An Extended Biography for a Longer than Expected Life
Uncomfortable with the uncertainty that invariably arrives with any form of change, David Joel describes his cautious steps towards maturity as those influenced by growing up in an “invisible Skinner box”.
"The difference between my upbringing and a goose raised for pate is that the goose is allowed to stand up. It's true, I was coddled like a liver destined for foie gras." David will tell you that he stayed an extra two weeks in the womb first, because he likes “warm climates”, and second because from the moment of inception the “spark of electricity” alerted him to the “random shock of change.”
“I’ve never left a home without carrying some piece of its history with me. I’ve always tried to maintain a connection to the past so that if I should ever find myself standing in a mine field I may have a shot at retracing my steps back out.” Ironically, it's this very thinking that David believes landed him smack dab in the middle of a mine field at age 21… Jokingly he says, “A few more months and I could have simply described this as a catch 22.” In fact, two months shy of his 22nd birthday David was doubled over in pain. The urologist described it as “embryonal cell carcinoma.” “So what does that mean? Did I hang on to a piece of the embryo; store it in a fluctuating climate, inhibiting its ambitions of maturity?” His doctor said, “You’re an artist aren’t you?”
David was a creative thinker from a very early age. Born in Manhattan in September of 1963, he insists that he can recall being in the womb, but it’s his more vivid recollections beginning at age three that most likely contributed to the precocious development of a strong visual memory.
“At three years old I dislocated my hip and spent the next few years in various stages of immobility. The first nine months were spent in a lower half body cast, where I was frozen in a frog leg like position. Every month I would figure out a new way to break open the cast and every month I would have to have a new series of 1960’s X-Rays aimed at my genitals in an effort to confirm the correct hip positioning.” David will tell you that he thinks those x-rays contributed to the testicular cancer at 21, again at 23 and again with a subsequent metastasis discovered shortly before his 24th birthday, but doctors refuse to consider a connection. “I see it like this, I pocketed a little extra piece of embryonic tissue, it remained dormant. At three, they began taking intimate pictures of it, flattered by all of the attention it begins to pose, vanity influences its desire to maintain a youthful appearance and so it refuses to mature. There will be no apoptosis for this bit of memory and no puberty either. As soon as I became sexually active at about 19, this little tumor started vying for more attention. It grew and spread and so began the cancer years.”
Virtually bed ridden from the ages of 3 to 5 David recalls spending a lot of time creating imaginary worlds where he could envision himself liberated from the confines of casts and braces. “I call these my deformative years. My brother is two and half years older than me. I remember when he found a horse's bit; a horse's bit and a cow's jaw. I tied up to the cow and hung onto the bit and the beast plowed me free from the cripple sheets. When three was meant to be mischievous; when legs were designed to move mountains, when my brother was running through the yard, finding fossils and planting corn, I was in a bed building fantasies and tumors. Is it any wonder that I would later prove to have perceptual problems?”
At the age of 10 David was still unable to read. “I use to memorize things. I thought that if I could memorize a book, I would have effectively memorized the concept of reading and therefore I would be considered a person who could read.” He memorized “Green Eggs and Ham” and when asked to read a passage from “Wuthering Heights”, he confidently opened the book and began to read out loud, “I am Sam, Sam I am…” The reading specialist explained to David’s mother. “I believe that David has some perceptual problems. I would like him to see a specialist in the field.” David and his mother worked with Dr. Melvin Kaplan for about a year and soon David could read, and write. It would be two more years before he would demonstrate ability for the visual arts.
“My father's Uncle was a pretty famous sculptor in Mexico.” Enrique Gottdiener Soto was a sculptor primarily based in Merida Yucatan. He was affiliated with the more famous Mexican muralists, Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco. A staunch Communist, Gottdiener rarely traveled to the United States but in 1976 he made the trip.
“I was eating an apple with a knife, carving a face in the apple as I ate. In truth, I saw my brother doing this; maybe I stole his art career.” Gottdiener spotted the activity and asked to see the apple. Upon viewing the face he declared, “He will be a sculptor.” The family laughed it off. David’s father remarked, “A sculptor? He just learned how to read two years ago, we’re hoping that maybe in a couple of more years he’ll be housebroken, but a sculptor… I don’t think so.” “It was probably my moment of rebellion, I wanted to see if I could really be a sculptor and defy my fathers’ predictions, (and by the way it only took 1 more year to be housebroken).” Using a screwdriver and a hammer, David asked if he could have one of the logs for the fireplace. He carved his first statue, a sort of Easter Islandish looking head. After this work, there was no stopping him. David continued to hone his wood carving skills, making many statues. “My mother encouraged it, she used to let me carve wood in my bedroom, there were shavings all over the carpeting; it was sort of like living in a gerbil cage.” There was talk of sending him to Mexico to apprentice with his great uncle, but Gottdiener became too ill and so it never happened.
“I use to travel with my family to Mexico. I grew up looking at a lot of Mexican art. My mother is an artist and so there was always art around the house: art and books, lots of books. My mothers’ cousin was William Steig, the New Yorker cartoonist. He carved statues too and also wrote books including “Shrek!” My mothers’ father was very into art and antiques and was also friends with the photographer Weegee. I remember coming across some of his works and a book or two. So, there was always an artistic influence looming somewhere in the house. My father was originally trained as an opera singer so there was that music thing happening too.”
David attended the School of Visual Arts where he maintained a 4.0 GPA, but was diagnosed with cancer in his 3rd semester. “I had to take a semester off and when I came back, my fourth year was just a mess. My GPA went to hell, something like a 3.75 and I really couldn’t focus. A lot of things happened and I was still sick. I think my professors just let me slide, but it’s a shame really. I was proving to be a fairly precocious painter actually but then I suddenly went numb. It would take me about 7 more years before I could actually finish a painting.”
Immediately graduating from SVA with his BFA, David found a job working as an assistant to the artist Larry Rivers and remained an assistant for about 16 years until Larry’s passing in August of 2002. “Larry was the first bonafide genius that I got to hang out with. To this day I’m not convinced that the man ever really slept. He just worked all the time. Larry Rivers was a difficult, complicated, funny, challenging, mean, sweet, intimidating talent of the highest order. I both loved and feared working next to him. I was always afraid of screwing up and yet, when I developed a new primary tumor Larry assured me that my job was secure. There is one incident in particular that I think has kept me working for the Estate and Foundation so many years after his passing. I use to have to go into the hospital and have chemo for a week. Then I would get out and be bed ridden for another week, and then I had two more weeks where I was able to go back to work with Larry, before having to return to the hospital to do it all over again. So I was
between chemotherapy treatments; and my hair had just fallen out. I used to have very long hair. I showed up for work with some head wrap on and Larry told me to take it off. I did and he said “You look good bald. Come with me.” I followed him into the studio and he pointed to this hideous greenish floral upholstered oversized lounge type chair and said, “That’s your chair son. I bought it for you. Any time you want to you can sit in that chair. I don’t care if you sit in it all day, I just want you to relax and not worry about work.” I made it a point to never sit in that chair and instead I think I worked twice as hard. I’ll always love Larry for doing that.”
David also worked twice as hard to find a way back to making his own paintings and at the age of 30 he was beginning to get some recognition for a large mural that he painted for a restaurant called the Grange Hall in Manhattans historic West Village. “That painting has a better resume than I’ll ever have. It’s been reproduced in Magazines; it was in some motion picture called Curtain Call, with Michael Caine. One night I fell a sleep with the TV on and I woke up just in time to see my painting on the TV. It was in some beer ad. We tried to contact the New England based Beer corporation to see if they would be interested in me maybe painting something specifically for their company but I think they got scared that I was going to try to claim copyright infringements or something and they never returned the call and the beer ads stopped appearing on TV. We live in a litigious society and they knew they screwed up but they didn’t know me and simply assumed that I wanted to cause some sort of trouble. I just wanted to make a beer label.”
Shortly after painting Harvest: A State of Affairs for the Grange Hall, David was given a show in SOHO at Gallery 13. He then had a one man show at Fischbach Gallery. He was commissioned by Scholastic Magazine to illustrate a cover depicting the diverse ethnicities attributed to the founding of the United States of America. David’s painted guitar was used to create the CD cover art for Caroline Doctorow’s 2001 CD “That Changes Everything” David’s paintings are in various private collections throughout the United States.
“My biggest challenge has always been my health. I’ve had this odd mix of looking very healthy and strong, but I’ve lived in pain most of my life. I’ve had testicular cancer three times, which I think makes me both more of a man and less of a man than most people can claim in a single lifetime. I lived 10 years without testosterone. It’s a long story but suffice it to say that I know what menopause feels like. I understand mood swings and sickness; I know hot flashes and muscle weakness. One day my back broke. There was no reason, it just broke and my leg went numb. It turns out that my bones were getting pretty weak. About 10 years into my testosterone free universe, I received a call. Someone wanted to commission me to paint two murals for the London Terrace Towers in Manhattan. I met with the woman brokering the deal and the two of us then met with the buildings owners. It seemed as though they really liked me. We all got along great. I was asked to make some preliminary sketches but based on my work they told me that I pretty much had the gig. Privately I was going through some hard times and was virtually insane. I had very serious mood swings and weakness; I was very sick and unable to concentrate. In an overwhelming moment of depression I called the broker and told her that I had to withdraw from the commission. This set me deeper into a depression and so I decided to leave my studio in Bridgehampton and move into my family's vacant apartment in Manhattan. I packed up a computer, took my shot gun and my dog and went into the city. I had planned to type up some sort of note, with instructions to take care of Maggie (my dog) and then I was going to shoot myself in a way that didn’t risk hurting my dog or anyone else (except me of course), but I remembered a private deal that I made with myself 10 years earlier. I thought that if I ever were to get so depressed that I was seriously considering suicide, I would then take testosterone supplements first. I always knew that the hormonal imbalance was dangerous, and suspected that one day it might get the better of me. In the city I hooked up the computer and began to do research on the internet. I only left the apartment to walk my dog. I was there for several weeks. One night I found a guy in England who sounded an awful lot like me. I wrote him; Nick O’Hara Smith set me on a course that would put me in contact with a magnificent group of men and woman all dealing with various aspects of testicular cancer. After a few months, the boys from the TCRC convinced me to take the plunge and I started Hormone Replacement Therapy for the first time in ten years. Within three months I was back in the Hamptons working with Larry Rivers. I bought a home in Sag Harbor and began painting, and sculpting and writing and playing music and living again.”
Since 2002, David has served as the chief archivist for the Larry Rivers Estate. He was instrumental in organizing the efforts of the Larry Rivers Foundation. In 2006 he was elected to serve as director for the Foundation. Always committed to his efforts to advocate for Larry Rivers' legacy, David has actively been refocusing his efforts to include dedicating the rest of his life to his own paintings and writings. David recently completed Commerce: Common Ground for the Sisters’ Story, a mural for a new restaurant in an old location. “Sometimes I feel like a cat, you know the 9 lives thing, but then I realize it’s only one life and change comes so hard and so fast, 8 more lives would really be exhausting! Also I’m lactose intolerant. Cats like milk right? I can’t do that.”
"The difference between my upbringing and a goose raised for pate is that the goose is allowed to stand up. It's true, I was coddled like a liver destined for foie gras." David will tell you that he stayed an extra two weeks in the womb first, because he likes “warm climates”, and second because from the moment of inception the “spark of electricity” alerted him to the “random shock of change.”
“I’ve never left a home without carrying some piece of its history with me. I’ve always tried to maintain a connection to the past so that if I should ever find myself standing in a mine field I may have a shot at retracing my steps back out.” Ironically, it's this very thinking that David believes landed him smack dab in the middle of a mine field at age 21… Jokingly he says, “A few more months and I could have simply described this as a catch 22.” In fact, two months shy of his 22nd birthday David was doubled over in pain. The urologist described it as “embryonal cell carcinoma.” “So what does that mean? Did I hang on to a piece of the embryo; store it in a fluctuating climate, inhibiting its ambitions of maturity?” His doctor said, “You’re an artist aren’t you?”
David was a creative thinker from a very early age. Born in Manhattan in September of 1963, he insists that he can recall being in the womb, but it’s his more vivid recollections beginning at age three that most likely contributed to the precocious development of a strong visual memory.
“At three years old I dislocated my hip and spent the next few years in various stages of immobility. The first nine months were spent in a lower half body cast, where I was frozen in a frog leg like position. Every month I would figure out a new way to break open the cast and every month I would have to have a new series of 1960’s X-Rays aimed at my genitals in an effort to confirm the correct hip positioning.” David will tell you that he thinks those x-rays contributed to the testicular cancer at 21, again at 23 and again with a subsequent metastasis discovered shortly before his 24th birthday, but doctors refuse to consider a connection. “I see it like this, I pocketed a little extra piece of embryonic tissue, it remained dormant. At three, they began taking intimate pictures of it, flattered by all of the attention it begins to pose, vanity influences its desire to maintain a youthful appearance and so it refuses to mature. There will be no apoptosis for this bit of memory and no puberty either. As soon as I became sexually active at about 19, this little tumor started vying for more attention. It grew and spread and so began the cancer years.”
Virtually bed ridden from the ages of 3 to 5 David recalls spending a lot of time creating imaginary worlds where he could envision himself liberated from the confines of casts and braces. “I call these my deformative years. My brother is two and half years older than me. I remember when he found a horse's bit; a horse's bit and a cow's jaw. I tied up to the cow and hung onto the bit and the beast plowed me free from the cripple sheets. When three was meant to be mischievous; when legs were designed to move mountains, when my brother was running through the yard, finding fossils and planting corn, I was in a bed building fantasies and tumors. Is it any wonder that I would later prove to have perceptual problems?”
At the age of 10 David was still unable to read. “I use to memorize things. I thought that if I could memorize a book, I would have effectively memorized the concept of reading and therefore I would be considered a person who could read.” He memorized “Green Eggs and Ham” and when asked to read a passage from “Wuthering Heights”, he confidently opened the book and began to read out loud, “I am Sam, Sam I am…” The reading specialist explained to David’s mother. “I believe that David has some perceptual problems. I would like him to see a specialist in the field.” David and his mother worked with Dr. Melvin Kaplan for about a year and soon David could read, and write. It would be two more years before he would demonstrate ability for the visual arts.
“My father's Uncle was a pretty famous sculptor in Mexico.” Enrique Gottdiener Soto was a sculptor primarily based in Merida Yucatan. He was affiliated with the more famous Mexican muralists, Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco. A staunch Communist, Gottdiener rarely traveled to the United States but in 1976 he made the trip.
“I was eating an apple with a knife, carving a face in the apple as I ate. In truth, I saw my brother doing this; maybe I stole his art career.” Gottdiener spotted the activity and asked to see the apple. Upon viewing the face he declared, “He will be a sculptor.” The family laughed it off. David’s father remarked, “A sculptor? He just learned how to read two years ago, we’re hoping that maybe in a couple of more years he’ll be housebroken, but a sculptor… I don’t think so.” “It was probably my moment of rebellion, I wanted to see if I could really be a sculptor and defy my fathers’ predictions, (and by the way it only took 1 more year to be housebroken).” Using a screwdriver and a hammer, David asked if he could have one of the logs for the fireplace. He carved his first statue, a sort of Easter Islandish looking head. After this work, there was no stopping him. David continued to hone his wood carving skills, making many statues. “My mother encouraged it, she used to let me carve wood in my bedroom, there were shavings all over the carpeting; it was sort of like living in a gerbil cage.” There was talk of sending him to Mexico to apprentice with his great uncle, but Gottdiener became too ill and so it never happened.
“I use to travel with my family to Mexico. I grew up looking at a lot of Mexican art. My mother is an artist and so there was always art around the house: art and books, lots of books. My mothers’ cousin was William Steig, the New Yorker cartoonist. He carved statues too and also wrote books including “Shrek!” My mothers’ father was very into art and antiques and was also friends with the photographer Weegee. I remember coming across some of his works and a book or two. So, there was always an artistic influence looming somewhere in the house. My father was originally trained as an opera singer so there was that music thing happening too.”
David attended the School of Visual Arts where he maintained a 4.0 GPA, but was diagnosed with cancer in his 3rd semester. “I had to take a semester off and when I came back, my fourth year was just a mess. My GPA went to hell, something like a 3.75 and I really couldn’t focus. A lot of things happened and I was still sick. I think my professors just let me slide, but it’s a shame really. I was proving to be a fairly precocious painter actually but then I suddenly went numb. It would take me about 7 more years before I could actually finish a painting.”
Immediately graduating from SVA with his BFA, David found a job working as an assistant to the artist Larry Rivers and remained an assistant for about 16 years until Larry’s passing in August of 2002. “Larry was the first bonafide genius that I got to hang out with. To this day I’m not convinced that the man ever really slept. He just worked all the time. Larry Rivers was a difficult, complicated, funny, challenging, mean, sweet, intimidating talent of the highest order. I both loved and feared working next to him. I was always afraid of screwing up and yet, when I developed a new primary tumor Larry assured me that my job was secure. There is one incident in particular that I think has kept me working for the Estate and Foundation so many years after his passing. I use to have to go into the hospital and have chemo for a week. Then I would get out and be bed ridden for another week, and then I had two more weeks where I was able to go back to work with Larry, before having to return to the hospital to do it all over again. So I was
between chemotherapy treatments; and my hair had just fallen out. I used to have very long hair. I showed up for work with some head wrap on and Larry told me to take it off. I did and he said “You look good bald. Come with me.” I followed him into the studio and he pointed to this hideous greenish floral upholstered oversized lounge type chair and said, “That’s your chair son. I bought it for you. Any time you want to you can sit in that chair. I don’t care if you sit in it all day, I just want you to relax and not worry about work.” I made it a point to never sit in that chair and instead I think I worked twice as hard. I’ll always love Larry for doing that.”
David also worked twice as hard to find a way back to making his own paintings and at the age of 30 he was beginning to get some recognition for a large mural that he painted for a restaurant called the Grange Hall in Manhattans historic West Village. “That painting has a better resume than I’ll ever have. It’s been reproduced in Magazines; it was in some motion picture called Curtain Call, with Michael Caine. One night I fell a sleep with the TV on and I woke up just in time to see my painting on the TV. It was in some beer ad. We tried to contact the New England based Beer corporation to see if they would be interested in me maybe painting something specifically for their company but I think they got scared that I was going to try to claim copyright infringements or something and they never returned the call and the beer ads stopped appearing on TV. We live in a litigious society and they knew they screwed up but they didn’t know me and simply assumed that I wanted to cause some sort of trouble. I just wanted to make a beer label.”
Shortly after painting Harvest: A State of Affairs for the Grange Hall, David was given a show in SOHO at Gallery 13. He then had a one man show at Fischbach Gallery. He was commissioned by Scholastic Magazine to illustrate a cover depicting the diverse ethnicities attributed to the founding of the United States of America. David’s painted guitar was used to create the CD cover art for Caroline Doctorow’s 2001 CD “That Changes Everything” David’s paintings are in various private collections throughout the United States.
“My biggest challenge has always been my health. I’ve had this odd mix of looking very healthy and strong, but I’ve lived in pain most of my life. I’ve had testicular cancer three times, which I think makes me both more of a man and less of a man than most people can claim in a single lifetime. I lived 10 years without testosterone. It’s a long story but suffice it to say that I know what menopause feels like. I understand mood swings and sickness; I know hot flashes and muscle weakness. One day my back broke. There was no reason, it just broke and my leg went numb. It turns out that my bones were getting pretty weak. About 10 years into my testosterone free universe, I received a call. Someone wanted to commission me to paint two murals for the London Terrace Towers in Manhattan. I met with the woman brokering the deal and the two of us then met with the buildings owners. It seemed as though they really liked me. We all got along great. I was asked to make some preliminary sketches but based on my work they told me that I pretty much had the gig. Privately I was going through some hard times and was virtually insane. I had very serious mood swings and weakness; I was very sick and unable to concentrate. In an overwhelming moment of depression I called the broker and told her that I had to withdraw from the commission. This set me deeper into a depression and so I decided to leave my studio in Bridgehampton and move into my family's vacant apartment in Manhattan. I packed up a computer, took my shot gun and my dog and went into the city. I had planned to type up some sort of note, with instructions to take care of Maggie (my dog) and then I was going to shoot myself in a way that didn’t risk hurting my dog or anyone else (except me of course), but I remembered a private deal that I made with myself 10 years earlier. I thought that if I ever were to get so depressed that I was seriously considering suicide, I would then take testosterone supplements first. I always knew that the hormonal imbalance was dangerous, and suspected that one day it might get the better of me. In the city I hooked up the computer and began to do research on the internet. I only left the apartment to walk my dog. I was there for several weeks. One night I found a guy in England who sounded an awful lot like me. I wrote him; Nick O’Hara Smith set me on a course that would put me in contact with a magnificent group of men and woman all dealing with various aspects of testicular cancer. After a few months, the boys from the TCRC convinced me to take the plunge and I started Hormone Replacement Therapy for the first time in ten years. Within three months I was back in the Hamptons working with Larry Rivers. I bought a home in Sag Harbor and began painting, and sculpting and writing and playing music and living again.”
Since 2002, David has served as the chief archivist for the Larry Rivers Estate. He was instrumental in organizing the efforts of the Larry Rivers Foundation. In 2006 he was elected to serve as director for the Foundation. Always committed to his efforts to advocate for Larry Rivers' legacy, David has actively been refocusing his efforts to include dedicating the rest of his life to his own paintings and writings. David recently completed Commerce: Common Ground for the Sisters’ Story, a mural for a new restaurant in an old location. “Sometimes I feel like a cat, you know the 9 lives thing, but then I realize it’s only one life and change comes so hard and so fast, 8 more lives would really be exhausting! Also I’m lactose intolerant. Cats like milk right? I can’t do that.”