August 4, 2002
MarkBernstein.org
 

Bars Full of Dancers

In MTIV:Processs, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer, Hillman Curtis recalls a story about the painter Robert Rauschenberg.

Rauschenberg would frequent two bars: one full of visual artists like himself; the other with dancers, choreographers, and musicians. After splitting his time between the two for a while, he gravitated more and more to the second bar. He said he was inspired by the energy of the people there and the music they listened to,

Is this story a tale of a lost world, or nostalgia for an imagined past? I live in Boston/Cambridge -- not Paris, but not Peoria -- and I have no idea where I'd find a bar filled with artists, or one frequented by dancers. I don't know that there's a bar where the graphic designers go after work, or if they do. I don't know where the knights of the keyboard joust after hours. (In Chicago, they used to go to Ricardo's, or so I was told; do they still?)