I’ve never been able to keep up with Robert Rauschenberg’s print practice, which has often passed by me in a blur. So I wasn’t surprised not to recognize @garadinervi’s post of what turned out to be a proof of a single stone from Visitation I & II, a pair of 1965 ULAE lithographs. Each of the “actual” prints was made with two of three different stones, but when the Art Institute of Chicago bought ULAE’s collection, they also got seven variants.
Sorting this out led me to ULAE’s own site and archive, and the 1999 Ruminations series, where Rauschenberg made splashy portrait/homages of nine people who influenced his early life and artistic career, by brushing developer of photogravure plates. The resulting images echo the imperfections of his earlier solvent transfer process works, and seems to use previously published photos of the subjects, so no new intimacies or revelations. But honestly, what gets me is the project itself—and the names.
Ileana, Tanya, Jap and John [Cage] are canonical. ‘topher for his son Christopher (and his uncredited ex-wife Susan Weil), Bubba’s Sister (the artist’s sister Janet) and Big and Little Bullys (his parents) feels like a lot of familial complexity. And the last two exes, Ace (Steve Paxton) and Eagle Eye (Cy Twombly).
There’s a combine titled Ace (1962) from the Paxton era. But unless it’s Cockney rhyming slang, the best I can come up with so far for Eagle Eye is Dodie Kazanjian’s 1994 Vogue profile of Twombly where Rauschenberg has all the best quotes. [“He spent my half of our grant on Roman sculpture.” It was Twombly’s grant.] Anyway, of their window shopping in Rome, Kazanjian wrote, “His eagle eye for quality deceives some people into thinking of him as a great decorator,” and I wonder if it stuck.