{"id":127852,"date":"2026-02-09T18:58:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/127852\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T18:58:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:58:51","slug":"when-giants-walked-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/127852\/","title":{"rendered":"When Giants Walked the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The extraordinary exhibit of Robert Rauschenberg’s photos<\/a> and art at the Museum of the City of New York, celebrating the centennial of his birth, tells us about Rauschenberg, his lovers, friends, and collaborators. Just as importantly, it tells us about New York City at a unique time, not so long ago, when giants walked the earth and strode through Manhattan. Jasper Johns. Merce Cunningham. Cy Twombly. John Cage. Trisha Brown. Jackson Pollock. Willem de Kooning. Robert Motherwell. And more.<\/p>\n

Whether friends or strangers, these people were crucial to Rauschenberg’s art. \u201cMy whole area of art has always been addressed to working with other people,\u201d he once said<\/a>. \u201cIdeas are not real estate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ideas are not real estate, and he happily plundered ideas, images, objects, even debris from others, a sort of communal approach to art. “I refuse to be in this world by myself,” he said. “I want an open commitment from the rest of the people.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Museum of the City of New York exhibit on Robert Rauschenberg<\/p>\n

Rauschenberg saw New York in all its density and complexity and converted its “constant irrational juxtaposition of things” into art, notes<\/a> Courtney Martin, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Executive Director. In the book that accompanies the exhibit, Martin begins by pointing out that Rauschenberg’s first encounter with New York in May 1948 was a false start. <\/p>\n

The 22-year-old from Port Arthur, Texas, prematurely disembarked from the train in Newark, having misheard the conductor. (He was dyslexic.) There, the famous skyline stretched out before him, on the other side of the river. He left for a hiatus in Paris, where he met artist Susan Weil, whom he later married. Together, they attended the renowned Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. In the summer of 1949, they returned to New York, which became his inspiration and his home. <\/p>\n

Sean Corcoran, the Museum of the City of New York’s Curator of Prints and Photographs, gave us a tour of the exhibit:<\/p>\n

MCNY president Stephanie Hill Wilchfort writes<\/a> that this exhibit celebrates and embraces “the qualities\u00a0that define New York: money, diversity, density, and creativity\u2014all of which are\u00a0palpably manifest in Rauschenberg\u2019s life and work.” <\/p>\n

\"\"Rauschenberg roamed and photographed Manhattan from Central Park to the Battery.<\/p>\n

A useful map at the start of the exhibit shows Rauschenberg’s New York, the\u00a0local addresses that became synonymous with different phases of his work, says Courtney Martin: 61 Fulton, 278 Pearl, 128\u00a0Front (these three locations have been demolished), 809 Broadway, and\u00a0381 Lafayette, the former convent of Saint Joseph\u2019s Union Mission of the Immaculate Virgin. Having won the International\u00a0Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1964 and sold increasing\u00a0amounts of his work, he was able to buy the convent in 1965. Today, it serves as\u00a0the headquarters of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.<\/p>\n

Why downtown New York? For one thing, it was cheap in those days, and for another, other giants, such as Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin, were already there. “You could smell the river air\u2014the kind of air that helps to open your mind,” writes<\/a> Hilton Als in The New Yorker.<\/p>\n

But it’s the people\u2014the artists, dancers, musicians, and random strangers\u2014who were his friends and muses that ignite this show. The photograph below of Susan Weil, captioned simply “Susan,” shows Rauschenberg’s ability to capture beauty, sadness, and longing. The marriage was productive\u2014Weil is an innovative artist in her own right and taught Rauschenberg experimental techniques\u2014but short-lived.<\/p>\n

\"\"Susan–Central Park NYC, 1951 (Credit Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

By 1954, Rauschenberg’s marriage was over, and he had met Jasper Johns. They soon\u00a0began what MCNY curator Sean Corcoran calls “an intellectual, artistic, and romantic partnership.” Rauschenberg rented a loft on the floor above Johns’s loft\u00a0at 278 Pearl Street. A few years later, they moved to a loft at 128 Front\u00a0Street, where Johns took the upper floor. They stayed together until the early 1960s, profoundly influencing one another’s work. <\/p>\n

In the photo below, critic Hilton Als especially admires<\/a> “Johns\u2019s self-containment, his inscrutability,” which “makes the portrait more formal, like the beautiful overcoat he wears as he stares out of the frame at the waiting world, his hands in his pockets.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Jasper–NYC, 1954 (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

“What is it that makes Robert Rauschenberg\u2019s photography so provocative?” asks<\/a> Rauschenberg curator Helen Hsu. “At\u00a0the inception of his career, Rauschenberg\u2019s photographic activity was integral\u00a0to the formation of his artistic ethos. It developed in parallel with his democratic\u00a0appreciation of an expansive spectrum of things, from the abject castoffs\u00a0of commodity culture to the market-priced preciosity of gold.” <\/p>\n

\"\"Jasper Johns with Flag, 278 Pearl Street loft (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

His “expansive spectrum of things” allowed him to move objects, even huge buildings, to please his aesthetic sense. Thus, he positioned New York’s Beaux-Arts Municipal Building<\/a>, which is actually located at One Centre Street, in front of Minoru Yamasaki’s austere World Trade Center<\/a>, destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. What would Rauschenberg make of this image today? He once said<\/a>, “The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Municipal Building and the Twin Towers, 1981 (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

He was clearly interested in men at work, especially those doing hard physical labor, such as construction workers. Rauschenberg said that photography was “the most direct communication in non-violent contacts,” an unfiltered view of reality. Did he speak to his interesting-looking subjects?<\/p>\n

\"\"New York City Construction Workers, 1981 (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

In the hopes of fostering cultural exchange Rauschenberg began the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture\u00a0Interchange, or ROCI (pronounced ROCKY), in 1984: \u201cI feel strong in my beliefs, based on my varied and widely traveled\u00a0collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful\u00a0powers, and is the most non-elitist way to share information, hopefully seducing us into creating mutual understandings for the benefit of all,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. He traveled to ten countries where relations with Americans could be improved, says Sean Corcoran, including Mexico,\u00a0China, Cuba, Germany, and the USSR. <\/p>\n

One result, juxtaposing his New York photographs with those from the USSR, is below. Even with his back to us, the familiar photo of Lenin is immediately recognized. Above Lenin to the right is an amusing, Elliott Erwitt<\/a>-type dog in a car, gazing out at the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"Soviet\/American Array VI, 1988-90, photogravure (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

Given his interest in the signs and symbols of human culture, surely Rauschenberg would laugh at the political relevance today of his 1980 photograph of the American flag above a One-Way sign and another sign saying, “Enough is enough.”<\/p>\n

And cut off but readable is the Vietnam-era slogan, used since for many humanitarian causes: “Bring them home.” Rauschenberg was non-partisan, but he famously summarized his views: “It is impossible to have progress without conscience.”<\/p>\n

\"\"New York City, 1980 (Credit: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation)<\/p>\n

Of the many extraordinary photos in the exhibit, one stands out as telling it all: Fred W. McDarrah’s photo of Rauschenberg reading the New York Times in an empty lot. With his strong, direct gaze, Rauschenberg looks at McDarrah with a touch of hostility. Surrounded by trash and debris, Rauschenberg looks as if he were in a post-apocalyptic film. But no, it’s just a vacant lot in 1961 in downtown New York, which Sean Corcoran calls his “artistic anchor.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a9 The New York Historical \/ Fred W.\u00a0McDarrah\u00a0Collection, Used with permission<\/p>\n

The Museum of the City of New York<\/a> is located on the Upper East Side<\/a> at 1220 Fifth Ave at 103rd Street. It is open Monday through Friday from 10 am to 5 pm and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 am to 6 pm.<\/p>\n

Robert Rauschenberg’s New York is open through April 19, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Become a paid member to listen to this article The extraordinary exhibit of Robert Rauschenberg’s photos and art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-127852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}