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I went to South Pacific, Guam. They dropped the bomb while I was over there, and then my outfit moved out.  I didn't see any action.  By this time I was a corporal.  I was a sargeant major at nineteen, when I got out.

Then what did you do?

I went back to Chicago and right away enrolled in the Art Institute.  It was in 1946.

Did you have a scholarship?

Oh, no.  I went on the G.I. Bill.  And that G.I. Bill had a profound effect on my life.  It allowed me to do what I do now.  And fortunately, the Art Institute is one of the best schools in America.  It's soft of like the Beaux Arts in Paris.  You took drawing before you took painting; you took still-life painting before you took figure painting. So, in the first year, you couln't paint; you had to draw and take all these related courses.  I took only what was pertinent to art, and I really knew that was all I wanted to do.  What I find with some of the artists who teach now--not all of them, because some had their own thing--is that many have the smell of school in their work.  You can get too much school stuff when you're a student.  And it seems like some students look at art magazines too much, trying to figure out what has already been done.  to me, too much schooling can be bad for creating visual art.  Unless, you're at a place like to Hans Hofmann School with other painters that are on top of their work.

But at this point you hadn't looked at other painters' work?

No. And hardly anybody else had in my circles.  I had seen paintings in somebody's house in Chicago, but I didn't like them.  They were oil paintings of the ocean and what not, rocks.  Somehow, I just didn't like it.  Nothing meant anything to me until I saw the work of people who were exceptional.  It had to be something special. I remember that I didn't feel anything just because it was correctly painted.

So, by the time you to to the Art Institute, who do you remember was the first artist that impacted on you?  Anyone?

No one.  When I first got to the Art Institute, some of the painters, like my instructor, Rittman, were good.  But at the time, I never even considered whether they were good artists; I just thought they were there to teach something.