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372 BARBARLEE DIAMONSTEIN AND... sixties you gave us life in the East Village, the Vietnam protesters and flower children. Now many of the people that you paint are dressed in blue jeans. Is it what they symbolize, or is it the color that lures you? RS: I always painted what I saw. In the Depression days I saw people sitting, and they were dressed very dingily, the colors were dingy; they were sitting in parks or, in summer, lying down in parks, and I painted them. I always relied upon my eyes. Later on I was on Second Avenue - that was in the sixties, I guess - and that was the East Village at that time. I got to know many young artists there, many young poets and writers, and I painted them. Now I am on Columbus Avenue uptown, and I see all these people dressed in jeans. At the time when they wore miniskirts, I painted them in miniskirts. I paint what I see. BLDD: How do you select your subjects, and what is the method by which you work? RS: I like to paint people-again coming back to this element of psychology, looking deeply into the human being. I know many artists, and I paint them because I know them and I love to paint them. And I paint my wife and my daughter and my friends. When I was young I painted on commission. I did many portraits of men, and women and children especially, for money. In those days, if I got twenty-five dollars or fifty dollars or one hundred dollars, I'd paint these people for money, but I never enjoyed it, I never loved to do that, because it always inhibited my style, it always curtailed me, I wasn't as free as I am when I paint people I know and they are not commissions. I paint to please myself. When I did those commissions, I had to please the mother of the child, or the husband of the wife and so on. BLDD: Are the subjects often please, no matter who paints them? RS: No, no. Just today I was reading about Oscar Kokoschka — he painted a wonderful portrait of an old scientist, a man with a beard and those wonderful hands; neither he nor the family liked the portrait, yet it's one of the masterpieces of modern European art. No, commissions are not always accepted by those who commission portraits. BLDD: Have you ever had the experience of a commission rejected? RS: No, but I can tell some very funny stories about some of those commissions. For instance, I painted a woman once, and she had a longish nose. Then she changed her nose, and she wanted me to repaint the portrait. BLDD: Did you? 200/201 RS: No. I am not a plastic surgeon. Then it happened that I painted a middle-aged man, and when I painted him he looked very haggard and very unhappy; he didn't feel well when I painted him, but it was accepted. Then he went to Florida and when he came back he was fat and RAPHAEL SOYER 373 brown, and he said "You know, Mr. Soyer, the portrait you did of me is right above the sofa where I usually sit when guests come, and they always say, 'What's the matter with you, Charlie? Were you sick when you posed?'" And he came with the portrait and wanted me to repaint it, make him fat and, as he said, kind of prosperous-looking, and I refused. BLDD: When was your first exhibition in New York, and what were the circumstances that surrounded that? RS: My first exhibition was in 1929. I was friendly with my instructor at the Art Students League, and after I left the school I went to see him and show him my work. He said, "Take this painting to the Daniel Galleries and tell them that I sent you there." So I did that. I took that picture over to the Daniel Galleries, and they told me that if I would have twelve such pictures they would give me a one-man show. It took me a year to make twelve pictures like that, because at that time I still worked during the day, and I painted only weekends. And I had a one-man show. The Daniel Galleries at that time was a very well-known gallery. BLDD: What other artists were exhibited in that gallery? RS: Kuniyoshi, Peter Blume, John Marin, Niles Spencer. BLDD: So it was quite an accomplishment for a young man. RS: Yes, it was a big thing for me to be in that gallery. From that point on I considered myself an artist, and I began to get studios, first with some friends, and then my own studio. My studio now is off Columbus Avenue, on 74th Street. It was a building where many artists lived and worked at one time or another. But now people live there, and they have converted the studios into homes. I think I am the only artist left there who just uses it as a studio. BLDD: How often do you go to your studio? RS: All the time. My wife says that people ask her, "Does Mr. Soyer go to the studio every day?" And she says, "Yes, every day, including Christmas and Yom Kippur." I am there about 9:30 A.M. and I work till about 5 P.M. But a lot of time is taken up by washing brushes, cleaning the palette. BLDD: To the work of what artists do you most respond? RS: The artists I respond to are the great classical artists, the great traditional painters. Of course you think of Rembrandt, you think of Courbet, of Degas, of the Flemish painters, Van der Weyden, Van Eyck, and the American painter Thomas Eakins. These are the painters that have influenced me and my work. They are my painters. BLDD: Is there the work of any artist that is always in your head when you yourself paint? RS: Yes, there is always some artist in back of my head when I paint,
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