Oral history interview with Reuben Nakian, 1981 June 9-17 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Funding for this interview was provided by the Wyeth Endowment for American Art. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Reuben Nakian on June 9, 1981. The interview took place in Stamford, CT, and was conducted by Avis Berman for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. [Transcriber’s note: RN’s transcribed words make him appear on the written page as gruff, irritable, and even unkindly. The timbre of his voice, however, is usually at odds with the words.] Interview [Tape 1, side A (all tapes are 45 minutes per side)] DON ROSS: DON ROSS (Nakian’s assistant) RUEBEN NAKIAN: I don’t care anymore what anyone thinks. It doesn’t matter, you know, what I do or what I say. I just try to keep busy. Even my art’s, you know. I do things just to keep busy. I don’t give a goddamn if. I don’t even care to go to the Metropolitan Museum, and that was like a sacred place for me, and that meant, you know, I don’t even care to go there. So, Jesus, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m bored and blasé, you know. But I think my eyes. I can’t see too good. Then I’ve been tired, I have a cold in my system. And it stays all summer and I’ve been tired as hell. Well, I’m feeling a little better now; maybe the cold’s worn off. I’ve got a little more pep. But when you’re saggy and tired and your eyes are not too sharp, you know, I get depressed. AVIS BERMAN: Can you see well enough to go to the Gorky show, since Gorky was a friend of yours? RUEBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, well, I have to go close up to look at the paintings. DON ROSS: He’s still producing a lot of work. AVIS BERMAN: Certainly. DON ROSS: It’s not like he can’t do anything. AVIS BERMAN: I know. DON ROSS: He’s still full of piss and vinegar. AVIS BERMAN: Uh huh. RUEBEN NAKIAN: I still, you know, make drawings and some sculpture. But, you know, I just have to get up close. AVIS BERMAN: Right. RUEBEN NAKIAN: And I almost do it instinctively. I don’t ever have to look. [chuckles] AVIS BERMAN: What I want to do is start with the basics. I want to go back to your childhood. RUEBEN NAKIAN: I don’t want to do that. No memories of it, there’s no. DON ROSS: Yes, you do. You just have to be. You have to let people pick at you. AVIS BERMAN: Right. Well, that’s what I’m going to do. I know you were born in, you were from College Point, Long Island, and I’d like to know first of all your parents’ names and their occupations. RUEBEN NAKIAN: Well, my father’s name was George, and my mother’s name was Mary. And he was in a number of occupations. He used to be in embroidery and in weaving. Sort of business in this and that, I don’t know what. He used to change around. AVIS BERMAN: And were you conscious of being Armenian when you were younger? Were you different? RUEBEN NAKIAN: No, not. I always felt American. It’s now the Armenians, they’re trying to come around and make an Armenian out of me, and I. I don’t know the language. And I only saw a few of them when we were living in Jersey. And after that, I seldom saw an Armenian. I never think Armenian. I’m raised up on American and Greek history, and Walt Whitman, and Buffalo Bill, and cowboys and Indians, and I was never interested, even in reading Armenian history. I’ve never looked. I’ve read French history, Roman and Greek, and everything. But Armenian is, I never. I wasn’t excited about it, you know, not interested. And the Armenians know, you know, it’s a big history. They know all about it. I have no interest. They’re always saying, “Why don’t you make mythological Armenian sculpture?” What. When you’ve got the Greek mythology, what the hell is the Armenian mythology? So I never felt Armenian. AVIS BERMAN: But did you ever speak it at home, or anything? Did your parents speak it? RUEBEN NAKIAN: They used to speak a little bit. And we used to speak Turkish at home. And Turkish, the Armenian, and English—the three languages. And I used to. I couldn’t speak it, but I remember a lot of Turkish words. And especially the funny curse words. They’re so funny, you know, it’s a belly laugh. It’s a beautiful language. Well, it’s the only other language I knew a little bit about, because they used to speak it at home, and I used to hear it. And I love it, you know, but I never hear anyone speak it anymore. But if anyone talks it, I can remember it, you know. It’s a strange language. Everything’s ass-backwards, you know. If they insult you, it’s ass-backwards insulting. It’s funny as hell. [chuckling] AVIS BERMAN: Well, what was your father like? RUEBEN NAKIAN: He was a tall. He was tall and he was bald. He was a nice fellow. AVIS BERMAN: Were you close to him? RUEBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, you know. We were an old Christian family. Used to go to church. Not the Catholic church, but the Protestant, the Episcopal or Armenian church. It wasn’t the Catholic church. So I used to go to Sunday school. And, you know, they all went to church on Sunday. We had an Armenian church in Union City. It used to be called West Hoboken, and they changed it. AVIS BERMAN: So you. RUEBEN NAKIAN: I was there three or four years around that area, you know. AVIS BERMAN: You moved to New Jersey when you were a kid? RUEBEN NAKIAN: Let’s see, what. I had a brother named George, and he died at the age of twenty around 1905. And I had a sister who was beautiful. She was a, she looked like a German, she was so blond. She didn’t look Armenian, with blue eyes, yellow hair, and everything. And she married an Armenian. He was in the roof business. So he brought the whole family from College Point after my brother died. A year later she married him, and we all moved to 116th Street and Lenox Avenue, around there. And it wasn’t colored then. There were no colored people around. Now, it’s a colored neighborhood. And we lived there for a year, and then we moved to Rutherford, New Jersey. In 1906 we were in Lenox and 116th Street, and I went to school there for a year on 117th Street. There was a school, and I went there for a year. Then we moved to Rutherford, which was nicer. It was in the country, right in the country. And the locomotives there had, you know, they had locomotives there. Boy, I used to love them, because I’d just sit down in the station and wait for the locomotives to come in, you know. Have you ever seen them? AVIS BERMAN: Yes. RUEBEN NAKIAN: Yes. They don’t have them anymore. They were real works of art. I actually made two of them, around 1930, abstractions of locomotives, and I even had them on an abstract trestle, you know, a locomotive in an abstraction. I made two of them. That’s around 1930, you know. AVIS BERMAN: Yes. RUEBEN NAKIAN: I have no pictures of them. AVIS BERMAN: Well, that’s something I never knew, that you had anything to do making, anything to do with machines. That’s very interesting. RUEBEN NAKIAN: Yeah, I actually went downtown, to the. I got in touch with a locomotive magazine. They gave me pictures and I spent about a year, and made them out of great, big, and in plaster, you know, full of action. DON ROSS: What happened to them? RUEBEN NAKIAN: I, you know, I break things up, move on, throw them away. AVIS BERMAN: You’ve always destroyed things. RUEBEN NAKIAN: And that was around 1930. Yeah, I think. That was before I got the Guggenheim. So it was 1929, I made that. And I made that at 55 Christopher Street. After the Whitney dropped me in 1928, I moved to 55. And I remember that room. I made them in there. Yeah, I made two of them. Everybody thought I was crazy. [laughter] AVIS BERMAN: How did you get in the habit of destroying so much stuff? RUEBEN NAKIAN: Well, when you move, where are you going to put ‘em? Every time you move, you gotta. You can’t take ‘em along. I had no huge house. We were poor, and where you gonna put ‘em? So I say screw it, smash ‘em up. AVIS BERMAN: But even a lot of your small. RUEBEN NAKIAN: I get bored with them.