Part 16

WESTSIDER JAN DE RUTH Partner of nudes and Time covers

9-24-77

In 1955, when Jan De Ruth's painting reached the point where he could support himself entirely by his brush and palette, he used to take singing lessons at 8 o'clock in the morning to make himself get up early. Today he gets up strictly to paint, and does so with such skill and efficiency that he maintains a reputation as one of America's foremost painters of nudes, while still managing to turn out five or six commissioned portraits a month.

At 55 and in the zenith of his career, De Ruth is a mellow, dignified Westsider whose lively eyes reflect the deep intellect within. His achievements in the past two decades are enormous. His works have graced nearly 70 one-man shows. His portraits of former First Lady Pat Nixon and other celebrity wives have appeared on the cover of Time magazine. He has written two widely popular books -- Portrait Painting and Painting the Nude. As we relax in the workroom of his West 67th Street apartment, I begin by asking how he came to specialize in nudes.

"I always knew I would paint women," he says in a soft voice shaded with tones of his native Czechoslovakia. "In 1948, when I came to the United States, I started to paint nudes."

Is his choice of subject matter motivated by something other than art's sake?" "The only person I think who may have these thoughts in mind is myself," he answers, smiling frankly, "because I always ask myself whether these reasons are purely artistic or do they come from the gut? I don't think there can be art unless it comes from the gut."

De Ruth's painting used to occupy him eight to 15 hours a day. Now he is down to about seven hours. He works very rapidly, with intense concentration. "I don't paint after the afternoon," he explains, "except sometimes sketching at night. You exhaust your juices by the time evening comes along."

One person he used to sketch after hours was actress Karen Black, who lived in West 68th Street just across from his apartment. Says De Ruth: "she would sit in the in the windowsill in her bra and slip. Then one day I called over to her, 'Would you like to get paid for this?' She rushed inside to get her glasses, and looked over at me, very surprised. She became my model for some time."

For a woman to be an ideal nude model, said De Ruth, "she should be gentle, as intelligent as possible, considerate, and somebody in the arts, or with the sensitivity of an artist. And she must be physically attractive."

How do the women who pose fully dressed for commissioned portraits compare to the professional nude models? "They work better than my models usually," says the artist, who has painted Ethel Kennedy, Eleanor McGovern, and the late Martha Mitchell for Time. "They're much more concerned to participate. I don't think it's necessarily something to do with vanity. It's much more curiosity. Because we never really know until the day we die what we look like. Because we vary so much from one time to another."

Ironically, Martha Mitchell -- wife of President Nixon's infamous attorney general, John Mitchell -- posed for De Ruth inside the Watergate Building during the height of her fame. "She had a certain peasant charm -- a charm of her own," he recalls.

A man who craves variety, De Ruth has for many years spent his summers at a studio in Massachusetts. This past summer he began to teach painting in New Mexico -- something he has wanted to try for a long time. A passionate skier, he travels to Austria each winter to pursue the sport that he learned as a child, then gave up until his mid-40s.

His other after-work activities? "I love to be in the company of women," says the artist with a radiant smile, adding that he prefers their company when he's not painting them.

The East Side, according to the artist, is "a city in itself. There's a sterility over there, at least for me. I just can't see myself without this mixture that the West Side is." De Ruth has been going to the same Chinese laundry for 28 years -- Jack's on Columbus Avenue. Another business he has patronized all that time is Schneider's Art Supplies at 75th Street and Columbus.

As the interview comes to a close, I ask De Ruth what advice he would give to an aspiring young artist. "Never be discouraged by anyone or anything," he says. Then, to balance his remarks, he relates an anecdote about an art student who asked Degas what he could do to help the world of art. Replied Degas: "Stop painting."

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WESTSIDER MIGNON DUNN The Met's super mezzo

3-8-80

Don't look for opera posters, photographs or reviews on the walls of Mignon Dunn's Westside apartment. The Tennessee-born Metropolitan Opera star, one of the world's most sought-after mezzo-sopranos since the early 1970s, prefers to keep her two lives separate. She has no scrapbooks and saves no clippings. "I look forward to what I'm doing tomorrow," she explains.

"I don't like those stand-up-and-sing roles. I loves to play wicked women. But you have to make them just as human as possible," she continues, her gold jewelry jingling as she settles onto the sofa. Tall and attractive, with large, expressive features, Miss Dunn is hospitality personified as she talks about her life and career over a glass of wine.

This season at the Met she starred in both Lohengrin and Elektra. In the spring she will appear in Aida on the Met tour, and perform the role of Kundry in Parsifal with Germany's Hamburg Opera. After that she plans some orchestral and opera concerts across the country. Long praised for her dramatic talents as well as her vocal skills, Miss Dunn has already signed contracts for performances into 1984.

Although a few noted operas, such as Carmen, Samson et Dalila, and Joan of Arc, have a mezzo in the title role, most operas feature the higher-voiced soprano in the lead and a mezzo in a character role. "We may not have the main roles, but we have some of the best parts in opera," she says in her rich Southern accent, shouting the last word as if from an overflow of energy. "Not many of the roles I get today are angelic. It's often the 'other woman,' or the woman who causes the trouble."

Married since 1972 to Kurt Klippstatter, a conductor and music director from Austria, Miss Dunn has never had any children of her own, somewhat to her regret. But she and her husband frequently have their nephews and nieces staying for extended periods. "Our niece Evi, from Austria, is living with us now. She's like a little daughter, and I adore her. She's 18, and she's going to go to nursing school." Mignon and Kurt are a very gregarious couple who enjoy throwing huge dinner parties. Mignon's cooking, like her singing, is international.

"I cook Austrian. I cook New Orleans. I cook some nice Italian and French things. I'm going to be in Paris later this year for six weeks, and I really seriously want to go to the Cordon Bleu Cooking School, and take at least a three-week course."

Around the late 1960s she was based in Germany for several years. There, says Dunn, many new operas are premiered each year, while in the U.S. they are a rarity. "It all comes back to the fact that we don't have government subsidy. We have to worry about selling tickets. Opera is an expensive thing, and until we get this government support -- which people for some reason are afraid of -- we cannot be as experimental as we would like to be."

Brought up on a cotton plantation in Memphis, she entered her first singing contest at the age of 9 and spent most Saturday afternoons in her girlhood listening with rapt attention to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on the radio. Immediately following her high school graduation, she was auditioned by Met scouts and encouraged to go to New York. There, after several years of study, she won a national competition that launched her career.

Dunn spent part of three seasons with the New York City Opera before joining the Met. It was many years, however, before her talents were fully appreciated there. "It only took me 11 auditions to get into the New York City Opera, and at least that many at the Met. So take heart, everybody," she says, laughing merrily.

She has made numerous opera recordings, including the role of Susan B. Anthony in Virgil Thompson's The Mother of Us All and Maddalena in Rigoletto. "I don't ever listen to my recordings," she says when asked to name her favorite. "I listen to the playbacks, when I can do something about it. But I don't listen to recordings afterwards because there's nothing that I can do about it, and I know I'm going to find a million things that I don't like."