Rauschenberg is Dead.

Three years ago, I worked on a Merce Cunningham project, and that's how I want to remember Rauschenberg.

The work I most appreciate the most  was from the early years - what we now call the "New York School" of the 1950's. Materials and money were scarce, but the contemporary art scene in the city was authentic and alive - the way it hasn't been since.  But that's another post.

Rauschenberg was part of a phenomenal creative partnership with dancer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage. Just one of the lifelong, enduring partnerships born at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

This piece was a set for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance, "Minutiae" and was completed by Rauschenberg in 1954. Merce never offered Bob aesthetic direction for any piece. Merce believed in the connection between creativity and "chance"; the dancers would respond to the work as Rauschenberg made it.

In earlier days, Merce Cunningham Dance Company toured the country in a Volkswagen Bus, with "Minutiae" strapped to the roof. I saw the Rauschenberg Retrospective at the Met a couple of years ago, and this piece was the first thing you saw as you entered the exhibit. A line in the sand, the publicly accepted birth mark of the artist.

In the studio I'll offer up something to Bob today. A dumpster-diving-kind-of-prayer, giving thanks for found objects, printing on cardboard, painting on old quilts.