The recently deceased Cy Twombly captured in a few photos taken by Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, in his studio, during their trip to Italy… (Photos from Rauschenberg 1949-1962, ed. David White and Susan Davidson, D.A.P./Schirmer/Mosel)

Rauschenberg’s relationship with Twombly and Jasper Johns was widely “outed” in an article by art historian Jonathan Katz, who sought to consider the importance of Rauschenberg’s relationships and crumbling marriage to Susan Weil in his work’s transformations and meanings. Quoting a letter by Charles Olson, a poet and director of Black Mountain college, to fellow poet Robert Creeley, Katz situates Rauschenberg’s now-destroyed black monochrome Should love come first? (1951) in the context of his budding and failing loves. Olson writes, “(I had noticed, a few nights ago, Twombly’s concern for this boy when we were all talking in the study building entrance, and Rauschenberg was sitting too carelessly on the railings over the wall’s edge-that sort of attention, and warning ones takes as feminine, guarding the beloved:) …he is in the black, just now, his mrraige smashing, probably over the affair with Twombly, his contract with the gallery not renewed, and-I’d also bet as an added hidden factor-the terroble pressure on him of the clear genius of this lad, Twombly, the success of his year and the total defeat of Bob’s.” (The Complete Correspondence, ed. Richard Blevins, Vol. 9, Black Sparrow Press, 1990)

(post inspired by Élisabeth Lebovici’s blog le beau vice)