Rauschenberg:
Purposeful Purposelessness
Meets
Found Order *
No period in recent history transformed the identity of the arts
in America like the years surrounding 1950—a time rivaling that
before World War I in Europe. Although the major activity
centered around New York City, the barometer that best
measured these changes in America was Black Mountain
College, near Asheville, North Carolina. Among the visionary
faculty in attendance from 1948 to 1953 were Josef Albers,
Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Karen Karnes, Richard
Lippold, Robert Motherwell, Aaron Siskind, and Jack
Tworkov in the visual arts; Lou Harrison, David Tudor, and
Stefan Wolpe in music; Merce Cunningham and Katerine Litz in
dance; R. Buckminster Fuller in architecture; and Paul
Goodman, Albert William Levi, Charles Olsen, and Mary
Caroline Richards in writing. Two participants in this community
who figured prominently in putting forth a decidedly American
aesthetic were John Cage (faculty: summers of 1948 and 1952;
resident: summer of 1953), and Robert Rauschenberg (student:
1948-49, 1951-52).
It was actually in New York that the two artists first met at
Rauschenberg’s show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in the spring
of 1951.
* © 1992 by Peter Gena