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0:49

A couple of years ago, Lizzie Peabody,

0:52

the host of the Smithsonian's podcast,

0:54

Side Door, received a suggestion.

0:57

She should do an episode about the artist

0:59

Leroy Neiman.

1:00

Basically, like, this guy was really foundational

1:03

to representing American pop

1:05

culture during this very specific

1:07

era.

1:08

In the 1970s, Leroy Neiman

1:10

was one of the most popular painters in America.

1:13

He sported a giant drooping mustache

1:15

and made colorful kinetic images of

1:18

famous musicians and athletes.

1:20

The people that love my paintings, they're

1:23

spectators, they're not viewers. They

1:25

look at it for the experience and the re-experience

1:28

for themselves.

1:28

He was on the sidelines of these games,

1:31

he was in these jazz clubs, he was meeting

1:34

these people, he knew these people. He

1:36

wasn't like painting a photograph of

1:38

Muhammad Ali. He was friends with Muhammad Ali.

1:41

Lizzie was very interested in Neiman's

1:43

life and his place in the culture. But

1:45

when it came to his art, I

1:47

looked at the artwork and I thought,

1:50

I mean, I kind of thought, like, OK, holiday

1:52

and expressionist. Like, what is there

1:54

here to talk about?

1:56

Lizzie is not alone in this reaction. Leroy

1:58

Neiman was very

1:59

very successful beyond most

2:02

artists wildest dreams, but

2:04

he wasn't particularly well respected by the

2:06

art or critical establishment.

2:08

He's not in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He's

2:10

at the Smithsonian Museum of American History

2:13

because of what he depicted and like how

2:15

his paintings and his images were everywhere.

2:18

And so Lizzie set out to figure out how

2:20

we decide what an artist means, what

2:22

their legacy is, why they're important,

2:25

why they matter when their art

2:27

is only a part

2:29

of the answer.

2:37

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

2:40

Leroy Nieman was a character,

2:42

a cultural gadfly and omnipresent

2:45

artist who sat for decades right at

2:47

the nexus of professional success,

2:49

cultural ubiquity and critical disregard.

2:53

What made him so popular? What made him

2:55

so disdained? And what can we

2:57

learn from how he resolved this

3:00

dissonance? He knew who

3:02

he was and he did his thing

3:04

his way. So

3:06

today on Decoder Ring,

3:07

with the help of Lizzie Peabody, the life

3:09

and lessons of Leroy Nieman.

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4:19

Here's Lizzie Peabody again.

4:30

This painting is enormous.

4:33

This is even bigger than I imagined it was. Can

4:36

you go stand next to it for me? For

4:38

real? Yeah. I'm just inside

4:40

the entrance to the Smithsonian's National Museum

4:42

of American History with curator Eric

4:44

Jench. Eric's going... Eric

4:47

is 6'2". It is like twice as tall

4:50

as you are. The museum isn't open yet,

4:52

so this space, which ordinarily would be echoing

4:54

with visitors' voices, is quiet.

4:57

But towering over Eric is a

4:59

painting that's loud. It's

5:01

like this big collage

5:04

of like color and sound.

5:07

Which is, you know, I think what

5:09

you... a good way of describing jazz, right?

5:16

The painting is called Big Band. It

5:19

shows 18 American jazz

5:21

legends playing together in a cacophony

5:23

of color.

5:23

You kind of have

5:27

this vibrancy around

5:29

Billie Holiday, this orange and yellow.

5:39

And then Elizabeth Gerald, it kind of goes into

5:41

these pinks and florals through

5:43

Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. You have

5:45

these darker blues, you know.

5:53

And then up near Jincrupa, it's like more

5:55

energetic, this purple.

6:00

It shows like you have these swaths of color, but I think

6:03

even though it's a visual medium, you kind of get a sense

6:06

of jazz and that it's very fluid,

6:09

improvisational, lots of colors, hues,

6:12

emotions, characters, you

6:14

know, voices. In

6:19

real

6:19

life, these musicians never shared

6:21

the same stage. Their different musical

6:23

styles would have made collaboration tough. But

6:26

here they are, like a fantasy sports

6:28

team of jazz players, brought

6:30

to life in the classic style of

6:32

artist Leroy Nieman.

6:34

It's very

6:36

much Leroy Nieman, who

6:38

is probably one of the first artists that I was

6:40

ever really aware of as a kid. It's

6:43

a very distinct style, these bright

6:45

colors, these sort of celebrities,

6:47

in this case jazz musicians.

6:51

You may not recognize Nieman's name, but you

6:53

almost certainly know his style. It's

6:56

an energetic mix of hyper real color

6:58

and hasty looking lines that give it a sense

7:00

of action. It's distinctive,

7:03

but surprisingly hard to define.

7:04

It is

7:06

expressionism, it's an impressionism, it's

7:09

just like he said, Niemanism, he is

7:11

a very, very recognizable,

7:13

that's a good way to say it.

7:15

Nieman's artwork papered the 1950s through the

7:17

90s. It was

7:20

everywhere, especially places

7:22

you wouldn't expect to find art. It

7:24

was illustrated magazine, chess tournaments,

7:27

the racetracks, political conventions, the Olympic

7:29

games, and Playboy magazine. He

7:32

painted entertainers, athletes, and celebrities,

7:35

and became friends with many of them. He

7:37

made millions of dollars from his art

7:40

and became a celebrity himself.

7:43

But not everyone loved Nieman.

7:46

In 2012, when he died, the New York Times

7:48

published a review of his work, and

7:50

in it, the critic called him

7:52

a hack.

7:54

The article reads, Mr. Nieman, who

7:56

died this week at 91, was not

7:58

an artist who anyone in what I will

8:00

here call the serious art world

8:03

ever cared about.

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10:00

Leroy Nieman first got attention for

10:03

his art in the US Army while

10:05

stationed in Europe during World War II. He

10:08

got sent off to paint camouflage

10:12

on the roofs of the tents because

10:14

they didn't want them to be bombed, right?

10:17

This is Heather Long, Leroy Nieman's niece. And

10:20

instead of painting camouflage,

10:22

he painted a beautiful nude on

10:24

top. But I'm not sure

10:27

that they would have avoided the

10:29

bomb that way. That sounds

10:31

about as attention getting as you can get. Yeah.

10:40

Leroy Nieman was drawing from the time he

10:42

could hold a pencil. As a kid

10:44

growing up poor in the Depression, he would

10:46

draw temporary tattoos on his classmate's

10:49

arms and even earn some change drawing ads

10:51

for the local grocer. He

10:53

was drafted into the Army as a cook, but

10:55

he found ways to paint.

10:59

I did a cheesecake mural and

11:02

the nudes romping around, jumping

11:04

through donuts.

11:05

This is Nieman in an interview

11:07

with the Jazz Oral History Program

11:10

at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American

11:12

History back in 2006. Nieman

11:14

was 85 at the time.

11:16

I made myself conspicuous and I got special

11:18

treatment for it, so I drew everything.

11:22

I never painted a mural, but if you can paint a

11:24

draw, you can do anything. Leroy

11:26

painted posters and backdrops for Red

11:28

Cross Productions. In the Army, he

11:31

got his first inklings that he might be

11:33

able to make a living as an artist.

11:36

And when he got back to the United States, he

11:39

saw how.

11:40

The Stars and Stripes published a story that

11:42

for every day you're in the Army, you get

11:45

a day of free education and

11:47

a GI Bill. And I

11:49

knew that day, the moment I read that piece,

11:53

where my life was going to be, I applied

11:55

to a bunch of art schools. On

11:58

the GI Bill, Nieman went to the Pacific.

11:59

School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

12:02

And after graduating, he joined the faculty and

12:05

taught figure drawing and fashion illustration.

12:07

Renowned galleries started buying his

12:10

work like the Minneapolis Art Institute

12:12

and the Corcoran Gallery in DC. He

12:14

was well on his way to becoming a respected

12:16

fine artist. And then

12:19

he found

12:20

Playboy. Yes, or

12:22

Playboy might've found him, I'm not sure. But

12:25

they needed some little drawing. Hugh

12:28

Hefner was asking for some little drawing, I guess,

12:30

on

12:30

the Playboy joke page.

12:33

In the early 1950s, Playboy

12:35

magazine was Hugh Hefner's brand

12:37

new idea. In each issue,

12:40

just behind the centerfold was a party

12:42

jokes page. Hefner asked Neiman

12:44

to add an illustration, and he did.

12:47

And that became the Phemlin for which he

12:50

became so famous. The

12:52

Phemlin was a female gremlin,

12:55

though to be honest, she's not very gremlin-y.

12:58

More like a teacup-sized cocktail

13:00

waitress. Sketched in black ink, she

13:03

scampered around the jokes page, climbing into

13:05

highball glasses, and making sexy mischief.

13:08

The Phemlin is a saucy

13:11

girl in black tights and

13:13

not much else. She

13:15

was a hit. So popular that

13:18

the framed prints at Playboy clubs had to

13:20

be bolted to the walls because

13:22

they'd disappear,

13:22

proving, says Leroy,

13:25

that blarceny is the sincerest form

13:27

of flattery.

13:30

Neiman became Playboy magazine's

13:32

artist in residence.

13:34

And this is a little hard to get from our perspective

13:37

today, but in its early days, Playboy

13:39

wasn't just selling naughty pictures. It

13:41

was selling a young male fantasy

13:43

of the good life.

13:45

And to that end, Neiman traveled all across

13:47

the world, writing and illustrating a

13:49

feature called Man at His Leisure,

13:52

his jet setter's guide to the world's

13:54

hottest spots. Leroy went around the

13:56

world drawing and writing about these

13:58

little

13:59

episodes. in Rome and in

14:01

Paris. And I mean, he was living this

14:03

kind of high life. This is

14:06

Carol Becker. She's dean of the Columbia

14:08

University School of the Arts and also

14:10

a friend of Leroy Niemann's. She says Niemann

14:13

went to the bullfights in Spain, film festivals

14:15

on the Riviera. He was having these adventures

14:17

that everyone wished they

14:20

could be having. And he

14:22

was doing these little images of them and drawings

14:24

of them, and that was all being reproduced in

14:26

Playboy. And Playboy was getting more

14:28

and more readers every month. They went from selling

14:31

a million magazines per issue in 1960 to

14:34

nearly six million by

14:35

the mid 70s.

14:36

So Leroy was in the middle of all

14:39

of this and he was making all these images

14:41

and he was becoming famous as

14:43

a result of it.

14:44

["The Little Star-Spangled

14:48

Banner"]

14:49

While Niemann was in Chicago working for Playboy,

14:51

he'd go out in search of live music. That's

14:54

when I got into jazz. The

14:57

Playboy building was in a crossy alley from

14:59

the Chaperie. A nightclub.

15:02

I'd walk across there in the afternoon. Sometimes

15:04

there'd be somebody rehearsing to go and check out what's

15:06

going on over there.

15:07

Niemann would sketch the jazz musicians.

15:10

But Louie was there at that time. Louie

15:13

Armstrong. It was good

15:16

company. And he was fun

15:18

and he would talk to you. I

15:21

liked him very much.

15:23

I think the room's sweaty. The

15:27

band's very... Oh,

15:31

favorite song.

15:32

Niemann sought out jazz for the action

15:35

of it. The closeness and the physicality

15:37

of the players. And it's all so intimate

15:39

and the people love

15:42

to be close to these guys. The music would sound

15:44

bitter or far away but they just want to be close.

15:46

I do. I do it because I draw, but

15:48

there's something about

15:51

the loudness

15:53

of it and the flair

15:55

that they

15:55

have. The Playboy Building

15:59

To Nieman, drawing jazz

16:02

players was different from drawing other musicians.

16:05

You can do a string room, classical,

16:08

and not identify the people. When you get to

16:10

jazz, you've got to draw the individuals. People

16:14

want to see an image of somebody they recognize.

16:19

Nieman painted the faces people would

16:22

recognize. He has stories about

16:24

everyone from Ella Fitzgerald

16:26

She was like a bird. to Miles

16:28

Davis Miles was always a problem

16:30

because he always wanted to have a

16:32

relationship with your woman. to

16:34

Duke Ellington He was so classy.

16:37

God,

16:38

he was classy.

16:44

The same things that drew Nieman to jazz

16:47

clubs also took him to sports stadiums.

16:49

The crowds, the motion, the big personalities.

16:52

He'd take his sketch pad to boxing matches,

16:55

the racetracks, baseball games. Nieman

16:57

wrote in his memoir, Almost immediately

17:00

I became immersed in the spectacle of big

17:02

time sports and the hysteria

17:05

and adrenaline of the spectators.

17:07

He would sit at the NFL games and

17:09

he would draw. He

17:12

was like a people's artist, you know? And

17:15

people recognized him and he dressed in

17:17

this very flamboyant way always. Whether

17:20

it was the cape or the moustache. Oh yeah,

17:22

Nieman had a look. He

17:24

wore brightly colored linen shirts. And

17:26

his niece Heather says, matching colorful

17:29

socks. No black socks. And of course,

17:32

his handlebar moustache. And

17:34

under that moustache, a long cigar.

17:37

He always had his cigar with him.

17:39

He generally stood out from the crowd. And

17:41

the strangeness of a guy sketching live on location

17:44

at a sports stadium got him noticed

17:46

by the local TV stations broadcasting

17:48

the games.

17:49

They'd pan in on his sketch pad while he'd flourish

17:52

his pencil and with a few lines bring

17:54

the action to life on paper.

17:55

Lely Nieman says adversity

17:58

brings out the best in him. And after all,

18:00

he does work in watercolors.

18:03

In this TV clip, Neiman is sketching a Chiefs

18:05

game in the pouring rain. It'd

18:07

be much more comfortable to have a telephoto

18:10

lens and be up in the top of where it's warm. But

18:12

here's where you see the people the way they are. Neiman's

18:15

captured many Kansas City stars along the

18:17

way. He's worked in bad weather before.

18:19

Look at yourself, you're here, you're so nice. We're

18:22

all here. We're all crazy.

18:28

As the sports media empire grew

18:30

through the 70s and 80s, Neiman

18:33

rode that wave, reaching massive

18:35

audiences drawing on live TV

18:37

long before Bob Ross set up his easel. His

18:40

ear-to-ear mustache became a fixture on

18:42

the sidelines of the Super Bowl and the World Series,

18:45

Wimbledon and the Kentucky Derby. He

18:47

was the official artist of the Olympic Games

18:50

five times. And

18:52

the New York Jets made him their artist in

18:54

residence. Once when the Jets

18:56

were playing really poorly, the crowd

18:59

began to chant, put Leroy

19:01

in, put Leroy in. He

19:03

was becoming as much a celebrity as the

19:05

people on his canvas. Here he is

19:07

on TV with Merv Griffin in 1980.

19:10

That's a lot of

19:12

love. We're all very proud of you, Leroy. I

19:14

want the people to love what I do because I love

19:16

what I do and I love the people that I do. Most

19:19

of all, you'll love action, don't you? I love

19:21

action and I love the people who do it well.

19:24

Neiman painted and sketched over 100 portraits

19:27

of Muhammad Ali, who became his very close

19:29

friend.

19:30

One portrait shows Ali mid-punch, his

19:32

eyeballs and teeth startling flashes of white

19:35

against bright splashes of red, blue

19:37

and yellow.

19:38

Is there an aesthetic connection

19:40

between art and sports? Oh,

19:42

decidedly. Sports are graceful

19:45

and beautiful. And I think any

19:48

work of art worth its substance, worth its

19:50

being or being done, is to be strong.

19:54

Strength is a part of beauty and strength

19:56

is a big part

19:56

of sports. He was drawn

19:59

to these incredible. athletes and he was interested

20:01

in drawing the body and representing

20:03

the body. He was, he wasn't ironic

20:05

about it at all. He cared about

20:07

it. He was, and that's, I think, why he was reverential.

20:10

That's a good word. And I think that's

20:13

why people want to own those

20:15

prints and why regular people who

20:17

may not have any other art in their house or

20:19

even think about art will buy Leroy and

20:21

human prints and want to live with them because

20:24

they are hopeful.

20:26

Carol Becker of the Columbia University School

20:29

of the Arts says Neiman was a populist

20:31

artist. When I say populist, I

20:34

mean

20:34

appealing to a very large audience. He

20:37

wasn't doing things that people would have a hard time

20:39

understanding. No, and someone,

20:41

he always told the story of someone leaping out of a

20:43

manhole cover and saying, Leroy, somebody

20:46

working in the sewer system knew him. But

20:48

I don't think that probably worked in his favor

20:51

in terms of the art world. That

20:53

probably

20:55

wanted him to be more elite

20:58

than he was.

20:59

But by the end of his career, Neiman was earning $10 million

21:01

a year on his art. He'd been all

21:03

over

21:04

the

21:10

world, drawn every celebrity you can think

21:12

of. But for the man who seemed to

21:15

be able to go anywhere, open any

21:17

door, the door to the so-called

21:19

serious art world remained

21:21

shut tight. For

21:23

the most part, art critics ignored

21:25

him. And if prompted to comment on his

21:28

work wrote things like

21:29

what Howard Johnson's is to the taste buds

21:32

Leroy Neiman is to the eyes. Neiman

21:34

makes art for people who don't like

21:36

art. His technique has been variously

21:38

described as gaudy, cheesy,

21:41

vulgar, schlocky, and

21:44

holiday in expressionist.

21:47

I asked his niece, Heather, what Neiman

21:49

made of this. He never

21:53

said anything about that. He

21:57

must have believed that, you know, eventually

21:59

people

23:59

life and work of celebrity

24:01

artist Veroi Nieman.

24:03

Nieman was by all measures an astoundingly

24:06

successful artist.

24:08

Well, all measures but one.

24:10

He was the artist that critics loved

24:13

to hate.

24:14

When Nieman died in 2012, art

24:17

critic Ken Johnson doubled down in

24:19

the New York Times, writing, is

24:21

the serious art world wrong to exclude

24:23

and disdain Mr. Nieman and his art?

24:26

I don't think so.

24:28

So I called him up. I

24:29

read your piece and I

24:31

just kept thinking this is so mean.

24:34

Oh, what made you write

24:36

it at that moment? You know, he wasn't even buried.

24:39

Oh boy. You're

24:43

not the first person to say to me,

24:45

I read really mean. That was

24:48

kind of mean. And I don't

24:51

know. I think my obligation

24:54

to my audience is to be honest about my feelings.

24:57

Ken has worked as an art critic for most of his

25:00

career and he says it's his job as

25:02

a critic to be frank about his opinion. If

25:04

everybody sort of hides their opinions behind

25:07

euphemism, then we don't know what

25:09

we're talking about. Culture

25:11

starts to become mush. You

25:14

got to call him like you see him. I

25:17

asked him to read a little more of the piece aloud. Mr.

25:20

Nieman was the archetypal hack with

25:22

his ever present cigar and enormous

25:25

mustache. He was a cliche of the

25:27

bon vivant and a bad artist

25:29

in everywhere.

25:32

But it's a good question. What was

25:35

I thinking? His body was

25:37

barely cold and I'm writing this stuff.

25:40

But I think

25:42

in some ways when I'm writing something

25:44

like that, I know people are going to go, what?

25:47

I can't believe you said that.

25:48

And so there's a certain kind of fun that

25:51

comes out in criticism when you're taking

25:53

on something that you really think

25:55

deserves it. But I

25:57

wanted to know what about Nieman's work deserves

25:59

it? This is a very interesting question.

26:02

It's a very interesting question. And

26:04

it also serves this criticism. Ken says, take

26:06

the big band painting, for example. Like, what

26:08

does this music mean to him? What you get are all

26:10

these little fragments that look like people playing

26:12

on color television or something.

26:15

It's too sweet. It's

26:19

this monotonously televisual view of

26:21

life in the world. He

26:26

had a point of view, and it was so banal.

26:30

It was just so banal. That's what I

26:32

want to say. To present?

26:36

In other words, what I think

26:38

you want from an artist, especially if his

26:40

purview is society and

26:43

culture, to have some kind

26:45

of critical element, you know,

26:48

just a little more complicated. So

26:51

do you think that Nieman might have achieved more critical

26:53

acclaim if he were more critical himself?

26:56

Yes. So

26:59

what is the role of the artist, then, in

27:01

your mind? It's

27:04

to see the world warts and all. And

27:08

he didn't see enough warts. I don't

27:10

think he saw any. You

27:22

know, it sounds like the very

27:24

thing that made him so popular was

27:27

what disqualified him from critical

27:30

acclaim. He wasn't challenging anything.

27:32

That's really a great

27:35

observation. Nieman does

27:38

not challenge.

27:41

Jerry Saltz is the senior

27:43

art critic for New York magazine. So

27:46

he's a big deal.

27:47

To me, Leroy Nieman

27:49

was this weird sort

27:52

of hippie, Carnaby Street

27:54

dandy who always had the

27:57

Salvador Dali must-action war.

27:59

for clothes and smoked

28:02

long cigars and hung out

28:04

with heft and Playboy

28:07

bunnies and drew Sammy

28:09

Davis jr. and Liza

28:12

and Rocky Sylvester Stallone

28:15

Kentucky Derby horses and

28:18

more Playboy bunnies and

28:21

I just thought

28:22

what the hell is

28:24

this guy? Now his

28:27

style is is kind of mishmash

28:30

between abstract expressionism,

28:33

color field painting, really

28:36

bad school of Paris, crap-o-l.

28:40

Jerry says he never thought much about

28:42

Neiman until one

28:44

day in 2009. It was springtime

28:47

and Jerry was giving the commencement address to

28:50

the Columbia School of Fine Arts graduates.

28:54

I

28:54

was there on the stage about

28:56

to give my address and there was

28:59

Leroy Neiman and

29:01

I got completely pointy-headed

29:04

elitist art critic

29:07

creature thinking hey I do not

29:09

want to be seen with Leroy Neiman

29:11

I mean my god I'm this important

29:14

art critic what's he

29:16

doing here?

29:17

The ceremony began and Jerry learned what Neiman

29:20

was doing there. He was receiving an honorary

29:22

professorship of the arts. See

29:24

there's this whole part of Neiman's life that unlike most

29:27

things he didn't flaunt and it has

29:29

to do with how he spent his money. He

29:31

never had other fancy houses he

29:33

didn't have boats he didn't have fancy cars he didn't

29:35

have those things that you

29:37

could do with all that money. He

29:39

used his money in a different way. Carol

29:42

Becker says when Neiman was teaching at the Art Institute

29:44

of Chicago way back in the 1950s he

29:46

was Saturn admissions and

29:48

he thought there was this wonderful

29:51

young woman that she should get to study

29:53

and no one agreed with him and the reason

29:55

I didn't agree with him was she was African-American.

29:58

He was just horrible. So

30:02

when it became successful, he wanted to

30:04

be sure that anyone who

30:06

had talent could go to school

30:08

and become an artist. And he put money towards

30:10

that. He gave scholarship money for that

30:12

purpose.

30:13

Leroy donated scholarships for low-income

30:15

art students and started several art programs

30:18

for high schoolers. He donated the Center

30:20

for Print Studies at Columbia University,

30:22

where young artists learn from more experienced printmakers

30:25

and where artists who've never worked

30:27

in printmaking at all can try their hand at it. Part

30:30

of the proceeds from those prints fund more

30:32

student scholarships.

30:34

Unlike most

30:37

super famous artists that made his

30:39

kind of big bucks, Neiman

30:42

gave back. So

30:44

back on stage at the Columbia commencement ceremony,

30:47

Jerry Saltz was hearing a lot of this for the first time. And

30:50

realizing when it came to Neiman... I

30:53

never really spent much time. The

30:55

truth is, the whole art

30:58

world never spent much time on

31:00

Leroy Neiman.

31:01

Jerry gave his speech. And

31:03

at the end of the ceremony, out

31:06

of nowhere, Janet, his

31:09

wife, came up to me with

31:11

a sheet of paper and said,

31:14

Leroy wanted you to have this. And

31:18

I looked down and saw

31:20

an incredible quick

31:23

sketch portrait of me

31:25

talking with my hands, my big

31:28

mouth open, gesturing.

31:31

And it said, Jerry Saltz

31:33

addresses Columbia graduates.

31:36

Leroy Neiman, May something, 2009.

31:42

And I looked down and all

31:45

my, I guess, cloaking

31:47

devices and defenses

31:49

and art world self-importance

31:52

dropped for a minute.

31:57

I've always considered myself

31:59

a character.

34:00

in celebratory and

34:02

fun when i look at big

34:05

band the

34:07

problems fall away a little

34:09

bit i

34:11

see law in

34:15

nineteen ninety five meme and told

34:17

american artist magazine maybe

34:19

the critics are right but what am i

34:22

supposed to do about it stop

34:24

painting change my work completely

34:26

i go back to the studio and

34:28

their i am at the easel again

34:30

i enjoy what i'm doing and i feel good

34:33

working other thoughts are

34:35

just crowded out factor

34:37

with do going to need told me when one favor

34:40

couldn't from do he should we

34:42

all become more will

34:44

we already are hungry

34:47

stephen we all become more when

34:49

we already are

34:53

i would only say to anybody listening

34:55

to this podcast get

34:57

to work you big babies there's

34:59

something really big and you

35:02

don't want to self replicating get

35:04

out of it's damn away and

35:06

make some balart

35:23

i'm was a peabody i will have

35:25

haskins this is decoder ring thanks

35:27

to lizzie and the smithsonian for bringing us the

35:29

story it first aired on their terrific podcast

35:32

side door they have a lot more stories like this

35:34

one so please subscribe wherever you

35:36

listen to podcasts to see a picture

35:38

of leroy newman's big band painting will

35:41

include a link in our show notes you

35:43

can find me on twitter at will a pass skin

35:45

and who have any cultural mysteries you want

35:47

us to decode you can email us at decoder

35:49

ring at sleep dot com decoder

35:52

ring is produced by me and katie shepherd

35:54

dark john is executive producer of narrative

35:56

podcast marriage jacob is our technical

35:59

director

35:59

The Sidor podcast team is Justin

36:02

O'Neill, James Morrison, Stephanie

36:04

Dalionczyk, Anne Konnanen, Kaitlyn

36:06

Schafer, Tammy O'Neill, Jess

36:09

Sadek, Lara Koch, and Sharon

36:11

Bryant. The show is mixed by Tarek

36:13

Fuda, and the theme song and episode

36:15

music are by Break Master Cylinder.

36:18

Special thanks to the Leroy Nieman and Janet

36:20

Byrne Nieman Foundation, especially Tara

36:22

Zabor, Dan DeRay, Heather Long, and

36:25

Janet Nieman. Also, thank you to the

36:27

team at the Smithsonian's National Museum

36:29

of Art History, Stephanie Johnson, Ken

36:32

Kimmery, Theo Gonzalez, Eric

36:34

Jensch, John Troutman, Crystal Clingenberg,

36:37

Valeska Hilbig, and Laura Duff. Thank

36:39

you to Smithsonian Folkways' recordings

36:42

for contributing music for this episode and

36:44

the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra,

36:47

which you also heard. If you haven't yet,

36:49

please subscribe and rate our feed on Apple, Spotify,

36:52

or wherever you get your podcasts. Even

36:54

better, tell your friends.

36:56

We'll see you next week. Tell

37:00

Jerry

37:00

I said he can't possibly

37:03

in any way honestly

37:05

like

37:07

Nieman's work. Tell him if he

37:09

says he likes it. I think

37:11

he's prevaricated. I'll

37:14

tell him you said so. Ken Johnson,

37:16

you are a great critic and a good painter,

37:19

and you are one damn commutian. I'll

37:23

pass the message along. His

37:26

words like prevaricate for God's

37:28

sake.