Profession: artist

The reclusive Johnson’s exceptionally long list of friends and acquaintances is closely tied to his work’s basis in correspondence and exchange. At Black Mountain, he was taught by Albers and Motherwell, and helped Fuller erect his geodesic dome. Cage and Cunningham became New York neighbours. He ate with Arman, watched Elaine de Kooning eat a hamburger with pliers, was involved with Maciunas’s gallery, collaborated with Brecht, found sympathetic friends in in Close and Warhol, and burned his work in Twombly’s fireplace. Acquaintances included di Prima, Malina, Cornell, Lichtenstein, Paik, Spoerri and Johns. Duchamp and Ono were among his many correspondents.

PaIk is widely recognised as the founding father of video art. Stockhausen was a colleague at an electronic music studio in Germany. Ono was an early friend — she said he taught her by being himself. He helped Maciunas and Vostell inaugurate Fluxus, and started a great friendship with Cage by cutting off his tie. Moorman (extensively) and Beuys were collaborators; other friends who featured in, contributed to or were dedicatees of his video works included Kaprow, Ginsberg, Cunningham, Gage, Breer, Beck and Malina. Viola as a young technician/artist first met him at an Italian video studio, and as a friend spoke at his funeral.

Moore cast an unignorable shadow over post-war sculpture. Epstein was an early and enthusiastic supporter and influential exemplar. Hepworth was a fellow-student (Moore hinted at more) and sculptural cross-fertiliser; she, Nicholson, Gabo, Mondrian, Nash and Read were all close neighbours and mutual supporters in 1930’s London. Following a visit to Picasso’s Paris studio (‘Guernica’ in progress), Moore sat in a bar between Breton and Giacometti, discussing art; he also met Arp, Éluard, Hélion (whose intelllect he valued), Lipchitz and Zadkine. Miró was a sensitive sympathetic friend, Caro the most significant of his many assistants.

Vantongerloo was associated with several mid-century groupings of abstractionists, and showed a strong sense of the utopian and the mathematical. Meeting van Doesburg, Mondrian and van der Leck, he collaborated with them on ‘de Stijl’ magazine. He was a co-founder, with Pevsner, Gabo and Kupka, of the group ‘Abstraction-Création’. Both Mondrian and Pevsner became close friends; Taeuber-Arp, Hélion, Gleizes and Torres-García were other Paris colleagues. Kelly befriended him in post-war Paris, while Bill, his lifelong friend, organised several exhibitions for him, and ensured the survival of his archive after his death.