Merce Cunningham has a dance company and Robert Rauschenberg
is an artist costume designer. Both of these men should be professionals and as
long as they are clear on what each needs from each other to work together then
there should not be a problem The dance company needs costumes and the costume
designer should be able to design them to the dance companies specifications.
Otherwise, if the two cannot respect each other enough to work together then
they should not. I would be a good collaborator especially if I had a business
that pertained to a potential client then I would try to meet their
expectations to deliver what they need from my business. If Robert Rauschenberg
as an artist needed only to do his vision for his work then he would not be very
good at meeting what the client's vision is and how in this case it would
relate to the dance that Merce Cunningham Dance Company designed. It is not
personal it's business.
That is an interesting, very pragmatic take. I would suggest that the two artists collaborating is actually a very different thing from one of the artists being a client that must be satisfied. It is true that they are professionals and know how the business side of their fields must work, but this was more of an artistic decision to work together than a business decision of just hiring someone to make needed costumes. The difference is that one is not necessarily in charge of the other, with final say over the whole thing. They both have input and give and take to try to make something 'more than the sum of its parts.' I do agree that respect is a really important ingredient in any collaboration, or else it would be doomed to failure.
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