Photo Credit: Basil Childers

Artist

Susan Weil (Primary), José Betancourt (Primary)

Title

Leaf Hands

Date

2007

Century

21st century

Medium & Support

Cyanotype and mixed media on paper mounted on Sintra

Dimensions

Support: 78 x 71 in.

Style

Abstraction

Object Type

Photographs

Credit Line

Black Mountain College Collection, 2009 Collectors' Circle purchase

Accession Number

2009.37.29

Copyright

In Copyright, Education Use Permitted
© José Betancourt and Susan Weil

Weil was a student at Black Mountain College for the 1948–1949 academic year and faculty wife to Robert Rauschenberg in the 1951 summer. At the Académie Julian in Paris in 1948, she met art student Rauschenberg, who subsequently applied to the college. Both studied with Josef Albers, whose exercises in design and color exerted a strong influence. In New York City Weil introduced Rauschenberg to blueprint paper as a medium, and together they transformed Weil’s childhood exploration of blueprints into life-sized “blueprint paintings.” Later collaborating with artist Betancourt, Weil revisited the blueprint medium. In her art, through reconfiguration of the single image, Weil challenges the singularity of meaning and of visual perception. In Leaf Hands the artists merge two compelling images, the trunk of the tree and the human hand (here belonging to Betancourt’s wife), each with a multiplicity of symbolicinterpretations.

Exhibition Title: Asheville Art Museum: An Introduction to the Collection
Label Date: 2021
Type: Catalogue Entry
Written by: Mary Emma Harris