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I feel this thing about "overcoming" running through you--overcoming the rejection of the tree, overcoming the rejection of the self-portrait; overcoming poverty.

Yes, that's probably true. But I'm going to tell you another thing that helped me in Paris in the fifties, a thing that helped me racially. The French made me see something racially, and they were not in that sense aware of the word racism. While I was there, the French government decided to give a big show, an American show, because there were so many Americans there at the time, and the show was not just in one of their galleries but in a museum. But then they decided that the American artists' talent didn't warrant the museum. I remember the artist Larry Calcagno standing on top of a table in the famous Cafe Select and shouting about how they were all rejected. Well, this helped me then, and it helps me now. The French were talking about the Americans not being good enough, back then in 1952 or 1953. Those Americans were mostly students then, but a lot of them are famous now: Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kally, and many others, including George Sugarmen and Beauford Delaney. So the French government was saying they just didn't have it (not that they had seen everybody's work). I remember Life magazine ran something on it. Why did the French reject American art? Now this is from my point of view. They did it because Paris, with its tradition and its culture--Impressionism, Cubism, etc.--saw these Americans painting abstractions, and they said, "That's their stuff." They had no Americans in the Musee de l'Art Moderne. I din't see one. They had all their giants, of course, but also a lot of crummy artists of their own on those walls. The reason I love France is because this is the way it was. Over there, rejection had nothing to do with being black. I was viewed as American. It was one culture saying that another culture wasn't up to snuff.

So, you came back to New York in 1956. Tell me about Tenth Street and the group you were around at that time.

In 1956, George Sugarman the sculptor told me I should come back to New York because there were things happening there at the time. Since things weren't going so well financially in Paris, I did come back. It was like a shot in the arm. All these intense artists were around.

Tenth Street was full of cooperative galleries that became very popular--little storefront galleries. Most galleries were small then except for the Stable Gallery and Sidney Janis. Some of the people who showed on Tenth Street then are Claes Oldenburg, Red Grooms, Al Held, George Sugarman at my gallery, and Ron Bkaden. There were hundreds of artists, some of whom we never here of and some who became famous. Through contacts in New York, I became a member of the Brata Gallery when I first returned from Paris. There was no black-white polarization among the artists then. We were