Paula Cooper-Arakawa
1977
collage on masonite
32 x 16 inches
Diane Arbus
1971
collage on cardboard panel
22 x 18 1/2 inches
not available
Arman
1973-80-81-87, 8.30.92
collage on illustration board
10 9/16 x 5 9/16 inches
not available
Baldessari Heart
1973
collage on illustration board
15 x 15 inches
Fifteen Slushy Feet
1972
collage on cardboard panel
22 x 22 inches
not available
Small Portrait of George Brecht
1968
collage on cardboard panel or board
20 x 11 1/2 inches
not available
Geraldine Brooks
1977
collage on masonite
12 x 9 inches
R.D. Brown
1972
collage on cardboard panel
21 x 15 inches
Untitled (William Burroughs with Montgomery Clift)
1976-1992
collage on illustration board
14 3/8 x 12 1/2 inches
not available
Burroughs
1976-1994
collage on illustration board
15 x 15 inches
not available
John Cage Merce Cunningham
a. 1974, 8.14.93
collage on round cardboard panel
12 5/8 x 8 7/8 inches
Untitled (Third Pist Card Lynda Benglis)
1974-1991
collage on cardboard panel
16 x 9 1/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Duchamp Cat)
1958
collage on masonite
11 7/8 x 5 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Joseph Cornell with Yarn)
1978-1988
collage on masonite
16 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches
Second Turtle
6.18.1975
collage on round cardboard panel
10 9/16 x 9 5/8 inches
not available
Comb with Yellow Green Stripe
1966
collage on cardboard panel
26 7/8 x 13 5/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Duchamp with "Blue Eyes")
12.1.87
collage on illustration board
17 x 15 inches
not available
Untitled (Janet Flanner's List)
1974-1989
collage on cardboard panel
15 x 15 inches
not available
Untitled (Duchamp with Jean Harlow)
11.10.92
collage on illustration board
9 1/2 x 7 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Bill de Kooning)
1977-1990
collage on masonite
12 x 9 inches
Cow II
1972
collage on cardboard panel
21 x 21 inches
not available
Roy Lichtenstein - Andy Warhol
1976-1994
collage on masonite
32 x 16 inches
not available
Allowayallow
1972, 1991-1994
collage on cardboard panel
13 3/16 x 13 inches
not available
Untitled (Pee Wee)
1984-1991
collage on illustration board
13 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Louise Nevelson)
1977-88
collage on masonite
16 x 15 7/8 inches
not available
Barnett Newman, 1905-1970
1972
collage on cardboard panel or board
25 3/8 x 15 3/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Yoko Ono Was Born in Antwerp in 1935.)
ca.1980
collage on cardboard panel
9 1/8 x 8 inches
not available
Alfonso Ossorio
1972
collage on cardboard panel
30 3/8 x 12 3/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Paik in Studio)
5.22.94, 12.12.84
collage on cardboard panel
16 1/8 x 15 5/8 inches
Section Eleven
1972
collage on cardboard panel
25 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
not available
Untitled (Pollock Stew with Bacon-Cornbread)
1973-1991
collage on cardboard panel
15 x 10 inches
not available
Untitled (Please Send to Jackson Pollock)
1973-1992, 9.25.93
collage on corrugated cardboard
8 x 10 inches
not available
Joe Raffaele '33
1967
collage on illustration board
18 1/4 x 13 1/2 inches
Untitled (Bob Rauschenberg Bunnies)
1977-1994
collage on illustration board
15 x 15 inches
Jim Rosenquist
1977
collage on masonite
16 x 16 inches
not available
Jim Rosen Quist
1979-93
collage on illustration board
28 1/2 x 14 5/8 inches
not available
Saul Steinberg I
1977-1986
collage on masonite
15 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Amei Wallach)
1977
collage on masonite
15 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (A with Andy Warhol)
1976
collage on illustration board
15 x 11 5/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Andy with Cows)
1976
collage on illustration board
15 x 15 inches
not available
Green Hornet with Arman and Andy
1976-1986
collage on illustration board
15 x 11 inches
not available
Andy on Dotted Ground
1957-1987
collage on illustration board
10 3/8 x 6 7/16 inches
Untitled (Osmotic)
9.24.88,8.31.88
collage on masonite
11 7/8 x 5 7/8 inches
not available
Untitled (Andy with Brown Snakes and Eyelashes)
1975-1992
collage on illustration board
15 5/8 x 9 3/4 inches
not available
May Wilson with Andy Warhol
1976
collage on illustration board
15 1/2 x 13 inches
not available
Untitled (May)
1976, 4.13.90
collage on cardboard panel
16 x 17 inches
Untitled (Snail with Yarn and May Wilson)
1979-1991
collage on illustration board
14 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches
Untitled (Mona Lisa Bunny)
n.d.
ink on found image
18 x 12 1/2 inches
not available
En Rapport focuses on a significant body of Johnson's collages that reference other artists, his peers and his friends. Ray Johnson positioned himself in relation to other artists and structured relationships with them more than any artist working from 1955 to 1995. The exhibition premiers an important group of works from the Estate never previously shown. A text by William S. Wilson is included in the catalogue.
A seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, Johnson was one of the earliest artists to use celebrities as subject matter. Johnson was introduced to the burgeoning American avant-garde at Black Mountain College in the late 1940's, where he studied painting with Josef and Anni Albers and worked alongside Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Richard Lippold, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, he moved to New York and became active in the downtown art scene where he exchanged ideas with his neighbors, Cage and Cunningham, and acquaintances Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly. He met artists such as Max Ernst, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, and Marcel Duchamp and learned about Modernism.
He interacted with George Brecht, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Öyvind Fahlström, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist to name only a few. Many of these artists were, like Johnson, marginal outsiders. Their fame, if it existed at all, was confined to the world of art makers and admirers.
Johnson would develop a rapport with an artist as he was working, and then would reveal that rapport in a collage, or in a series of collages. He encouraged interrelations in his prompting of anyone he met to become an artist or at least a 'correspondent' by participating in his ongoing postal-art exchanges. He used their name, their image, or fragments of some related subject matter in his works, sometimes designating them as "portraits". Johnson would create an entire network within a collage, not dissimilar to the network he connected with his correspondence practice. It is this network, this rapport, that the exhibition will reveal and present.
