little room and rehearse. In
his way, I think he gave them some very good education
in spite of his lack of any facility in English. He could
get his ideas across, and I think they profited very much
by him. The fact that he didn't have a theater to work in
wouldn't stop him from producing something. He would get
me interested, and he got everybody else interested and
had everybody helping him. He was a wonder that way. If
anyone dropped in, he'd find something for them to do,
to help him out in some of his work. He had the idea of
having a small troupe and portable scenery, and they would
put on little one-act performances at a club or a hotel
or anyplace where there was a room for it. It seemed like
a very impractical idea and, of course, in a way it was,
but he persisted and carried through with it.

786

I made a big folding screen as a backgroiind, and we
managed to construct two or three little objects, like
a bench and one thing and another to make a little set.
This screen that I made was somewhat eighteenth century in
design. I remember the one that I did because it v;as
simply a large folding affair, painted with scene-painter's
colors and, of course, varying the background according
•to the subject. The kids made costumes, and I painted the
scenery; and we had stuff we could put into a couple of
cars and transport and set up in a few minutes and go
through a sketch. He had some sketches he'd written
himself, based on the stories of Boccaccio. He began by
trying them out in private houses of people who were
interested. Then he went out to some other places. I've
forgotten now just where. I didn't go very often. For
one over in Pasadena, I remember they had quite a crowd.
They rented a little room there, and it went off quite
well. It was short and amusing and kept some of our
Slimmer visitors amused for an hour or so after dinner,
[laughter] And I think that sort of helped out his income
a bit. But things got so hard for him that it was pathetic,
He took a job as gardener for an actor who was quite well
known in those days. I can't think of his name now, but
he was a very good one. He worked for him in his garden.
However, not long after that, somebody managed to get
some kind of support for him from an actors' guild of

787

some sort, some source of help, though he wasn't a naturalized
American. He lived in a very simple way, but he had that
same idea — that no matter what idea he had in mind, if
he wanted to do it, he could do something about it. The
mere fact that he didn't have a theater didn't keep him
from producing, even though it was in a microscopic sort
of way. He'd put on plays and direct; and he v;as constantly
at work on something from early morning to late at night.
Even the fact that he didn't know English wouldn't keep
him from writing things in English. He did this by putting
down his ideas on paper in his very crude way. If he
wanted to write a letter to the paper or write a little
article for a magazine in San Francisco (I remember he
wanted to write something for them on the theater) , he
would put down to the best of his ability what he had to
say. Then, when anybody that came in to see him or call
on him, he'd get out his manuscript and have them criticize
it and correct it and put it in right [form]. So you'd
sit there and work and find out exactly what his idea v/as
and write and rewrite this sentence. And the next person
would come in and they'd go over it too, and eventually
he'd get this thing into readable English and get it
published.

One of the girls he knew had been an office worker.
She knew about a mimeograph machine. That would solve
the problem. He would get a mimeograph machine and

788

mimeograph them. Then he would put the books together
and become his own publisher. In some way, I think
he persuaded some of his friends, and they foixnd him a
mimeograph machine, which he set up in his little room
and away we went. After correcting his manuscript and
reworking it and arguing about it and disagreeing with
others on what he was trying to say, he finally got the
thing ready, and then he would sit and, with one finger,
patiently, all night long, practically, he'd type this
out. He couldn't type, but that v;ouldn't stop him. By
going veiy slowly and very carefully he got it done. Then
it had to be boimd. One of the girls knew a little something
about bookbinding, and so his room was in a terrible mess
for weeks. After he got this stuff mimeographed and
folded, it had to be sewn [and covered]. He went around
and discovered that at wallpaper places they had very
handsome wallpapers. He decided that certain ones
would make a beautiful cover for a book, and so he'd come
home with these samples of various kinds of wallpaper.
Then we had to paste these on the covers and letter the
title on it. I've forgotten how many there v;ere. I have
two of them; one I gave away. But he wanted illustration,
too, in one of his books. This was a book in Russian. I
guess two of his books were in Russian, and the one that
I gave to [Zenna] Serrurier is in Russian. I thought it
would be a little addition to her Russian library, a

789

curiosity at least. She was telling me something of its
contents afterwards. Apparently this little book was
about his Russian experiences on a railroad train when he
met the mad monk. What was his name?
SCHIPEEES: Rasputin.

NUTTING: Rasputin. He wanted some drawings for it.
Veil, I said, "Mr. Glagolin, I've never been in Russia.
All I know about Russia is what I've seen in the movies
and what you've told me and what I've read and seen from
illustrations in books. I don't know how I could do any-
thing that would be of any use to you." He said, "Oh,
of course you can." He gave me some of this mimeographed
material, and I sat there and asked what happened.
"Well, we were in a train and there were berths, and there
was a man in the berth above, and the berth goes crossways.
The window is here, and I was sitting here." While he was
talking, I visualized this and I would sketch with the
stylus on the paper, you know. It was just a pure
improvisation of what he was talking about. "Oh, that's
fine, that's fine."

I finally got through, and he put this through the
mimeograph machine. The lines came out pretty well. It
wasn't at all bad. So he tried them all out and said,
"Oh, that will be fine." So I supposed, of coiirse, that
I would take these jottings and try to make something for
him, but before I knew it, that's what he used for

790

illustration. I guess he was wise, too, because they were
probably better than anything that I could have tried to
dope up, you know. They had a spontaneity and, apparently,
they were close to the mood that he had in mind. So he
got all of his books printed. He got them bound. He got
them illustrated, [laughter] and he got them out. He had
quite a serious review in a Russian paper published in
San Francisco, and he got them in the Library of Congress.
Though it may not have been what anybody else would
have thought of, it was simply an example: that if he
couldn't do what he wanted to do, he, did what he could, and
he got something accomplished!

The Wisconsin Players, I believe, was quite an old
group in Milwaukee. At that time, it was supported by
Laura Sherry who had been a well-known actress in her day
and was then married to a well-to-do Milwaukee industrialist.
Although it wasn't run in any very elaborate way, they had
a good place to work and managed to do good work and
produced quite a few talents. I believe that Angna Enters
was there before my time and began her career in the
theater with the Wisconsin Players. While I was there,
there was a youmg fellow, Leroy Kuperstein, who was then
working in Gimbel's basement in Milwaukee, and all his
spare time and evenings he worked with the dance. He was
one of the best members of our troupe because he also was
an excellent actor. He could learn his part very rapidly

791

and act it very well, and he also contributed his talents
as a dancer and choreographer to the work that was being
done. He went on from Milwaukee to New York and became
successful in the ballet and was in Agnes De Mille ' s company.
He not only distinguished himself as a dancer but also as
a choreographer. He is now here in Los Angeles and head
of the American School of Dance.

When he left Milwaukee and became a professional
dancer, he took the name of Eugene Loring, and he is known
by that name in Los Angeles. I saw the work of some of
his students on TV the other evening. They took part in
a picture.

There were not many cases in Milwaukee where my
contacts from my earlier life were picked up or touched
upon. The visit of Ludwig Lewisohn, of course was one,
his coming there to lecture and afterwards spending the
evening at our house. Another Paris friend, Willy Seabrook,
also came to Milwaukee to give a lecture, but I didn't
even know he was coming. I ran into him by accident in
the Milwaukee museum. He was on his way to see the
director of the museum about something, and we stopped and
chatted. And then I saw something of him in the two days
that he was in Milwaukee, but that's the last I saw of
him. [tape off]

Of course, it's very much of a bromide to say what
a small world it is, but we all have experiences which

792

makes one realize in some ways that it is amazingly small,
that there seems to be some sort of a mysterious attraction
among the many millions of people v;ho have once knovm each
other and who somehow drift together in unexpected places.
I first realized that — or experienced it — early in life
when I met a young Cuban on shipboard and then many years
afterv/ards, leaving France, I found that he v;as my cabin-
mate on shipboard. After being thousands of miles away,
all of a sudden here we ajre in the same room again, out
of the millions of people who might have been roommates.

When I was a boy in St. Paul, one of my artist
friends was a man by the name of Carl Bohnen. He was
doing commercial work there and also was very much interested
in doing portrait drawings. He did rather tight portrait
drawings, but he had quite a lot of facility in getting a
good likeness quickly. The actual quality of the drav/ing
wasn't veiy interesting, but he had some success with them.
The newspapers used to publish his drawings quite often.
They seemed to think of him as sort of a local artist of
repute, and he would make portrait drawings of famous
people who came to St. Paul and they were used by the
St . Paul Pioneer Press a great deal. When I left St. Paul
and I went to Boston, I didn't hear anything more of him.
Then years passed, and when I was in Germany trying desperately
to find some way of getting out of Germany and back to Florence
where I was then staying, I ran into Carl Bohnen at the
consulate. We were very glad to see each other, and for

795

the few days that I had left in Munich, I saw something
of him. He'd come to Munich to study. He saved up
money and had come to Munich with his wife and family,
a couple of boys and a girl. He, too, was caught by the
war, and I supposed that he v;ouldn't stay in Germany,
being an American. But he did, as I found out later.
Some years later in Paris, all of a sudden, I ran into
Carl in a galleiy. To my surprise I found that he had
really done rather well in Munich. He had [v/orked out]
a very good commercial idea. He started it in St. Paul.
He would make a portrait drawing and then have photo-
graphic copies made. He took care to have handsome
copies of the original drawing, somev;hat reduced and on
handsome paper; so his client vrould have not only the
original paper but v/ould have these good and attractive
photographic copies which v;ould make very nice presents
to the family. They really got their money's worth. So
when he foxind himself in Munich at a time v;hen artists
couldn't expect any sort of a living (people were not think-
ing very much about having pictures or portraits
painted or anything of that sort in those days), he got
along quite well by his good business acumen.

He found a bookstore that had a big window and he
managed to have a display of his drawings in this window.
He talked the people into the idea, and he said it worked
very well. He had this exhibition of these drawings and

79^

the photographic copies for possible clients and information.
He said he did a great many of these drawings in Munich,
and later did some portrait paintings. His portraits
were very tight and not very well painted, which he
realized, and one reason he went to Munich was to improve
his ability as a painter.

He took a studio in Paris, but he wasn't at all
happy because I think the movement in modern art distressed
him very much. He couldn't seem to find any niche
like the one he had in Gennany, so he came back to this
country.

Well, again here's Paris and then I find myself in
Milwaukee — I've forgotten where it was there — but I

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while doing some portrait drawings. By that time he was
working for the calendar people in St. Paul , (Brown and
Bigelovif) , doing quite a lot of work for them. He wasn't
doing calendar pictures. It was some other project that
they had in which he did portraits of famous people or
something in these crayon drawings. He was in Milwaukee
doing somebody for Brown and Bigelow.

Well, again years passed and once when I was walking
down Hollywood Boulevard, I heard my name called. I
turned around and there was Carl again, [laughter] By that
time, I think he'd been in a motor accident, and he had
become quite frail. He was, of course, quite a bit older

795

than I, and lie died not too long after that, [tape
off]

Maybe because I had moved so often in mj life, I
never really felt that I was a permanent resident of
Milwaukee, though I liked the city very much and enjoyed
my work. But things happened that really necessitated
our leaving. During the first period of our life there,
my wife's health was quite good, but she gradually
developed a mysterious difficulty and, on going to the
doctor for a thorough examination, found that it was
extremely serious. She had cancer of the thyroid. Of
course, that was operated on, and it was quite a severe
operation for her. Her convalescence v;as long, and she
was in the hospital rather longer than I think was common
for that sort of an operation. I used to go to see her.
Any time that I had to spare, I would dash out [to the
hospital] without any regaid. for the hours. I must say
the hospital was very generous about my unconventional
appearances at all hours of the day and sometimes at
midnight. I'd rush in to see her at all sorts of strange
times. She gradually recovered and apparently was doing
quite well. When she got strong enough to really enjoy
life a little, I got tickets for the theater. It was a
musical — I've forgotten what it was — it was one of the
successful ones of the thirties. I remember Fanny Brice
was in the performance. When I went to get the seats, the

796

house was about sold out and the only places I could
get were in a box. So I got two seats in a box. We
were going to have a celebration of her getting well
and getting out and having a little fun. It was in the
old Pabst Theater, that hadn't been very much improved
or modified for years, and the passage going down to the
box was very badly lit. There was a step Just before
entering the box which wasn't easily seen in the dim
light, and she stepped off and fell and struck her
shoulder against the opposite wall. Well, it was hard
to believe it was anything at all serious, but I found
that she was not only very badly shaken up but was in
quite severe pain. It seemed to be rather more than
simply a bruised shoulder, so I made her as comfortable
as I could and dashed out to get some help. The curtain
had gust gone up, and I remember Fanny Brice v;as on the
stage in some kind of an act. Of course, they didn't
want to have any commotion, but I wanted an ambulance
called right away and something done about it. They
tried to quiet me dovm and wanted to know what was the
matter. I said she fell, and they said just let her
rest, and she'd be all right. So I had to threaten to
make a real scene in the audience before I could get any
help. When they saw I was going to get rampageous and
make myself difficult, they did go so far as to get a
taxi and some people to help. We half-carried her out

797

to the taxi and went to the hospital. Well, that fall
proved to be more serious than we thought because the
shoulder was badly broken. So here she was, just getting
over a convalescence, and all of a sudden with a very
bad shoulder fracture. Again that was a long siege —
plaster cast, nursing, hospital expenses and so forth.

The expense, of course, was the most serious thing.
We sued the theater. It seemed to be gross negligence
that a dangerous step like that shouldn't have some kind
of illumination. It would have been so easy to put a
small electric light under the edge of the step as they
do so much in theaters. But that had never been done,
and the wall light was inadequate. We felt that the
theater was very much to blame for the accident. Apparently
we weren't the only ones, because we got a couple of
thousand dollars in damages. But I felt that nov; our
life in Milwaxikee really had come to an end, and we must
find a better part of the coTintry to live in because
there was no prospect of her being really herself again
and really strong.

She was a person of tremendous courage and always
active in some way. She was always interested in things
and enjoyed life very much in her reading and in her
activity. But the climate of Wisconsin [was very restrict-
ing] . There are extremely cold winters and the winds off
the lake are so biting that they make anything out-of-doors

798

not very enjoyable except for people who are husky and
used to that sort of thing. Then the springs are rather
raw and muddy and disagreeable. They have a relatively
short period in the summertime when the weather is
really delightful and can be enjoyed.

Well, she was California born, and she was homesick
for California. The question v/as whether to try to come
out to California or go to Florida or someplace where
there was a mild climate so she could get more out of
life than she could in Wisconsin.

The first thing we did though was to take a trip to
New York to see her niece, the one who stayed with us
for a year in Paris, Helen Kieffer. She had married but
her husband had died. She had quite a brood of yo^jngsters.
Also, Helen Kieffer' s sister was a librarian at a place
near New York, and there were other members of the family
she could visit before coming out to the coast. So we
flew to New York and met some of our friends and her
family, and then we came back to Milwaukee and sold off
superfluous furniture and one thing and another. We
packed [what remained] and put it in storage. Then we
came out to explore California.

We first went to San Francisco. We both were very
fond of San Francisco, but again I felt a little bit of
the same thing [concerning the climate], that there are
so many days in San Francisco that are foggy and more or

799

less inclement. We were rather hesitant about Los Armeies,
but we decided to explore it before we finally settled
down. We stopped and visited at San Luis Obispo on the
way down from San Francisco, where Helen's sister was
living and also her niece. The niece at San Luis Obispo
was a cousin of Helen Kief fer in the East. She was also
Helen, Helen Ballerd. She was named after my wife and
had been a teacher and librarian in the public schools
of San Luis Obispo.

We came on down to Los Angeles, and drove into
Los Angeles, found a hotel and put up for the night. The
next morning we were going out to drive aroiond and see
what we thought of this part of the world as a place to
settle. As I was paying my bill, the clerk said, "Mr. .
Nutting, do you mind telling us how you heard of our
hotel? How did you happen to come here?" Well, I said,
"To tell the truth, I came in here because I got lost."
[laughter] And a woman (I think that she was one of the
owners of the hotel) who was in the back part of the
office burst out with a peal of laughter. I wouldn't
have noticed it, except that she was so amused, [laughter]
But the truth was, neither of us had the slightest idea
where we were. We couldn't make heads or tails of the
map of Los Angeles, and so when it was time to stop, we
saw a hotel and decided to go in and see what it was like.
It turned out to be a very nice hotel.

800

Afterwards we took a room in Hollywood and decided
that was the region that we would look aroiind for a place
to live in. We spent about a week hunting, and finally
on Winona Boulevard in Hollywood, we found a duplex
apartment that seemed very satisfactory, and it was.
That's where we lived until my wife died some years later.
But that was the reason and the way we left Milwaukee,
[tape off]

I left my school in Milwaukee going; the fact is
that they wanted to go on with their work. They didn't
have any special plans. They seemed to want to pay rent
on the place and have some kind of a cooperative workshop,
which seemed to me a fine idea. So I left them the
lithographic press and also a collection of about a dozen
reference books of one sort and another on art history
and techniques and criticism which we had used in our
talks and discussions and also in practical work.
Apparently the group held together for quite a long
time. I don't know what they did about the life classes,
which were quite important while I was there. Whether
they did anything in the way of getting instruction, or
whether it was simply a matter of having a place to
work, I don't know. But I remember I used to get a
letter from Milwaukee, and they'd say, "Well, I see the
name !A.telier' is still on the door." (It used to be on
the street door.) Apparently it kept going for some time.

801

Then I lost track of their activities. If it hadn't
been for the need of the move — for my wife's health and
the necessity for an especially good climate, and also
for the fact that she was very fond of her native state,
California, and that coming back would mean quite a lot
to her happiness and peace of mind, I would probably
have gone to New York or to the East because, much more
so then than now, we felt that everything really exciting
happened especially in New York. We still had the old
idea about Southern California, and I think that was
one reason why we looked at San Francisco first, because
those were the days when Los Angeles was still known
as a rather crazy movie colony, for eccentric cults and
all sorts of absurd aspects of living. My wife's fondness
was for northern California. Her native town was San
Luis Obispo; and Santa Barbara was the toT/vn furthest
south that she was fond of, and she looked on anything
south of that as rather ordinary and not for nice people.
But, of course, we foTind Los Angeles changing very rapidly,
and as I look back, it's really astonishing what changes
have taken place since I've lived here.

Most of the people that I knew that v;ere really
doing things in the world had gone to New York. It was
not that Chicago wasn't active in many ways, but even the
Chicago talent had moved East. Writers who had made the

802

Middle West famous, and also had made Chicago famous,
were not living in Chicago any more. Dreiser was not
there, for example. Of course, there was Harriet Monroe
and her magazine Poetry , and there was a very active
spirit in the arts and music; but you still felt that
New York was the hub of real excitement. I always had
rather a yen to go back to New York. I had never spent
very much time there, but what little time I had spent
in New York had always been very happy and also very
profitable. But what with the Depression which made the
career of the artist a rather desperate one for a while
and the other reasons that I mentioned, I didn't even
think of settling in that part of the country, with its
cold winters and hot summers and so forth. New York,
in that way, would be no improvement over Milwailkee.
Further south didn't seem to be a very good idea. The
most natural thing was to come to California.

TAPE NUMBER: XVII, SIDE ONE
May 2„ 1966

SCHIPEEES: We were going to insert here your experiences
with the Milwaukee Art Commission.

NUTTING: The last years that I was in Milwaukee, I
served on the Art Commission. There was a vacancy,
and I was chosen, as an artist, to be on the commission.
It had the job of passing on designs of mon\aiiients, of
buildings, and things of that sort. There v;as nothing
very important that came before us while I was there
except a monument to Abraham Lincoln. The Civil V/ar
veterans in some way had raised a substantial sum of
money for a monument to Lincoln. There was no monument
to him of any importance in Milwaukee, and they seemed
to think that that would be a contribution that they
ought to make.

There was a competition for a design for the monument.
That was rather difficult because we had really no authority
to pick the design in the first place. It was first of
all to be picked and then approved before the matter came
to us. Quite a large number of small models were presented
to the commission, not to pass on, but to criticize, and
a very interesting thing was done by Carl Milles, the
Swedish sculptor. The others v/ere rather conventional
sort of things. Unfortiinately, the Carl Milles, which

804

was much the best and most original was a little too
unconventional for the old boys, the veterans of the
wars, and they wouldn't consider it at all. They had
one that they chose, and we finally agreed on it. It
was a fairly good thing of its sort. There was nothing
very distinctive about it. But for this kind of thing,
it wasn't bad. We accepted it.

Then came the question of a site for it in Milwaukee.
They were determined that it should be down on the lake
front, and the commission was unanimous in opposing that
idea. It wasn't a good place for it. It was too much
out in the open for this sort of thing. It would have
no monumental character. There was a certain bend in
the highway that went down along the lake front, and it
would have no background except water and sky. What
little value it might have for any decorative purpose
or for any monumental feeling, we felt would be destroyed
in such a situation. We discussed all sorts of places
and the architect, Mr. Judell, worked very hard. He
went all about town in the various parks and various
public places and made some sketches for the possible
placement of it in various locations-r-giving an idea of
what the surroundings would be, what sort of a background
and what scale it would have to its surrovmding material
to get the most out of it. Well, we couldn't persuade
the donors of the monument that any of these places were

805

really better than the one that they wanted. So finally
we felt we had to yield if they were determined to have
it down on the lake front, and if that would make them
happy, why, that v;as it.

I never saw it in place. I never heard anybody say
how it turned out. But we took that job very seriously
and had a great many meetings, and, as I say, Mr. Judell
made these drawings, sketches, and plans, and we would
discuss them and go about town and try to visualize a
place for it and then go back to some other idea. So
the commission couldn't be blamed too much for not doing
the best they could to get the most out of the problem.
That was a rather important thing in a way, not as much
so as some of the work the commission would have to do
but did not have any chance of doing at the time that I
was on the commission — that is to say, larger buildings
and styles [ involved in the] architectural buildup of
Milwaukee. But it was interesting. It was also educational
to work on a practical gob of that sort and give it
serious study. We couldn't be blamed for doing the best
we could with the problem. We had a lot of discussion;
we had long conversations, pro and con, with all sorts
of people who became quite interested in our difficulties.

Well, when I left Milwaukee I resigned from the Art
Commission. I was quite pleased and quite touched that
when I announced the fact that we were leaving, the

806

people were concerned about it and seemed genuinely sorry
for us to leave. The Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors
gave me a delightful dinner, kind of a banquet, and
presented me with a tvro-volume edition of The Notebooks
of Leonardo da Vinci , profusely illustrated, v;hich I not
only treasure as a memento but also because it's a very
handsome and valuable edition to my library. Very nice
speeches were made by the members of the Wisconsin Painters
and Sculptors and also the director of the Art Institute,
the schools and other people in student art in Milwaukee,
and that together with quite a number of parties and
farewell gatherings sent us off on our way. [tape off]
Not the least touching, of course, was my students
at the Atelier. They threw quite a party for us; we had
quite a gathering of not only my students but our friends.
They decorated the place very nicely and we had a delight-
ful party. There was a group of the students who thought
they would like to keep the Atelier as a cooperative
workshop at least, and do more or less what I had done
while I was connected with it — that is, to get in people
for lectures or for special instruction. In the mean-
time they'd have the place in which to work and carry
on their projects. Apparently it kept up for some time.
I'd have letters and people would say, "Well, I see the
Atelier is still going. I see those gold letters on the
door downstairs are still there and the place seems active."

807

[laughter] Also I left a fev; of my books with the idea
that when they finally closed up they would box the books
and send them to me. It's quite Tinders tandable, but they
never got around to doing that; so I don't know what
became of some dozen or fifteen nice reference books that
I had for them because I suppose at the time they finally
closed it they had forgotten what the situation was.
Our last days of packing up were ones of great
confusion, and it was almost the last day before leaving
Milwa-ukee that, what with the packing and general dis-
order, we decided to go down to the Hotel Pfister for
breakfast. We had scarecely ordered our breakfast
when I looked across the room and saw one of our Paris
friends, Marvin Lowenthal, who I hadn't seen or really
heard of since our Paris days. It was quite a surprise
and quite a pleasant meeting, and he joined us for break-
fast. It turned out that he was in Milwaukee for a
lecture, and we told him what we were doing. He said,
"By all means I v;ant to give you a letter to a friend of
mine in San itancisco." (I'm sorry I can't think of his
name at the moment. We'll call him "Mr. X." [His friend]
was a well-known figure in art and music in San Francisco,
a man in the insurance business, I believe, and he had
made some very genuine contributions, partly as a collector
and partly by his interest in art and young artists and
by promoting art and music for San Francisco. It seems that

808

he was a very warm friend of Marvin Lowenthal.) Lowen-
thal immediately got some paper from the desk at the hotel
and wrote a little letter of introduction to him for us.
So our first acquaintance on coming out to the coast was
"Mr. Z. " who turned out to be all that Marvin Lowenthal
had described him as — a very charming, very hospitable
person.

He invited us to dinner. He had two or three other
guests, artists whose names I did not know but apparently
ones that he thought I would be interested in meeting in
San Francisco. He showed us his apartment, his collection,
and his guest room. He was very proud of all the famous
artists and musicians and dancers and various people he
had had as guests and who had occupied this room. He
named off some quite important names. It gave him great
pleasure to have these people in his home.

Also the art objects of his apartment were very
interesting. That was really our introduction to the
art life in California. He died not long afterwards.
I never saw him again, but I remember him with great
pleasure and also with considerable gratitude.

rfy wife's girlhood being spent in California, she
was very fond of San Francisco, and her family had a
great many friends and associations with the city. But
we both felt that in her very frail condition the
climate there wasn't the best "for her, and we would

809

not decide on a place to settle until we had explored a
little, at least Santa Barbara and maybe Los Angeles, to
see what sort of a future we might make for ourselves in
other parts of the state.

Well, one veiy fortunate thing for us happened.
Helen's niece had been teaching for years in the schools
of San Luis Obispo, and at that time I think she was not
only teaching but she also was the chief librarian for
the schools, or had some such position. She was going
to be in San Jose for the summer, taking some courses,
and she had a very nice cottage at Cambria in the pine
woods and urged us to come and stay there as long as we
wanted. We drove down to Cambria, and I made the ac-
quaintance of m;>' wife's niece Helen Ballerd, who then
left us with the cabin and went to San Jose. We stayed
at least three months, if not longer, and it was ideal.
Helen got her strength back to a surprising degree. It
was very quiet there, and with the days on the seashore
and walking in the woods, living a simple, very quiet
life, it was ideal for her recuperation.

I think it was in October of 1939 that we then came
on down to Los Angeles. We stayed at a hotel and drove
about and finally decided that, everything considered,
Los Angeles would be the best bet. Santa Barbara, of
course, is a very charming city and life could be delight-
ful there, but there would be much more possibility of

810

my finding myself in a larger place like Los Angeles
than in Santa Barbara, which to some extent was true.
After quite a lot of searching, we found an apartment in
Hollywood that was within our means. It was in a
duplex and had the advantage of being so divided that
we could have a sitting room-bedroom and a room that was
larger than average. (It was an old house and had
bigger rooms that you get in most houses nowadays.)
This would serve as a studio, and it had grounds and a
garden. The minute we saw it we thought that was about
the best that we could do; we took it and sent for our
furniture and started our life in Hollywood.

My wife had regained a great deal of her strength,
but she was still frail. She had to economize, to rest
a great deal, but fortunately she was a person of tre-
mendous inner resources. Her interest in all sorts of
things could keep her hours interesting as long as she
had any strength at all. She was an omnivorous reader,
from mystery and detective stories to archeology and
classical reading. I remember one thing that she did
was to read Dante's Inferno in the original. Everday
she'd do a bit, till she got through all of Dante's
Inferno . Then she found a fascinating book on Easter
Island, which interested her. She had quite a feeling
for detective stories and was a good critic of such
writing. It kept me busy getting up armloads of paperbacks

811

that she would run through in a hurry. I'm sorry that
she didn't do more writing. She had her typewriter
and many notes and did quite a bit, but I'm mystified
because I don't know how it could have happened, but I
feel it probably did happen. When I was corresponding
with Professor Ellmann when he was writing his life of
James Joyce, I discovered that things that I thought she
had rather extensively written as material were only
fragments and little bits of notes and pages torn out of
small notebooks. During her last illness, I rather
imagine that she may have inadvertently, in destroying
papers, destroyed things of value. I don't really know.
I know that I used to hear the typewriter going quite a
lot, and she ought to have left much more than I have
of her writing. She had a definite talent for writing;
she wrote well. She wrote a novel which didn't get
accepted, but she wrote a very delightful book on garden-^
ing (this v;as before we were married) which had some
success and even got good reviews in England, and English
people are very critical of anybody who writes about
gardens. They have a special love for their gardens
and a feeling for gardening.

She wrote a book based on the bridges of the
Antietam. She met somebody in Italy who accidentally
picked up that book and said, "Now that's the way that
history ought to be written." He didn't know that my

812

wife had written it. [laughter] I don't know where he
foiind it, but it interested him. He came from Maryland.

The book was inspired by a man — a druggist, I
believe, in Hagerstown, Maryland — who took good photo-
graphs of all the old bridges crossing the Antietam, the
old arch bridges over the river. Using those bridges as
a starting point she wrote her book.

She also wrote quite good verse. I mentioned the
fact that she translated the Corsican voceri , the
improvisations that are recited at funerals in Corsica,
which was published in The Bookman with some woodcuts
by someone who did some decorations for it. Some bits were
published here and there, but she never published very
much.

Well, she was also very musical, and when she felt
strong enough for us to go to concerts or musical affairs
she enjoyed these. So that in spite of her frailty, her
very active mind and her enthusiasm and appreciation
prolonged her life, and she foiond that Los Angeles was
not nearly as unpleasant as she might have anticipated.

Again, because she was a person of imagination,
we would drive around our neighborhood in Holly\TOod, and
she would note, for example, in the smaller streets the
great variety of industries. The character of the shops
was not as monotonous as they are in some parts of the
city. There 'd be strange and unusual things, maybe a

815

craftsman or a bookbinder or somebody who was doing
something not too common. She would spot things of that
sort and was always appreciative of character, the
spirit of her surroundings.

I think that's characteristic of a certain type of
mind. For example, like my mother, she was a lover of
Dickens. She knew the stories and characters of Dickens
more or less by heart, and maybe persons like my mother
and [my wife] and other people I've known who are very
fond of Dickens have that sort of feeling about a city.
Dickens' London is kind of a world of his ov/n, and she
could make Hollywood also something other than the
convential conception of the place. If she wrote a novel
it would have a kind of a Dickens' feeling; it wouldn't
be the feeling that most of us have for Hollywood as
being altogether a movie sort of a place.

We didn't come to California with any introductions
except that one in San Francisco, but in Los Angeles I
had been preceded by two Milwaukee friends. One was
Dolly Duim, who had been my secretary and manager at my
little school and had taken care of it and had done a
beautiful job, and she had come out at the same time as
Boris Glagolin. Dolly was very enthusiastic about my
idea of starting some teaching here along the lines that
I had done in Milwaukee. She had a niimber of friends and
the first thing I knew I had a fair- si zed group. I didn't

81^

have room for many, but we had a weekly group. We used
to meet in this room in our apartment, and it went very
nicely.

At the time we came out, Dolly married a yoimg
Russian and with a rather curious result. It made me
feel how you can live in a city and how the city takes
on completely the feeling of the people you associate
with, because of Kolya's — I've forgotten his very diffi-
cult last name — being a Russian and having a great many
Russian friends. He was rather a bright fellow and in
some ways rather talented. He could draw, and he was a
very good talker. He was doing some writing, but it was
in Russian so I don't know what it was like. He spoke
English rather fluently but with very much of an accent.
Then Glagolin, of course, had a great many Russian
friends, and for some months I had a feeling that Los
Angeles was really a Russian town. Everytime I went out
I seemed to be meeting Russians.

Glagolin took part in a play, and, of course, I
was interested to see him in the play and used to go down
to rehearsals. Here were all these Russian people around
me. Some of the people Dolly got as my pupils were
Russians. And an interesting variety — some of them were
quite brilliant. Others v/ere of aristocratic families
who were refugees in Los Angeles. One was the chief
personage of the Russian colony. I don't know what you

815

would call her, sort of the queen of the Russian
entourage. She had a very v/ell-known Russian name,
Golitsyn, Princess Golitsyn, and then there were some
others I wouldn't know, but I could gather from the v;ay
that Glagolin would speak of them or talk to them that
they were people of high rank. One that he was es-
pecially deferential to was living in a very simple little
cottage and taking in sewing. To meet her she seemed
very nice but she was gust another sewing woman that
you might get to modify some of your clothes. One
reason that our circle of acquaintances was rather limited
to people in more or less the immediate vicinity was that
Helen's lack of strength necessitated that she should
live a quiet life. The operation plus her accident had
left her with a heart condition that had to be considered,
and that required quiet and as much rest as possible. I
didn't make any special effort. We had enough to live
on very simply and decently, and if I had done anything
that would have taken me away from home too much, I felt
that I would have to have somebody to be with her because
I could never tell at what moment she might need some
help or attention. We couldn't afford to hire help,
so I resigned myself to being simply active in my studio.
I wasn't confined really, but I didn't make any effort
to do much besides that. I sent to exhibitions, and I
interviewed galleries.

816

I met a painter, a landscape painter, Paul Lauritz,
who lived not too far from where I lived in Hollywood.
He suggested that I join the Southern California Art
Society, which I did. In those days it was rather a
large society and held rather large exhibitions. Also
there used to be held at the muse\im in Exposition Park
the Annual Exhibition of Los Angeles and Vicinity. It
was contributed to by Los Angeles and San Diego and as
far north as Santa Barbara. (Santa Barbara artists also
were eligible to show. ) One year I got a prize — I think
it was third prize — at the Los Angeles and Vicinity show.
But as usual, for some strange reason, no sooner do I
get some kind of recognition for some work than I v/onder
why it was given and decide that I don't like it anyway,
that I made a mistake. The same thing happened with that
thing I got a prize for in Paris. I got bored having it
around and painted it out.

Another activity I had for some years — I've forgotten
just what years they were — was writing for Rob Wagner's
Script . I met — I've forgotten how — Lorser Peitelson,
who was with S. MacDdnald Wright, head of the Federal Art
Project for Southern California, and through him I met
S. MacDonald Wright, and for some time he had been writing
the art column for Rob Wagner's Script . For some reason
he wanted to give it up and wanted to pass it on to me.
So I went with him and called on Mrs. Wagner. The Script

817

was then published in a little building over on San
Vicente. I think it was published twice a month, a very
delightful little magazine. It had local character and
very often some very good writing and some quite nice
drawing in little spots and line drawirgs that were used
in it, along with other illustrations that were good.
Well, that was interesting work, and it took me out a
great deal. Through that occupation I got in touch with
all of the galleries, and then if I made a trip to
Santa Barbara or San Francisco, I would have material
from both places to write my column. Eventually the
Script was sold by Mrs. Wagner, and they changed its
character completely. I felt they made a mistake because
it was just another slick magazine. To pick it up you
wouldn't know whether it was California or New York. It
was nondescript in contrast to what it was when Eob Wagner
had edited it, and Mrs. Wagner had carried on success-
fully, very ably, until she finally sold it.

Mrs. Wagner turned out to be a very charming person.
She used to call me up and wanted to know if I would
care to go out for evenings at various places. One time
I went to dinner at Edward G. Robinsons, which turned
out to be a very pleasant evening. There were quite a
number of interesting people there, not especially of the
movie colony. I can't think of his name now, but there
was a very well-known architect and his wife, and people

818

in other walks of life who were distinguished in their
way. Mrs. Robinson, as I guess we all know, is a rather
ambitious painter, besides Edward G. Robinson having a
superb collection. That collection has been dispersed.
It was really a wonderful one and beautifully shown in
his house, and seeing those in itself was well worth
the evening. He also was trying to draw and was very
much concerned about perspective. I tried to tell him
that it wasn't too difficult a problem for all practical
purposes, that you don't have to know too much of the
theory of it for what use one ordinarily had for it. It
wound up with our going upstairs to his study and trying
to get the perspective of his table and furniture from
all points of view, which v;as one time standing on a
chair looking down on it and another time it was sitting
down low on the floor and looking up at it, holding up
pencils and measuring this way and that way.

His study was quite an interesting place. He'd
collected interesting photographs, among others some
photographs which up to that time I hadn't seen of
Toulouse-Lautrec. Some sort of trick photographs.
Some of them have since been published in writings about
Lautrec. But it was the first time I saw them and they
were quite fascinating, as were other things of that sort
on his walls, which had more to do with art maybe than with h:i

own profession.

819

Another time I went with her to a showing at Charlie
Chaplin's studio. They were showing a private view of a
film, and the strange thing is I can't remember what that
film was now. But he was there, and I met him. I
remember being quite surprised to see what a small man
he is. In the pictures you don't always feel that he's
such a little guy. He is a small fellow, but that
evening I had the feeling that he was much smaller than
I had pictured him. And on several occasions I went out
with Mrs. Wagner for things of that sort, which were
interesting.

As a matter of fact, I'm way ahead of my story
because that was really after my wife ' s death that I
took on this Job of writing. She died in 19^7- In the
meantime there was the war — Pearl Harbor. Let's see,
that was about a year after I got here in 19^- I felt —
I guess as most people did — that I ought to be doing
something. I knew I was too old to enlist, but what did
rather give me a little bit of a jolt was when I would
call various agencies to inquire about things. The first
thing they would ask me was my age, and I found that I
was a "forty-plus." [laughter] I wasn't really a forty-
plus. I was thirty-nine then. I wondered where the
years had gone. They would say, "I'm sorry, but you're
too old." I found that my usefulness was more limited
than I imagined. In some naive way I thought, having

820

been through World War I and knowing something of the ropes
in the various departments of war activity, that I might
be of value. But that didn't mean a thing.

In some way I read or heard that the Art Center was
going to have an intensive course in industrial illustration.
Well, I thought that was interesting. It would give me a
chance to do some drawing, of sorts anyway. I decided to
go down and find out about it. I v;ent down to the Art
Center, which was then down on Seventh Street, and they
had a class of maybe about fifteen people of all ages,
most of them middle-aged, and some rather elderly, who
were being trained for certain forms of industrial
illustration.

It seems that Adams, the director of the school,
had got this idea and went to Washington; they thought
that it was a very impractical idea, that you could not
train people for that sort of work so quickly. They
seemed to have a sudden need for that sort of thing,
partly because of the tremendous increase in the air-
plane industry and in manufacturing for the government,
also because so many commercial artists and people who
could do that work professionally were in the anny, and
draftsmen were scarce. But in some way Adams convinced
them that he could do something practical about the
situation.

He had this course, which I think was six weeks. It

821

was intensive. I've forgotten how many hours a day we
used to work. I'd go down quite early, with considerable
qualm because it meant that I left my wife alone really
all day. However, we then had people downstairs, a
French family, who were very pleasant and linderstood the
situation, so it was not too bad. Well, the work wasn't
too successful so far as I was concerned. What Adams
did was that one of the companies had given him a set of
blueprints of an obsolete plane and that was on file in
the place. The group were to draw a complete plane, the
inner structure of it, in perspective from these blue-
prints, which sounds like a terrifying idea to a lot of
those people who didn't really know any perspective.
But, curiously enough, they had the perspective lesson
everyday and little by little they got onto it quite
well. It seemed to me they did. It shows that you can
take a subject of that kind and give it concentrated
attention, and it doesn't take too long to get the
elements of it. Along with that work was a drawing of
the mechanical parts. The really difficult thing was
that nobody there could do really professional work, but
there was a lot of illustration that could be done by
people who were not professional commercial artists,
that didn't take too much skill but more so than you'd
expect an ordinary person to get in such a short time
without previous experience. For example, they would

822

have to draw some simple piece of mechanism in such a
way that a person assembling it could tell from this
illustration how to put it together, because again the
airplane industry had to rely upon people with no ex-
perience v;hatsoever and had to start from scratch. They
had to be trained to have things very simply expressed.
So this group learned to draw simple objects in perspective,
freehand, and to ink them in vrLth a ruling pen and com-
passes and so forth and make a good, clear illustration
of the object — sometimes, as they v;ould say, "exploded."
That is to say, the various parts would be illustrated
as near one another, showing that this entered that and
this touched that and this joined this and this screwed
on that, so they could follov; it along by this sequence
of parts that were drawn. To draw them neatly in good
perspective and to ink them in is not easy, as anybody
well knows who tackles it for the first time. But they
did very well. And it's surprising what some of them
did with this very complicated thing of the structure
of the plane. The drawings were not really professional,
but very clear and suiprisingly good.

I didn't do too well. In the first place I found that
the blueprint drawing was terrifically tiring, because
it's like some kind of very finicky bookkeeping. You had
to look up a certain number of a certain blueprint and
that turned out to be a certain part—the inside of a

825

plane, a plate — and it had exactly so many bolts on
certain places on the plate which fitted in a certain
way, and you counted one, two, three, four, five bolts;
and so you carefully drew one bolt head with its six
sides and another bolt head with its six sides and another
bolt head with its six sides and another bolt head with
its six sides, until you get rather woozy, [laughter]
And then you found out that you got one of the bolts in
the wrong place, or maybe the bolt had five sides and
not six sides [laughter] and you had to do it again.
To make matters worse, I had some tooth trouble; I got
an ulcerated tooth. Well, you seem to be trying to meet
a deadline, and I felt if I left a day or so to look
after this tooth I never would catch up on this infernal
j'ob; so I h-ung on, which wasn't too good for my nerves
or my health or anything else.

The fact is I got terribly nervous. I could have
dynamited that place before I left— with great joy!
[laughter] I finally got through with it, and I got
what looks like a skeleton of an airplane v/ith all its
little bolts and extrusions and various little parts in
the right place and lettered and titled. They gave me
some kind of a certificate of accomplishment, and I was
supposed to go out and get a Job doing that thing. I
decided nothing doing. I had had enough of that. But
I thought, "Well, I'll take on some kind of a dob. This

82^

thing of being a useless person in a period as intensive
as this isn't too easy. I would like to do mj little
part, no matter how modest it might be."

I went down to an emplosnnent agency, and the first
thing I knew I was out at Lockheed to be a riveter.
I think that was a much more valuable experience than
working in a drafting room would have been, because it
got me acquainted with a side of life that I had not
known before in my life.

The only thing at all comparable to being an organi-
zation man that I had ever known before was my service
with the Red Cross in Italy, which I didn't especially
like so far as being in an organization v/as concerned.
And I think it's rather in a v/ay unfortiinate that my
life had been so introverted as it had been in lots of
ways; my work had been done by myself and for myself and
according to my own ideas. To be a cog in a machine for
a while, I think, might be rather a wholesome experience
for anybody. I had had too little of that sort of thing.

Well, anyway here I found myself getting up early
in the morning, driving out to Burbank and standing in
the great crowd of people in front of the gate, which at
a certain hour was shoved up and then we all streamed
in, punched the clock and went to a bench in this huge
place. Of course, the first thing that I found difficult
to get used to was the noise. I didn't dream that such a

825

horrible amount of noise could be lived through, so I
got earplugs and that helped a little bit. There was a
noon rest when they played soft music, not soft music
but sweet and pleasant music, and everything was quiet
for a little while before this awful hullabaloo started
again, [laughter] The feeling of being in a crowd of
workers and the punching of the time clock and being one
little person in this huge thing was a strange sensation,
which in a way I found interesting. I was very glad to
know more about it.

When the induction was over, which consisted of
about three or four hours of examination — physical and
mental and psychological and educational — gosh, what they
didn't know about me in four hours! Of course, it wasn't
too long a one, but they crammed an awful lot of my
private life and condition, it seemed to me, into that
quiz and examination. Then the training in the use of
the machinery for riveting, and then given a place to
work and someone to work with.

One thing I remember is a Negro girl who had gotten
as far as the induction and had passed everything; she
was standing aroimd and nobody would pay any attention
to her. I couldn't understand it. She seemed to know
what was the matter, and she tossed her head about it
and sneered. It was then that I realized what it was,
that nobody was going to pay any attention to her. She

826

finally left, even though she was already trained, but
nobody would take her on. So she didn't get her job.
In a way I was up against the same thing that I was with
this airplane drawing — that is, my dislike of anything
veiy monotonous and repetitious. I could stand it for
an hour, two hours, or three hours, but by and by, in a
long day, it got rather difficult for me. I couldn't
help noticing that women seemed to do much better than
men. There were middle-aged, gray-haired women v/ho never
complained, who never seemed to be bothered by the
brrrr! brrrr! brrrr! — hour after hour. And it was a
long day's work, and when it was all over they v/ent home
quite happily, whereas I'd go home in more or less of a
stew sometimes.

I found little ways to break the monotony. Once
when I got there in the morning and there was nobody to
work the other side of the plate with me, I foiind by
my bench a piece that had been damaged by someone on the
night shift, because if this rivet gun slips it almost
goes through the aluminum plate; it makes a dent that
has to be repaired by somebody who knows his Job. I looked
at this thing and decided that I could do that. I got a
piece of scrap and worked out a solution, and I went to
the foreman and said, "I think I could fix this." I
showed him what I had in mind, and he said, "Well, I
think your idea is perfectly good. I'd put one more

827

rivet in here." (He took out Ms pencil and marked the
place.) "Otherwise I think it will be all right. See if
you can do it." And so I did, and it worked out. It
passed inspection right away — a very good job. So at
least that was something a little different.

Then there was a fellow who came around once in a
while to gather up the drills and took them off to be
sharpened, and I looked at those drills and decided it
would be rather interesting to see if I couldn't sharpen
those myself because the wheel was just a few feet from
my bench. I walked over and put my drill on the wheel;
then I examined it closely and it looked pretty good to
me. I had four or five drills, and I sharpened them all

Ti-TN rnVi<r>-»-> T -t-^r\V -t-ViQ-m -Ho -t-Vio ■Fr.-r>OTTiori anri qcV^H Vn'm i f ViP

thought those were correctly sharpened drills, and he looked
at them and said he felt that was really a very good job
indeed. He said, "Now, if you only had a drill that turned
anti-clockwise instead of clockwise those would work
perfectly." [laughter] By mistake, I'd given the bevel
the wrong way on the drill; so it was kind of a left-handed
drill. I went back and the next time I did all right. I
learned to sharpen my drills, and I learned to make simple
repairs when I made a boo-boo on things. I got a little bit
of variety into my work instead of the eternal riveting.

However, one thing that rather concerned me was
that I had to leave early in the morning, and I left
Helen alone so much. It made me rather anxious, so I

828

looked around for another place to work that would be
near home. I found one in Hollywood where they were
making separate parts, and that was the sort of work
where several had to work together inside a part of a
plane. I was always cracking my head on some sharp
point or other.

Well, I finally decided that there v/ere plenty of
these fellows doing the war work and doing it quite
satisfactorily, and I stopped worrying about it too
much, and went back to my 0T.-m life — to paint, to look
after my own interests. I am probably getting ahead of
my story a little, but just to finish up one phase of
it, my concern about being away was justified. I used
to dash home from work, partly to get my lunch and partly
to see that everything was all right. One day I did that
and I found that in the comparatively short time I had
been away from home my wife had fallen and had broken
her hip. She was ill for a long time and didn't recover.

TAPE NUMBER: XVII, SIDE TWO
May 9, 1966

NUTTING: Besides my efforts at working in the plants
there were other things that I did for the war effort.
For one thing I was an air warden, which was very-
amusing, and I think: it was that work that more than
anything else made me feel that I was no longer a young
fellow, [laughter] Up until that time I thought that I
might be of some value to the v;ar effort as I had been
before as a younger man. But when you get to forty-plus,
I discovered that you're not so important, and as an air
warden, of course, most of the other men v/ere also older
people. The way they took their work v;as to me quite
amusing, and it was only the younger people vfho had a
certain sense of reality about it. The men I worked with
had all sorts of funny ideas, and they wanted to change
the cut of their armbands (they thought they were too
wide), and so they trimmed them down, [laughter]
In some ways they took it very seriously, but in other
ways they had a rather childish sort of an attitude
towards the whole affair. They didn't seem to have as
good sense as I'd expect mature men to have. The v;ork
itself was interesting. They had it all worked out. You
would get calls in the middle of the night, and maybe
at two o'clock in the night they'd wake you up on the

830

phone, that you had to report at a certain place, that a
bomb had fallen, and a certain disaster had taken place
and you must act accordingly. So you'd gump out of bed
and rush off with these guys and mill around this spot
where nothing had happened and point to the devastation
and one thing and another and make plans for rescues and
this sort of thing. These drills were rather frequent,
and it wasn't too easy when you were working hard and
had a lot of other matters on your mind. But I didn't
feel badly about it. As I say, I found it rather an
interesting experience as well as an amusing one.

I had one rather narrow escape from being sent to
the hospital myself one night, because most of the time
was spent dashing around having people put out their
lights. You'd see a lighted window and you'd race down
the street or across vacant lots to get people to put
out their lights or cover their shades. And all, of
course, in pitch darkness. Over near HollyTr/ood Boulevard
at a place where a large apartment house now stands,
there was a vacant lot with an excavation and a retaining
wall. Apparently, it was the beginning of a building
that had been halted by the war. They had gotten as far
as excavating to a certain extent, a retaining wall
of around six feet or so, and a cement floor had been
laid, and that was that. I saw a light in the distance
and I went tearing across this lot and to my amazement

851

and shock — it was dark — I stepped off into thin air, dovm
six feet onto this cement floor, [laughter] And how
I escaped injury I don't know, but I wasn't even lame.
I landed on my feet and was pretty well shaken, but I
went on and tended to business, and I didn't suffer any
ill effects. That v/as the nearest I came to being a
casualty in the war. But this going to certain addresses
and congregating and spending a good part of the night on
a hypothetical disaster was quite interesting.

The other thing I took was a course in first aid,
and I learned bandaging and took the lectures on the
treatment of shock and so forth that they give to people
taking elementary first aid. As a matter of fact, quite
a bit of it I knew already. I don't know why, but all
my life I have often had responsibilities to people who
were ill, either my family or my friends, and I seemed
to get a reputation of being able to do the right thing.

I've often thought what profession I would have
taken if what I had been doing hadn't gripped me so.
Engineering (my father's profession) was to me interesting,
but I think that temperamentally it would be either law
or medicine. Both of them interested me. Ity maternal
grandfather was a very talented lawyer, and some aspects
of law appealed to me. Medicine too is a field that I
would like to have worked in, especially if one could go
on with a broad education required for a person in the

832

field of neurology and psychiatry, because it seemed to
me that that was a marvelous field, and in spite of the
fantastic developments in medicine itself, the fields
of psychology and neurology attracted me. I noticed
how much among the professions the various fields of
art appeal to many doctors. A number of writers, for
example, from Rabelais to Oliver Wendell Holmes to
Somerset Maugham, have begun their life with the
study of medicine or have been practicing doctors, which
is also true of art. Whether Da Vinci had an interest
I don't know (I never saw anything in his notebooks
apropos of pathology), but his tremendous interest in
anatomy suggests that he might have been a very fine
surgeon — he did such remarkable dissection — if he'd
followed that field. Also that among the professional
groups, the businessmen sketch clubs and things of that
sort, by far the best amateur work in these clubs is from
the doctors' clubs. And sometimes they're above the
amateur. We have one doctor here now. Bob Kennicott, a
heart specialist of considerable renown, who is also an
excellent painter and exhibits his work in the professional
shows; it passes quite stiff Juries sometimes. So it has
rather interested me that there seems to be a relationship
in the thought and temperament in these various fields.

However, I concentrated on the idea of being a
painter, always with some idea of doing writing; probably

855

it's a matter of laziness more than anything else that
I haven't made some effort in writing. A good many-
painters have been very articulate. The lectures of
Sir Joshua Reynolds were not classics exactly but were
examples of a man who not only was very thoughtful but
also very articulate. Among the European painters,
one of my teachers, Maurice Denis, was also a serious
art critic and made some contributions to criticism.
He is best known for one statement that is very often
quoted by writers on art — that a painting before it is
anything else, whether a representation of the crucifixion
or a still life or what it might be (I'm paraphrasing
what he said) , is simply an organization of color on a
plane surface, and that must always be borne in mind.
It is in those terms that it becomes a painting, not
because of what it represents.

And Andre Lhote, another one of my teachers, was
quite an industrious writer. I always wondered when he
found time to write because he was so busy. Not only
was he a very busy teacher but he was a very industrious
painter. I foxind that he did some of his writings on
the subway on his way to work, that he carried his book
with him, and in his spare moments he would write, and
little by little he would get together serious studies
which he would publish.

Another activity that I enjoyed, and v/hich also took

85A-

time and energy, was going to the USO and doing quick
sketches of the boys in the service. It was one of the
projects of the USO that they invited artists to do that
sort of thing, and they would mail these dravri.ngs to the
families of the hoys who had had sketches made. They
had mailing tubes and facilities for wrapping, and they
would take over the sketch, and so all the boy had to do
was to sit for half an hour and be drawn. Then they'd
give the drawing to someone in charge who would tend to
the packing and mailing of it. It was very nice. The
boys seemed to enjoy it very much; everyone was eager to
sit. Of course, there weren't too many of us doing that
sort of thing, but quite a number though. We used to go
in pairs. It was rather more interesting that way.
Sometimes we'd go alone. But Ed Biberman and I used to
go— I've forgotten how often it was— quite often, some-
times in the daytime, mostly at night though. It's
rather tiring work; it's quite a strain. You can't
keep it up very long, because after a certain period the
boys all commence to look alike, which isn't very good
when it comes to a likeness. You get a kind of a blur
from one face and then another face and you remember the
last face you saw and all of a sudden you find you're
drawing that face instead of the one you should be
drawing. So you have to take a rest. But the principal
thing is that you can't keep it up just one after another

855

too long without it being more than you can do well.

That would have led to one or two other interesting things

if it weren't that I couldn't leave home.

Once I got a telephone call, and they were flying a
small group of artists to do that sort of thing up north,
someplace where they had landed a b\inch of the fellows
in a hospital station, and they wanted to send some
people up to interest and amuse the boys in that v/ay. But
I couldn't go, and I was rather sorry about that. It
would have been a rather interesting variation in my
life. So what with being an air warden and doing some
work in the aircraft plant, that was my activity during
the war. [tape off]

After I left the work in the aircraft plants, I
commenced to think seriously of trying to get a job in
teaching. It was not too easy to decide. When I v;orked
in the aircraft plant, I made it a point to only take
the graveyard shift, because by working at night I could
leave my wife, who was doing quite well, but was in too
delicate condition to leave alone too long at a time, and
by working at night of course she was in bed and
asleep and I wouldn't have too much to worry about. The
idea of going back to teaching would require my being
away probably all day long, but I decided to do it.

Two artists that I had become very well acquainted
with in that period were S. flacDonald-Vright and Lorser
Feitelson. MacDonald-Wright and Lorser Feitelson had been

836

head of the Federal Art Project, and coming from Milwaiikee
and having been in the Federal Art Project, I v;as interested
in what they were doing out here. I called at their
office and met Feitelson and later met Mac Donald- Wright.
Then a certain amoimt of time intervened, and I v;as doing
this other v/ork that I've spoken of. In the meantime, I
saw something of Feitelson; I met him quite frequently.
And when the Federal Art Project was closed down, he
took the position of instructor at the Art Center. The
Art Center was then down on Seventh Street, and it v;as
there that I did this work for industrial illustration,
in a big room across the street from the school. When
I spoke to him about going back to teaching, there were
some positions offered me. UCLA called me up once, and
there was another small art school, not too good but I
guess a fairly successful one, v;ho wanted a teacher and
wanted to consider my taking the position. But before I
decided on these places, I was talking to Lorser and he
said, "Why don't you come to Art Center?" And he arranged
an appointment with [Charles] Adams, the director, and
he and I went down. I took a folio of my work, and
Adams liked my drawings. He thought I had something to
contribute to their work there. So I took that position.
It paid much better than the other two offers, and really
for that reason alone I took it, because I v;as glad to
have the money.

837

The Art Center was getting along very well. It
seemed to be very well managed in a business way, and it
was going to be a successful school, which it has in fact
become. At that time it hadn't been going very long,
and they were rather cramped in their quarters. But it
was already getting a reputation, especially its school
of commercial art. They had a certain amount of training,
■which was considered fine art, under an excellent teacher
by the name of Stanley Reckless. Stanley Reckless was
one of the foimders of the school, along with Adams and
two or three other people, and had an interest in the
business.

So I started teaching life drawing in the same room
where I had been doing my industrial illustration, which
had been changed over into a life class. At first it
wasn't too easy. The school was run in much the same
way as the Layton School had been managed, the instructor
being there the entire time of the session, but also they
had rather special ideas of what they wanted the drawing
course to be. At least Adams did, though he didn't
interfere at all, but one could feel that he always
looked through the drawing of the student in its immediate
application to the other parts of the course, especially
in advertising layout and that sort of thing.

For example, I had one class at one time in head
drawing. Ordinarily, in the drawing of the head in

858

most art schools that I had been familiar with, you would
do a drawing of the head nearly life-size, not over life-
size but fairly large, the idea being that in doing it
on a larger scale, as you v;ould have in conventional
portrait painting, you get more intimate knowledge of the
structure. For example, you can really get into the
drawing of an eye and find out how the eye is made. In
a very small drawing, you can't do it so well unless you
are very proficient.

Sometimes, with that idea in mind, remarkable work
has been done, especially by a Russian school in Paris.
Students would do a drawing of a head much greater than
life-size, sometimes quite a colossal drawing of a head.
In that Way they couldn't cheat on anything, using little
clever touches, you know. You had to actually make the
nostril as it is built, and the corner of the mouth, and
how the eyelid fits over the eyeball, and how the lids
join at the corners — the exact structure, almost the
architecture of it — which I thought was an excellent
idea. In contrast to that, one of the few things that
Adams suggested about my teaching was not to have them
do the head so big. He said, "They never do that in
practical work and we want our work to be always very
practical, to have its immediate application to what
the student is doing, and they've got to learn to do
small heads." So most of our head drawing was a sheet

839

of paper with a large number of rather highly finished
little heads drawn on it, which was all right. I didn't
feel it was too bad of an idea, although I didn't feel
I got as much out of my students as I would if I had had
a chance to. As a matter of fact, I didn't pay too much
attention to the idea. I had them also do large heads
as well as small ones. Well, there are a lot of little
•variations like that in teaching, the demands of a school
which emphasized commercial art, which I had to get
accustomed to. It was extremely hard work because my
classes were very large, and it was quite a problem how
to do justice to such a big class in one session. If
you really wanted to do the most you could for them,
go around to each one individually and give adequate
explanation and criticism, it v/ould have taken days to
get through forty or fifty drawings. So that v;as some-
thing I had to learn, and I never felt that I really did.
You could do quite a lot by talking, by demonstration,
by putting drawings on the wall and going down the line,
comparing one drawing to another, explaining the reason for
this and that, and something of the theory. I didn't
mind, as a student, if a teacher would actually work on
my drawing, and the same way with my painting. If I could
see him actually take that problem and lick it right there
on the spot, it would mean much more to me than any amo\int
of theorizing.

840

At the same time, I had the other responsibilities,
my wife and my father. My father was then out in Alhambra;
after his house burned, he got a place in Alhambra, and
he and my aunt were living there. There were certain
difficulties, as when both my father and my aunt got
pneumonia at the same time, that kept me quite busy and
quite worried. But, I was lucky in finding a nurse, a
woman who was quite practical and good. She had a little
boy, and she was very glad to live with my father. She
had a room in his house and took care of the place and
looked after him. Father pulled through, but my aunt
died in ^^i^. There were things like that that compli-
cated life, [tape off]

The director and founder of the Art Center, Adams,
was a man of great ability but in some ways very much of
a martinet. He thought of things that I thought were a
little excessive. For one thing, it seemed to me that
he would systematically throw out so many students every
semester, because he didn't think that they were promising
material — or that was the idea, that they weren't doing
well enough to justify their taking the full course. That
kept the others very much on the qui vive , of course, and
made them work ^evy^ hard. One of the excellent things
about the school is that the kids do learn to work.

After my wife died, the house in which I was living
was sold. Somebody bought it and was going to remodel

841

it into a n-umber of small apartments. So I put all my
stuff in storage and by that time the Art Center had
moved out to Third Street in v;hat used to be the Ciimnocks
Girls School in the old days. It had beautiful big
grounds, and a big building that had an auditorium, and
on the second floor, there were many rooms. They did
much remodeling, which was going on when we moved the
school. I began teaching down on Seventh Street, and
then he moved the school before they were really ready
for it. We had classes in all sorts of odd places, and
it wasn't too easy at first. Then after my wife died
and I put my stuff in storage, Adams said that they had
plenty of room there, and if I wanted to, I could take
one of the rooms upstairs, which was very nice and worked
out very well indeed. The building superintendent and
his wife also had an apartment on the same floor, and she
used to give me my breakfast. That made it convenient.
I could go down in the morning and go to my classes;
they had a cafeteria in the school, where I could have
lunch and go back to work. For dinner, I xvent out to a
restaurant. But one thing that I enjoyed very much after
coming home, if I didn't go out — and I went out very
little — would be to go dovm and wander around the night
school. They had night school with life classes, and if
I saw an interesting model in one of the classes, why,
I'd go in and sit with the students. And in that way I

842

got quite a lot of drawing from life, which is something
that I had rather missed.

Unless you make a special effort to get out and go
to a life class, you don't get it. And, of course, it's
too expensive to have one ' s own model and do much such
work at home, especially when you're doing it for study,
very much as a musician would practice everyday. I
always felt that I ought to have a certain amount of my
scale work, like any other student, and also because it's
the kind of study that I enjoy very much. It would amuse
me that there were certain times that they would think
that I was just another student in the class, trying to
learn to draw like the rest of them. I remember one
girl who used to work not far from where I would sit.
She came to the night class, and I got into a conver-
sation with her and she was tremendously interested in
her work and said that she was going to enter the school
full time at the beginning of the following semester.
The reason that I noticed her was that her work was
unusually good, very sensitive, and I thought showed
very definite promise. Also, she seemed to be so
intensely interested in her drawing that I was sure that
she would make good. Well, she was one of the ones that
thought that I was just another student at the night class,
coming to learn; so when she finally Joined the school
and came into the life class and found that I was her

845

teacher, she was quite flabbergasted, [laughter] And
I had her in my life class for some time.

As a comment on the school — and I don't say that I
blame the school at all for it, but it's one of the
unfortunate things that happened in this case, and it
doesn't always happen — the very severe demands of being
a good commercial artist took completely out of v/hat she
did most of those qualities that attracted me to her
drawing in the first place, and she became Just another
commercial artist. She learned the techniques and all
the tricks of the trade. I say tricks of the trade, because
a boy going out to make his living at commercial art, if
he is going to be at all successful, is supposed to be

"*^ T->£i -f- H — TT -r\ir*/~\ -P -1 r* n ctin ■{- n-|- /-Iz-inv^rr Tn/^o+- TnTr-f-Vi-imrr -HVi n'h T.ro n oTr /-* "P

him, especially lettering. The well-trained commercial
artist, of course, is at least skillful in lettering, and
he ought to be very good at layout, because the layout
is the most important part. But even so, he must be
able to render a block of lettering proficiently. If
he can do that, he has a very strong entering wedge in
a commercial field. After that, it depends on what other
things he has talents for, which include things like
fashion drawing and also being able to illustrate
advertising, which is one reason that their course in
perspective was quite complete. This was very hard on
some of the students who weren't mathematically minded

844

because they had to know the principles quite thoroughly,
very much as an architect would learn perspective. A
good many of the girls, especially, used to get nervous
prostration over their perspective course. I had more
students come v;eep on my shoulder, because they were
afraid of being kicked out of the school at the end of
the semester. They didn't think their v;ork v;as good
■enough. They were so afraid they wouldn't be able to
stay, because this course in perspective v/as simply
driving them crazy. They couldn't make head nor tail
of it, which of course was a gross exaggeration. Like
a lot of things, at the beginning, it ' s a complete mystery.
You can't see any sense to it, but, little by little,
things fall into place. I don't think many of them
failed their perspective course, even though it was
rather stiff. They had an excellent teacher. He v;as
a very nice fellov;, and he worked out models and mechani-
cal devices to illustrate his teaching. I thought he
was doing a very good Job, and I would have liked to have
taken the course myself, because although I \inderstand
it up to a certain point, it's not something that the
painter makes too much use of. In commercial art they
have to know it pretty thoroughly, because a good
illustrator for advertising will sometimes have to make
a very realistic picture of something that hasn't even
been manufactured. He must do it from blueprints and

8A-5

knowledge of materials and malce a rendering which will
be convincing, just as an architect will make an
illustration of a house that hasn't been built and give
you a good idea of it. Especially in the old days they
used to do it very realistically; sometimes you'd swear
that the house had been drawn from nature. Nowadays they
do it rather more schematically.

Adams demanded a great deal of the students because
I think his idea was that when they got out into the
world and had to meet deadlines, they must know v;hat
it's like. I imagine when they finally got out and got
their jobs that they would very often find that the work
was really easier than it was at Art Center.

There were quite a number of students that were
given rooms and lived there at Art Center, and I never
came home late at night without seeing some of the windows
with the lights burning as they were working on their
projects.

The only thing that we called the fine arts was the
classes of Stan Reckless, though there were some other
courses at the Art Center that were good, especially
one by a man name of Kaminski. Kaminski had a course
that 1 thought was excellent; it was called the Logic
of Drawing. It was one that I would like to teach my-
self; I would like to use some of his ideas. I never
have had an opportunity to really do it. You could only

846

do it with someone who was taking a regular course and
doing daily work. But Kaminski's course and Reckless'
course were excellent for artists, and as I say, the
discipline that was given at the school wasn't one that
necessarily killed talent. I felt that it did in this
girl that I mentioned, but one of my students in life in
those days is now [acting] head of the Art Institute here
in Los Angeles. Bentley Schaad not only mastered all the
Art Center had to give, but he got an excellent start
in painting and afterwards went to study with Henry McFee,
and then became a teacher at the Art Institute, now Otis.
He not only was very accomplished as a painter and in
his art background but has published a beautiful book on
the art of still life painting, which isn't Just one of
these how-to-do-it books. It's really quite a serious and
excellent book on the subject of still life in art and the
painting of it. [tape off]

The work that I saw of Kaminski's at the school
interested me; one was his course on the logic of drawing,
which instead of what we used to do in the old days of
simply setting up a still life and making a drawing of
it, he would begin right away with a student inventing
compositions. The first problem they would have was a
rather good-sized drawing in black crayon. I don't think
it was charcoal. I think they used a Conte crayon on a
rather smooth paper. One of his favorite problems (I

847

tMnk it was the first he gave in course) used to be to
take a cigarette and to lay it over a match box. You
had there a combination of a cylinder and a cubical form,
and studied the theory of light — the transition of light,
the reflected light and so forth. At the same time the
student would do an imaginary composition, using the
principles, and being as fantastic as they liked. It
resulted in some of the wildest surrealism you can
imagine. Some of the kids really did some good illus-
trations for horror stories. But they were good in the
way they turned them loose into really using their
material freely rather than copying the actual appearance,
as we used to do when I first went to art school and
made charcoal drawings from still life, but always with
the reasonable use of those various elements — line, light,
shade, and characterization of edges, reflected lights
and all that sort of thing. In the old days, realistic
rendering was one of the things that architectural students
would have to study. I don't think they do any more. One
was the theory of shadows, of cast shadows. Usually
it would be drawn mathematically onto the rendering,
in perspective. It wasn't simply an impression of light
and shade; they had to be able to actually make it. If
the light of a shadow fell on a curved surface, the
degree of curvature and the angle of the light, all that
sort of thing, was mathematically worked out and laid out

8^8

on your drawing and then rendered.

Well, Kaminski didn't demand this exactly, but he
demanded understanding . Later, with the knowledge that
he gave them, plus the mathematics of perspective, they
were well on their way. After that, it's then only a
matter of tonal values and of color relationships to make
a complete pictorial representation of anything.
•Kaminski was excellent, and also an instructor (whose
name I can't think of for the moment) had a course in
color. Usually I found that color courses are rather
boresome. First, I had an idea that the theory of color
would be extremely interesting, but from my own efforts,
I felt, more and more, that color is a very personal
matter. Its relation to your work is more a matter of
feeling; beyond certain elements of it, I never found too
much use for theory. But this course that he gave, with
its exercises, he made interesting, and the students did
some rather beautiful things in abstract designs in color.
They used all of the qualities that we have in color —
hue and value and so forth, how they could play against
one another and be modified by texture.

Incidentally, another part of Kaminski 's work
contributed a great deal to the success of the department
of commercial photography which was, and I believe is,
very good. Kaminski himself was not a photographer, but
he had classes for the photographic student, in the study

849

shapes and of textures in a way that's familiar to us,
mostly of montages and collages, in v;hich you v/ould take
various textures — like a smooth piece of paper and a
rough piece of canvas and this, that, and the other thing —
cut them up into shapes and arrange them. Sensitivity to
texture and the rendering of it is, of course, very
important to the photographer and one thing that you very,
very seldom see in the work of an amateur photographer.
They have no sense of texture whatsoever or the possibilities
it has in making an attractive picture of even an ordinary
subject. This course would cultivate such feeling and
would have quick repercussions on the work of the photo-
graphic student. They took their photography very
seriously there and had excellent instructors and lecturers;
some of the most famous photographers taught and lectured
at the school. Sometimes it seemed to me that they
weren't too economical in some of their projects. I
remember one day the whole auditorium was in an uproar.
You'd have thought that a movie was about to be produced
there, because of the cameras and effects and models
working on the auditorium stage and the making of a fog
effect with dry ice. You felt that something
really big would come out of all that, because there
was enough in the way of costumes and build-up and color
effects and lights and all the boys with their cameras
to produce a spectacular movie. Finally the picture was

850

made, and it seemed to me that almost aiiybody could have
tricked it up in an ordinary photographer's studio fairly
easily without all that fuss. But I suppose I do them
an injustice. Maybe the not impressive results were the
measure of the value of all this expense and hoopla,
[laughter]

I can't say that I was very happy at Art Center. I
spoke of Adams being a martinet. He believed that you
should demand a great deal of the student, and you should
not treat them with kid gloves, that they were there to
learn to do a job and they had to learn it. There was
a certain military attitude towards doing your job. Well,
the boys were just back out of service, and one thing that
contributed to the success of the school in getting started
(the same thing that aided the Layton School) was the
fact that they had a lot of fellows right out of service,
going on with their education and getting it in art. So
they were used to men like Adams, but I never have been.
I never liked to make much show of authority. Adams used
to try to get me to be more demanding and severe in my
criticism. Also I felt there was an excessive emphasis
on the purely commercial side of art. I felt, and do
feel, that in the field of commercial art the important
contributions are really made by the creative artist.
What happens is that they may not, as commercial artists,
contribute too much, but the source of everything that is

851

used in commercial art has begun outside of the field of
commercial art.

In Europe, you have the magnificent posters of
Toulouse-Lautrec and [Theophile] Steinlen and [Jules]
Cheret. The artist, and sometimes the great artist, has
made the real contribution. It's only on rare occasions
(not too rare fortunately) that you find superior talent,
[tape off]

SCHIPPERS: I asked you to mention some of these other
personalities you worked with there.

MTJTTING: Feitelson v;as teaching life drawing at the same
time that I was at Art Center, and I saw a great deal of
him. We often went out to lunch together. He is an
excellent teacher. He's not the conventional teacher of
life drawing that I was used to, but he was good in the
sense that he had not only been a serious student of his
art in a practical way, but one who understood it
historically aad theoretically as well. He's very articu-
late, and he has a very good way with his students.
He interests them; he brings illustrative material and he
discusses it. He gets excellent results from his students.
They learned a great deal about the art of drawing as well
as acquiring skill.

Reckless' teaching in painting was more academic.
He was trained in France in the Beaux-Arts' tradition of
painting. He used to put up still lifes around the room

852

with artificial illumination. I hardly ever sav; work
being done with natural light. They alv;ays had some
system of electric lights over the subject and v;ould work
a long time on their paintings, which was fine discipline
in drawing and in textures and tone and color values.
Bentley Schaad, incidentally, now teaches at the Otis
Art Institute and was in my life class. He was also a
•student of Reckless' and did some excellent things. He
afterwards worked with Henry McFee. I met S. MacDonald-
Wright at the same time that I met Lorser Feitelson.
He is, of course, a very talented painter, not only a
beautiful draftsman with a fine sense of decoration —
the murals in the Santa Monica library testify to that —
but also, he was one of the very first of the painters
in the modem movement to do so-called "pure abstraction."
He and another painter [Morgan Russell] founded a
movement — I say "founded" a movement — they started what
they called Synchromism, which wasn't too important in
the history of art, but it was interesting in the fact
that it was one of the earliest, and may possibly have
been .the earliest, efforts to do purely nonobjective
painting. Well, besides being a distinguished painter and
very articulate person, he is witty and highly cultivated.
He is an excellent teacher, [tape off] He's a great
collector of, and an authority on, Oriental art and is
spending most of his time — or half his time, it seems to

855

me — in Japan these days. A lot of his painting has
definitely the influence of the Orient, especially his
drawings and watercolors.

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