Robert Rauschenberg

Short Stories

Waddington Galleries

2002   |  330 × 240mm   |  32pp

Leslie Waddington, who died in 2015, was the pre-eminent London art dealer of his generation, and, as his Daily Telegraph obituary put it, was 'instrumental in transforming the market for Modern and contemporary art both in Britain and internationally'. Working for Waddington Galleries around the turn of the millennium, I designed catalogues for both British artists – Ben Nicholson, Craigie Aitchison, Michael Craig-Martin – and also the key international figures that they showed: Antoni Tapies, Mimmo Paladino, John Chamberlain and, here, Robert Rauschenberg. Delegation must have been another of his skills: I never met him. At least not until many years later, when we were on holiday in Puglia, where Alastair MacAlpine – Waddington's onetime business partner – had ended up running an extraordinary bed and breakfast.