Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl is pleased to present Robert Rauschenberg’s Rookery Mounds,reunited in New York as the complete suite for the first time since they were initially exhibited at the legendary Castelli Graphics in 1979.
This historic series of eleven lithographs marks the first printmaking project in which Rauschenberg utilized his own photography, taken in and around the environs of his Captiva Island residence, rather than “found imagery” plucked from the public domain. This shift in approach was the direct result of a lawsuit in which Rauschenberg and the Gemini G.E.L. workshop had found themselves. The case, settled out of court in September 1980, involved Rauschenberg’s use of an Acapulco diver photograph taken by Morton Beebe. Beebe’s photograph, a small version of which had been used in a Nikon camera advertising campaign, was significantly enlarged and transferred to fabric in Rauschenberg’s iconic editioned fabric work, Pull (Hoarfrost), 1974. The case put Rauschenberg personally at odds with his own very public support of artists’ rights. He wrote for the court case, “having used collage in my work since 1949, I have never felt I was infringing on anyone’s rights as I have consistently transformed these images sympathetically with the use of solvent transfer, collage and reversal as ingredients in the composition which are dependent on reportage of current events and elements in our current environment, hopefully to give the work possibility of being reconsidered and viewed in a totally new context.”
