Artist and graphic designer, creator of the I ♥ NY logo
(1929– )
My mother never ate with the rest of the family. My father, who had this dry-cleaning store, would come home from work at about a quarter after eight at night. My sister, who at that point was still in grade school, would come home early and have something to eat. Everybody ate by themselves. Every once in a while two would eat at the same time, but my mother was never seen eating. During the day, she was taking food from somewhere. It was very strange. My mother also cooked spaghetti in a very specific way. She would boil it for an hour until it had gotten gelatinous and lost its identity. She’d toss Velveeta cheese in before the water had boiled off. Then she would demold it from the pot because it had been reduced to a kind of pudding. It was like the Dome of St. Peter’s. And after that she’d slice it and fry it in chicken fat. In my teenage years, I went to an Italian restaurant for the first time. I asked for spaghetti and when they brought me a plate of spaghetti, I said, “No, no. I want spaghetti. Spaghetti!”
The Italians in our neighborhood lived to the east of us in small houses, but the Jews lived in apartments. Three-room apartments with maybe six kids. Try to figure that one out. You basically had a small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room, a foyer, and one bathroom. I slept for a period of my life under the stove. Well, I was young. But people were forever sleeping in the hallway or foyer. Or everyone slept in the one bedroom. At one point I slept on a folding cot. For years my sister slept on a small bed at one end of the bedroom while my parents slept together in a big bed in the same bedroom. But that was for a family of four in three rooms. When you had a family of six or seven it was like the Marx Brothers. The concept of having a room of your own didn’t exist. There was no such thing. Sometimes you’d see it in the movies and you would wonder what it was. I mean somebody with their own room, their own bed, their own dresser? What is that? That was somebody else’s fantasy about another kind of life. It could have been on Mars.
In our building of around fifty families, no one had their own phone, but there was one phone and it was in the hall on the ground floor. Because we lived on the ground floor, when the phone rang—and it could be for anyone in the building—I answered it. And that went on for a good part of my life there. I’d answer the phone, “Hello, who’s this?” “I’m looking for Irving Schnabel.” “Okay. Okay. Wait a minute. I’ll ring his bell.” And I would go outside to the hallway entry and I would ring that person’s bell three times. That was the acknowledged signal. Ding ding ding. Then I’d go back into the hall. The person would open the door upstairs and I would yell, “Telephone!” “Who is it?” “Didn’t say.” “I’ll be right down.” What a nutty idea! But fortunately phones were in such infrequent use we’d get only a few calls a night.
My mother was the person who said that I could do anything in life. My father was the one who said prove it. It wasn’t as antagonistic as it sounds. He was a man with modest aspirations. A timid man to a large degree. A very decent, hardworking man. But he had no sense that great achievement of any kind was possible. He knew that he was meant to work. And so he worked twelve hours a day every day of his life. But my aspiration to be an artist was something he didn’t fully understand because he couldn’t figure out how anybody could make a living from that.
The most touching thing that occurred between my father and myself was when I went to visit him in an old-age home in Florida, six or seven months before he died. We were sitting, talking, when he said, “You know, you did the right thing.” And I said, “What do you mean?” “You know, you decided to be an artist. I resisted then, but you were right. It turned out to be the right thing for you.”
You don’t get that confirmation often in life. It was like a benediction. Because all he wanted when I was young was for me to be able to make a living.
I have a standard story about the origins of my interest in the visual world. My parents were going out to some kind of event so they asked a cousin of mine to babysit. He came to the house—I was five—he came with a paper bag. I didn’t know what the bag was. He said, “You want to see a bird?” and I said, “Yeah.” I thought that maybe he had a bird in the bag. But when he reached into the bag he pulled out a pencil. He then drew a bird on the side of the bag.
I think it was the first time that I had ever seen anybody draw something that looked like something outside of a child’s crude scrawl. It was as if he had created life in front of me. A bird had materialized out of nothing. Out of a bag and a pencil. I suddenly realized that I was going to spend my life creating life. That I could make something magical occur. I have to emphasize that this was a revelation. It wasn’t logical. I almost fainted. It was like a blinding light. Suddenly! It was like the hand of God had come down. It was that important.
In some cases there isn’t an event like that. There’s just a slow accumulation of things. I think it happens differently to different people, and it also happens at different ages. Or the realization doesn’t occur while you’re that young. You don’t know what to call it, right? You don’t have a name for it. It’s just an interest of yours.
I became a working artist by drawing pornographic pictures for the other kids. “Can you do a naked lady?” “Glad to be of service.” In addition to my own satisfaction in life, I realized there was a job to be done for others and that you could satisfy.
And then, of course, I went to the High School of Music and Art. It was a very optimistic place. It was part of the optimism of that period, where the feeling was that anything is possible. That was a consequence of the emigration of people who were leaving a circumscribed life where they saw no possibilities to the sense that they could prosper and grow and that their children would have a better life. How strange it is now that that has flipped over—the idea that your children are not going to live as well as you. I think that’s a great sadness.
Music and Art High School was one of the great institutions of the city. It’s not fully appreciated for how much it shaped the aesthetic of the city. It created the audience for both music and art. It’s hard to imagine what the city would’ve been like without that school. I think at one point probably two thirds of the New York Philharmonic were graduates of Music and Art High School. The statistics are astonishing. But more than that, it created so many generations of graduates committed to either the world of painting or the world of music.
Once Leonard Bernstein came to conduct the senior orchestra at the school. That orchestra was fantastic. They were doing Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3,” which has a big trumpet solo in it. It was played by a very proficient kid who could really play the trumpet. As the kid finished the solo, Bernstein yelled out, “You’re hired!” And while he was still conducting, he hired him for the Philharmonic.
I grew up with the extraordinary idea that this was the promised land and that you could achieve anything. I was promised a scholarship to Pratt Institute, because the dean there had come to Music and Art to look at portfolios. He said, “Young man, I’m giving you a four-year scholarship to Pratt.” I said, “Great.” So I didn’t apply anywhere else. Then I took the entrance exam to Pratt and I failed it. I called up the dean—I think his name was Boudreau—and I said, “I didn’t apply anywhere else and I haven’t got a school to go to because you promised me a scholarship.” “Well I can’t very well give you a scholarship if you can’t pass the entrance exam, but I have an idea for you, young man. What I want you to do is to go to night school, and if you succeed in night school for one year, I’ll give you a three-year scholarship for the remaining time in the day school.” So I took the night-school exam and I failed the night-school exam too. I think I’m the only person in the world who failed that night-school exam. Then I took the Brooklyn College exam and got in. After three months of commuting from the Bronx to Brooklyn for two hours each way on the subway, I said I can’t do this and left. I got a job and then got into Cooper Union.
Lewis Hyde wrote a wonderful book on how primitive cultures use gifts to diminish hostility but you can’t keep the gifts. You have to pass them on. In most cases, these gifts are physical, but in our civilization you realize that the gifts are cultural and in the arts. That they’re music and painting and they’re architecture and so on. What is this persistent need for music and art and for beauty? What the hell is beauty? Why do we have to keep making pictures and making music? Why?
Everything else is driven by money, greed, and power. The only remaining barrier to all of that is the arts. This recognition that there’s something other than material issues in life. It’s what bonds the species. It is the only thing that has no intention other than to make you feel you’re part of something larger. It really serves as an alternative to religion. And it’s experiential. It reaches a different part of the brain. You just see something and you are changed. And everybody who sees that same thing and is moved by it now shares that feeling too. And you share something that can’t be sold. Something that can’t be made into a commodity. Leonardo’s The Last Supper, although it was created as propaganda, as most religious paintings are, makes us feel a spiritual longing. A longing to share an experience with others. That’s the only reason that I can imagine that art exists.
This is my life. Art chooses you. You don’t choose art. You become possessed. This is my commitment and I’ve never deviated from that.