Answer 4 out of 5 questions

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When they finally split up in 1961, the after-effects were so powerful that both artists left New York for their native South, changed their pictorial styles radically, and neither saw nor spoke to one another for a decade or more (Fig. 1) Given the intensity of this relationship, it comes as something of a shock to realize that Johns has never spoken of it, and Rauschenberg has addressed it but a few times, and then only cursorily. His most open and direct acknowledgment of his life with Johns occurs in the following interview:RR: I'm not frightened of the affection that Jasper and I had, both personally and as working artists. I don't see any sin or conflict in those days when each of us was the most important person in the other's life.Interviewer: Can you tell me why you parted ways?RR: Embarrassment about being well known.Interviewer: Embarrassment about being famous?RR: Socially. What had been tender and sensitive became gossip. It was sort of new to the art world that the two most well-known, up and coming studs were affectionately involved.While to a greater or lesser degree both artists have resisted further elaborations on this relationship, their art offers a number of interesting clues.. and Johns cultivated their most lasting contributions to American art. And it is because of this joint opposition, and the work it generated, that they have been branded a two-person movement.Most critics agree that Johns and Rauschenberg's finest work grew out of the period between 1954 and 1961, a time of intense emotional involvement during which they searched together for an alternative to Abstract Expressionist picturemaking. Rauschenberg once remarked of this moment, "We gave each other permission." The statement demands to be taken seriously both in terms of constraints on artistic innovation and constraints on homosexual desire, for in the lives of these men, as we shall see, the two were correlated. It was winter of 1953 when Rauschenberg first met Jasper Johns, although both had moved to New York in 1949. Rauschenberg, who was born in 1925 and grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, arrived after two years' draft in the navy and four more years trying out various art schools from Kansas City to Paris to North Carolina. Johns, born in 1930, moved to New York from his native South Carolina in order to attend commercial art school, but his story was interrupted by the draft and he spent two years in the army, returning to the city in 1952. He got a job at the Marboro bookstore, unsure of whether he was working toward becoming a poet or a painter. Visiting at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, he was introduced to Rauschenberg by a mutual friend, the artist and art writer Suzi Gablik, who had known Rauschenberg at school. They met again later at an artist's party and struck up a friendship. Rauschenberg and Johns began to see more of one another. Rauschenberg convinced Johns to quit his job at the bookstore and join him in doing window designs for department stores. They worked together under the name Matson-Jones, and they were quite successful. In 1955, Rauschenberg moved from his Fulton Street studio into John's building on Pearl Street and then they moved together again to a space on Front St.

Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955