Remembering Rauschenberg

After his discharge from the navy, Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute (1947–48) and the Académie Julian in Paris (1948), where he met and fell in love with fellow artist Susan Weil (who once told ARTINFO that her greatest collaboration with Rauschenberg was their son, Christopher, born in 1951). From 1948 through 1952 he followed her on visits to Black Mountain College, where he made such a negative impression on Josef Albers, who instructed there, that the older artist subsequently denied ever having met him, and also participated in the proto-happening “Theater Piece #1” with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and others.


Susan Weil and Robert Rauschenberg at the opening for Susan Weil's exhibition "Moving Pictures" at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, March 14, 2002

Courtesy Sundaram Tagore Gallery