.. these reproductions were in Zwemmer's bookshop [in the 1920's]. I can see them now. They were black. There was one on Negro sculpture, one on Mexican sculpture, one on an Egyptian sculpture, and so on. And all these I knew. And in one of them was this small reproduction of the Chac Mool [famous Toltec-Maya sculpture]. It was the pose that struck me – this idea of a figure being on its back and turned upwards to the sky instead of lying on its side, which is a different sort of idea from the Renaissance, or Greek reclining figure, which is usually on its side. And this gave me all sorts of chances of making variations on it.

In: The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 377