A newly published book is bringing long-overdue recognition to the collaborative artistic partnership between Susan Weil and her former husband Robert Rauschenberg, focusing on their groundbreaking work with cyanotype blueprints during the early 1950s. The book, titled "The Blueprints of Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil, 1950," published by Stanley/Barker, showcases a series of ethereal blue artworks that emerged from their creative collaboration and highlights Weil's significant but often overlooked contributions to this innovative artistic technique.

The story of their blueprint collaboration began in 1949 during a summer stay at Weil's family home on Outer Island, Connecticut. It was there that Weil introduced Rauschenberg to the practice of making cyanotypes, a photographic printing process that involves exposing blueprint paper to light while using figures and objects to create silhouettes and impressions. This technique had been passed down through Weil's family, as she had learned it as a child from her grandmother, who had experimented with self-portraits using blueprint paper from her architect father's office. Weil and her brother had spent childhood summers on the island creating blue monochrome images of flowers, shells, and other found objects.

When the young married artists spent the summer of 1949 on the island, Rauschenberg became equally fascinated by what Weil describes as the "magical process." The couple initially met while attending the Académie Julian in Paris in the late 1940s, where both were passionate about painting. "We were both obsessed with painting – we were really zany painters. We wanted – needed – to paint every minute, all the time," Weil recalls in an interview featured in the book. Despite the passage of decades, Weil vividly remembers their first experiments with blueprint techniques on Outer Island.

"It was something we did for the pleasure of it and the beauty of it," Weil explains. "It was the summer break from art school and Bob stayed with my family on their small island. We painted a lot and I talked about my childhood blueprint fun." After acquiring a roll of blueprint paper from an architectural supplies shop, they began creating compositions featuring Weil's three-year-old brother, who was the perfect size to fit comfortably on the paper. They surrounded him with seaweed and beach debris they collected from the shoreline. "We felt like we were exploring something together," Weil says.

When the couple returned to New York, they continued developing their blueprint technique on an even larger scale. They worked in the garden of their small apartment or inside their shared kitchen and bathroom, using an ultraviolet bulb to develop their distinctive pure blue images. For Weil, the appeal of the blueprint method lay partly in its potential for large-scale artworks – the bigger the paper, the larger the images could be. With sufficiently large paper, they could create full-size images using adults as models.

"I really wanted to be very active in my work – and the scale has something to do with that," Weil explained. "For all women who were abstract artists, you were investigating your complicated thoughts about being an individual and everything. It wasn't so simple or direct as being a statement – I want my place in the world – but it was about trying to be at one with your own work and take it seriously and have a sense of force."

The context of their work is crucial to understanding its significance. The abstract art movement in 1950s New York was dominated by male artists, creating what was essentially a "boys club" built around the archetypal myth of the avant-garde male artist. This gender bias is perfectly illustrated by an anecdote about American modernist painter Hans Hofmann, who once reportedly told his student Lee Krasner, "This painting is so good, you'd never know it was done by a woman." In the same conversation, Hofmann acknowledged Krasner's huge influence on the work of her husband, Jackson Pollock. This story encapsulates the systematic erasure and negation of women from the abstract art world throughout the 20th century.

Despite her significant contributions, Weil has not received the same critical recognition as many of her male contemporaries, even though her works are included in prestigious collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. At the time of her marriage to Rauschenberg, Weil was actively involved with the New York Professional Women Artists, a protest and activism group fighting for gender equality in the art world.

"I took my work very seriously, and then when people were rough on women, I resented it," she explains. "I was certainly a big part of the women's movement when it happened; involved in several groups, and so on – It feels awful. To be not considered because you're a woman: it's a very sick thing. It really is. It's the idea that women are supposed to stay home and take care of the children and the cooking, and that's what you're supposed to do – Most people felt that men were the more important makers of the art, and so they chose to focus on the men."

Rauschenberg's artistic partnership with Weil had a profound and lasting impact on his career. He continued to use the blueprint technique long after their separation and even introduced the method to fellow artist Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg, who died in 2008, went on to become one of America's most prominent artists, with his explorations into abstract expressionism credited with anticipating the pop art movement. Meanwhile, Weil, now 95, continues her prolific though less recognized career as an artist, with a lifelong commitment to art that encompasses painting, photography, and experimental pieces in a continual effort to expand painting beyond the traditional two dimensions of the canvas.

However, Weil expresses frustration about how their collaborative work has been historically interpreted and credited. "As I said, the blueprints come from my family, from me, and I resent it when that's ignored. I do," says Weil. "I didn't mind working with Bob, because it was just something that we were doing for the beauty of it, the surprise of it, but I mind how people look at it afterwards. I resent it when it's 'Bob's Blueprints.' They don't hardly include me, when it all came from me. So that strikes me very badly."

This new publication represents an important step toward correcting the historical record and giving proper recognition to Weil's foundational role in developing these innovative artworks. The book not only celebrates the aesthetic beauty of their collaborative blueprint series but also serves as a reminder of the need to acknowledge women's contributions to art history that have been overlooked or diminished over time. "The Blueprints of Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Weil, 1950" is now available from Stanley/Barker publishers.