Susan Weil’s Blue Journey: Pioneering Cyanotype Photography
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 3:40 AM
Description
Vanessa S. Troiano, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, City University of New York - Graduate Center, New York City, U.S.A.
Susan Weil’s Blue Journey: Pioneering Cyanotype Photography
In 1951, American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930) and her then-husband Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) first earned national recognition when LIFE magazine and MoMA featured their co-created Blueprints (1949-1951)—the unprecedented series of full-body cyanotype photograms that helped launch Rauschenberg to artistic fame. In this talk, I will show how Weil was, in fact, the creative driver of this series, having introduced Rauschenberg to her family’s tradition of crafting floral cyanotypes, a practice begun by her great-grandfather Dankmar Adler, the leading Chicago School architect of Alder & Sullivan. Weil and Rauschenberg began making blueprints the summer after their first year at Black Mountain College, where Rauschenberg had joined Weil to study with Josef Albers. I contend that the young couple developed the perspective and skills to transform the blueprint medium into art because of Albers’s Bauhaus-based pedagogy, which incorporated craft techniques and New Vision principles. Although Weil has since produced a prolific oeuvre with international exhibitions, art history has marginalized her to brief asides about her relationship with Rauschenberg—an unfortunately familiar problem for women artists of Weil’s generation, who were also married with children. My discussion engages in feminist approaches to revisionist history to illuminate Weil’s pioneering contributions to photography, including her work in the 1990s with the Cuban-American photographer José Betancourt to expand the cyanotype’s multimedia applications. I will demonstrate that Weil has been at the forefront of the contemporary trend to imbue textiles with a photographic aesthetic, harnessing the materiality of various fabrics to create multidimensional blueprints. She has subsequently passed down an expanded family tradition, which I will highlight with the exceptional matrilineal achievements of Weil’s daughter and granddaughter, Sara and Flint Kirschenbaum, respectively, who also make cyanotypes for art and craft, including clothing and quilting.
Vanessa S. Troiano is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation, “Susan Weil: Artistic Trailblazer,” is the first critical biography to survey the career of American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930). As a modern and contemporary art specialist, Vanessa’s research interests include feminist and women’s art, photography and artist’s books, and art history pedagogy and historiography. Her publications have appeared in the Routledge Research in Art History book series, the Smarthistory website, and the Art History Teaching Resources platform. Vanessa has received several awards, including a Women Writing Women’s Lives Kathy Chamberlain Award, a United States Teaching Assistantship with Fulbright Austria in Vienna, and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. Before CUNY, she earned degrees in Art History from Wellesley College and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Vanessa has taught international graduate students at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and undergraduates at CUNY’s Brooklyn, City, and Queensborough campuses. Since 2020, she has also served as the inaugural curator of Baruch College’s lecture series, “World Cultures, World Arts."
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Troiano, Vanessa S., "Susan Weil’s Blue Journey: Pioneering Cyanotype Photography" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 12.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/12
Susan Weil’s Blue Journey: Pioneering Cyanotype Photography
Vanessa S. Troiano, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, City University of New York - Graduate Center, New York City, U.S.A.
Susan Weil’s Blue Journey: Pioneering Cyanotype Photography
In 1951, American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930) and her then-husband Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) first earned national recognition when LIFE magazine and MoMA featured their co-created Blueprints (1949-1951)—the unprecedented series of full-body cyanotype photograms that helped launch Rauschenberg to artistic fame. In this talk, I will show how Weil was, in fact, the creative driver of this series, having introduced Rauschenberg to her family’s tradition of crafting floral cyanotypes, a practice begun by her great-grandfather Dankmar Adler, the leading Chicago School architect of Alder & Sullivan. Weil and Rauschenberg began making blueprints the summer after their first year at Black Mountain College, where Rauschenberg had joined Weil to study with Josef Albers. I contend that the young couple developed the perspective and skills to transform the blueprint medium into art because of Albers’s Bauhaus-based pedagogy, which incorporated craft techniques and New Vision principles. Although Weil has since produced a prolific oeuvre with international exhibitions, art history has marginalized her to brief asides about her relationship with Rauschenberg—an unfortunately familiar problem for women artists of Weil’s generation, who were also married with children. My discussion engages in feminist approaches to revisionist history to illuminate Weil’s pioneering contributions to photography, including her work in the 1990s with the Cuban-American photographer José Betancourt to expand the cyanotype’s multimedia applications. I will demonstrate that Weil has been at the forefront of the contemporary trend to imbue textiles with a photographic aesthetic, harnessing the materiality of various fabrics to create multidimensional blueprints. She has subsequently passed down an expanded family tradition, which I will highlight with the exceptional matrilineal achievements of Weil’s daughter and granddaughter, Sara and Flint Kirschenbaum, respectively, who also make cyanotypes for art and craft, including clothing and quilting.
Vanessa S. Troiano is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation, “Susan Weil: Artistic Trailblazer,” is the first critical biography to survey the career of American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930). As a modern and contemporary art specialist, Vanessa’s research interests include feminist and women’s art, photography and artist’s books, and art history pedagogy and historiography. Her publications have appeared in the Routledge Research in Art History book series, the Smarthistory website, and the Art History Teaching Resources platform. Vanessa has received several awards, including a Women Writing Women’s Lives Kathy Chamberlain Award, a United States Teaching Assistantship with Fulbright Austria in Vienna, and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. Before CUNY, she earned degrees in Art History from Wellesley College and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Vanessa has taught international graduate students at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and undergraduates at CUNY’s Brooklyn, City, and Queensborough campuses. Since 2020, she has also served as the inaugural curator of Baruch College’s lecture series, “World Cultures, World Arts."
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