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6. Months later, a mediation was held in Susman Godfrey's Houston office on a Saturday morning to try to settle the lawsuit. Some commercial painters were in our office that day, doing touch-up work in preparation for a party our firm was hosting. Mr. Rauschenberg got bored with the mediation and wandered out of the conference room. A paralegal soon rushed in and told me that Mr. Rauschenberg had told the painters that he too was a painter, and that he wanted to use their paints and brushes to paint something on a very large white wall in our firm's main reception lobby. The skeptical painters had told him, "No thanks." By the time I went out and assured them that, yes, Mr. Rauschenberg should be permitted to paint whatever he wished on our wall, Mr. Rauschenberg just smiled at me and said, "It would have been worth a lot, but the mood has passed." We did not resolve the case that day, but we did soon thereafter, and a grateful Mr. Rauschenberg gave my law firm two of his paintings as a bonus. Christopher Rauschenberg P h o t o g ra p h e r ; t h e a r t i s t 's s o n ; co-founder, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts My father always lived in loft-type spaces, where the whole space was one big room. In his loft on lower Broadway before he bought his orphanage building, I learned to roller- skate using his studio as a rink. This is the studio where he painted the 32-foot-long painting called Barge, so you can imagine that was plenty of room to learn to skate. He was very exuberant, joyful … terrific. My mom [artist Susan Weil] and dad separated when I was a baby. When I was in high school, I would go to his house after school and hang out a little bit. There was always Häagen-Dazs in the freezer and stuff going on. His friends who would be hanging around the house were mostly dancers. It felt like the dancers understood his work more deeply than the painters did. The most powerful advice about my own career as an artist was given to me " R a u s c h e n b e rg was a person who said yes more than no and would kiss you full on the lips whenever he saw you. He was omnivorous in his passions and interests and inspired my work as an artist in every way by his complete commitment to his daily practice, which was fully integrated into his life. — Artist Matt Magee, artist, studio assistant ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION ARCHIVES, NEW YORK From top: Rauschenberg with Satellite, 1955, and the first state (1955-1956) of Monogram, 1955-1959, in his Pearl Street studio, NYC, circa 1955. Dominique de Menil and Robert Rauschenberg, Houston, 1991. COURTESY MENIL ARCHIVES, THE MENIL COLLECTION, HOUSTON. PHOTO BY ANNIE AMANTE. (Continued) 74