The Sayings of Mrs. N.

The self-construction of the Nevelson persona has as much to do with words as with Paisley scarves or triple-layered eyelashes. In memoirs, lectures and interviews, the artist has built up a sort of collage of comments--often repeated, but often to good effect--on art, life, love and other themes. A sampling:

On Indirection. Life isn't one straight line. Never. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom.

On Early Training. I don't like cold weather, and I found the schools cold, so I selected art. I liked that room because it was so warm. Of course, I loved my teacher too. But it was only years later that I accepted the fact that I generated heat because I was so happy in that room.

On Love and Marriage. I think romance is great, and I think love affairs are marvelous, and I certainly think sex is here to stay, and I love it. As long as you meet as companions and perform as lovers, that's fine. But the minute you get that $2 paper, a marriage license, that becomes a business--it's a partnership. And not only that, it gives the mates the privilege of all barriers down, and for God's sakes who can handle that! It's a lot of work and it's not that interesting. I wouldn't marry God if he asked me.

On the Appeal of Black. It is the most beautiful color. It really is. You take, for instance, any material, and when you convert it into black--I don't even mean wood or a sculpture, I mean anything, for instance, a house--it's so distinguished.

On Advising Younger Artists. I only know this--you can't give advice to an artist. Could I tell Caruso that he's got to sing or that he's got to take lessons? Caruso was born with a voice. Then of course he cultivated it. Without equipment you can give advice until doomsday and it's no good. To the persons that feel--and they have a right to fulfill that--that they want to give their life to what they are doing, I say, sure, go to work, just work, and the work will invite you to move.

On Having Children. I think people should think a million times before they give birth. The guilts of motherhood were the worst guilts in the world for me. They were really insurmountable. You see, you are depriving another human being of so many things, and the other party also knows it.

On Independence. It's a hell of a thing to be born, and if you're born, you're at least entitled to yourself.

On Reality. It's through the looking glass, dear. Always through the looking glass. Because I do not give the so-called material world its concept of reality. It's through the looking glass that is the reality.

On Anger. Anger has given me great strength. I have a fantasy about Picasso. That every morning, when he got up, they'd delivered to him, hours before, a thousand glasses, and he'd take a wall and smash them before he'd ever start working.

On Moral Obligation. If you don't live up to your greatest potential, then you are cheating God.

On Her Life. We still find daily that life in its essence is a mystery. And psychiatry and psychology and all the other fancy things are not getting close. They are giving us another facet, like in a mirror there's a reflection. Within my being I have not been influenced so much by all these outside things. I am interested in my life and my awareness and my consciousness. What my life's about is what everybody's life's about. Only the other people have been cowed down to make a living, they'll say, or to eat (which embarrasses the hell out of me), or they have children as an obligation or they have a concept of truth which boxes them in like a prison, or they have a concept of lies which boxes them in like a prison.

On Influences. A white lace curtain on the window was for me as important as a great work of art. This gossamer quality, the reflection, the form, the movement, I learned more about art from that than I did in school.

On Generosity. When you have a center you can help everybody. From that place you throw the ball of generosity. That is where I move from. Everything I do, more or less, comes from that place.

On Color. Color is a rainbow and is just as fleeting as anything on earth.

On What She Wants. When people say that I'm a strong woman, it offends me no end. Because I don't want to be a strong woman. All I want is to reveal what I understand about the world to myself. And that is my whole search. I want it to be revealed to me. For that I work; for that I will work more.

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