publications including Merce Cunningham's Changes, and David Vaughan's chronology of the Cunningham repertory published in Dance Perspectives, 34, (Summer 1968), 54- 67.
Strong links also exist between the spectacular, sail like, patchwork drop cloths Rauschenberg designed for Travelogue in 1977 (illus. 22; illus. 23) and the works on cloth made outside the theatre during the 1970s, in particular his Hoarfrost series made in the early 1970s and his Jammers made between 1975 and 1979.
Rauschenberg's interest in the relationship between movement and soft, translucent fabrics had begun to develop in the 1950s and 1960s with his costumes for Cunningham works such as Springweather and People, Aeon, and Field Dances when he explored the effects of adding such fabric to a basic outfit of leotard and tights. His Hoarfrost series (illus. 36), in which he printed images onto unstretched cloth, hanging the items from their top edge so that they wafted gently in the breeze, expand upon these experiments with costume. He employed a similar concept in his Jammers (illus. 37), although with these works he stripped the cloth of imagery and
concentrated on the property of the cloth which, as with the Hoarfrosts, waved gently in whatever breeze happened to develop around it. Travelogue was created during the period that Rauschenberg was making the Jammers, and the irregularly-shaped dropcloths which he made to be
lowered during Travelogue are examples of the Jammers made larger than would normally be possible had they been made for exhibition in a gallery or museum.
With regard to Summerspace, connections between
Cunningham's choreographic intention and Rauschenberg's stage-setting have already been discussed. In this work, links between Rauschenberg's contributions and specific details of Cunningham's choreography are also apparent.
In addition to exploring a kind of space-play using movements that traverse the space, Cunningham's
choreography for Summerspace contains a number of small movements in which the hands and feet appear to flutter and shimmer. While the backcloth's spatial ambiguity reflects Cunningham's overall concept, the shimmering luminosity Rauschenberg achieved with his "pointillist" decor reflects these choreographic details.
Rauschenberg's dropcloths for Travelogue, his object for
Minutiae, and his backcloth for Summerspace indicate that the relationship between an a r t i s t 's theatrical and non-theatrical output is a complex one, and highlight the importance of considering the theatrical as an arena for experimentation by visual artists. In particular, the Summerspace decor, with its closely linked backcloth and costumes, deserves greater analytical attention than it has so far attracted, and certainly more than Kotz's "essentially traditional, though imaginative."69
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With his work for Cunningham's indeterminate piece
Story, however, Rauschenberg's contributions to setting the stage moved in a different direction, one that had major implications for both the future of the Cunningham company, and for the future directions of Rauschenberg's career. Just as his costumes for Story manipulated the idea of functionality, and just as his lighting plots for the piece involved expanding the audience's
perception of spatial boundaries, his contributions to the stage setting of Story defied and transgressed conventional boundaries. This was especially true of one particular performance of Story in 1964 when
Rauschenberg claimed to have invented the "live
set."70 Probably growing out of his early performance pieces - at least Homage to David Tudor, The
Construction of Boston, and Pelican had been given
before the crucial performance of Story -, the live set was a phenomenon in which the demarcation not just
between the standard theatrical categories of set, costume and property, but also between set and performer, all but disappeared.
In an approach similar to that associated with the Story
costumes, Cunningham has recalled that his idea
regarding the set was that it should be "devised from
the existing circumstances and environment at the time of performance."71 Initially, in creating the set according to Cunningham's instructions, Rauschenberg made use of the backstage environment (illus. 38). He
freguently removed existing backcloths revealing the backstage area with its technical equipment, opened backstage doorways to reveal the spaces beyond, or used technical devices, such as moving platforms, which
happened to be part of a particular theatre's permanent apparatus. Into the spaces he created in these ways he put an assortment of objects found in and around the theatre, including ladders, fire equipment, musical instruments, bicycles and chairs.72 Story was toured by the Cunningham company on its 1964 world tour and the frequent changes of theatre - often only one performance was given in any one theatre - provided Rauschenberg with a constantly changing set of circumstances in which to invent new sets. He maintains he never repeated the set,73 and his varied solutions questioned traditional views of what constituted the performing area just as Cunningham had maintained that any space in the
performing arena was as important as any other.