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compared with what they were. Any one price would have kept them all alive for years. The only ones who are alive to see these fantastic prices that are now being paid are Chagall and Picasso. Dufy's prices wasn't very high when he died. His watercolors brought eight or nine hundred dollars. They're now between eight and eleven thousand. I was asked thirty thousand dollars for a small painting by him, recently.

Well, those are the main French artists that I had any contact with. In the fifties, I thought about buying some of the abstract expressionists, but I thought, “Oh, they won't go up in price for a long time, and I can get into this at any time. This, however, was not the case, and in the early sixties, when I did start to buy, the prices were already fairly advanced. I bought two Franz Klein's, one for $15,000 about; and I bought three Rathko's, each between twelve and fifteen thousand. I think I bought two, once, for twenty five. I bought paintings by Gottlieb, Paul Jenkins, Okada, Hedda Stern, and Georgia O'Keefe. I think I'll tell you about them the next time we meet.

Who else have I bought? I bought a picture by Stamless (?); and of the contemporary Frenchman I have a fine picture by Soulages and one by George Mathieu. The person I've missed is de Kooning and Pollock. Pollock prices are now too high for me, and de Kooning, I fear, too --

But I'll tell about Rathko's ecoentricities. I don't know if any of this about the painters is worthwhile,