Editing Ray Johnson (section)

==Early years and education==

Born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 16, 1927,<ref name="artpool" /><ref name="1stdigital" /> Ray Johnson grew up in a working-class neighborhood and attended [[Cass Technical High School]] where he was enrolled in the advertising art program. He took weekly classes at the Detroit Art Institute and spent a summer drawing at [[Ox-Bow School]] in [[Saugatuck, Michigan]], affiliated with the [[Art Institute of Chicago]].

Johnson left Detroit after high school in the summer of 1945 to attend the progressive [[Black Mountain College]] (BMC) in North Carolina,<ref name="1stdigital" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Journal |date=2011-07-24 |title=Reading Ray 1 by Johanna Gosse |url=https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/volume2/vanderbeek/johanna-gosse-2/ |access-date=2024-04-25 |website=Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center |language=en}}</ref> where he stayed for the next three years (spending the spring 1946 semester at the [[Art Students League]] in New York but returning the following summer). [[Josef Albers]], before and after his notable sabbatical in Mexico, was in residence at Black Mountain College for six of the ten semesters that Johnson studied there. [[Anni Albers]], [[Walter Gropius]], [[Lyonel Feininger]], [[Robert Motherwell]], [[Ossip Zadkine]], [[Paul Rand]], [[Alvin Lustig]], [[Ilya Bolotowski]], [[Jacob Lawrence]], [[Beaumont Newhall]], [[M. C. Richards]], and [[Jean Varda]] also taught at BMC during Johnson's time there. Johnson decided on Albers' advice to stay at BMC for a final term in summer 1948, when the visiting faculty included [[John Cage]], [[Merce Cunningham]], [[Willem de Kooning]], [[Buckminster Fuller]], and [[Richard Lippold]].<ref name="artpool" /> Johnson took part in "The Ruse of Medusa" – the culmination of Cunningham's Satie Festival - with Cage, Cunningham, Fuller, Willem and [[Elaine de Kooning]], Lippold, [[Ruth Asawa]], Arthur Penn, and others among the cast and crew. "Because of those who participated, the event has taken on the reputation of a watershed event in 'mixed media{{'"}} wrote [[Martin Duberman]] in his history of BMC.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Duberman |first=Martin B. |url=http://archive.org/details/blackmountainexp0000dube_v2j9 |title=Black Mountain : an exploration in community |date=2009 |location=Evanston, Ill.  |publisher= Northwestern University Press |isbn=978-0-8101-2594-0}}</ref>

In the documentary ''[[How to Draw a Bunny]]'', [[Richard Lippold]] delicately but candidly confesses to carrying on a love affair with Johnson for many years which began at Black Mountain College.

<blockquote>I risk to say, [that at [[Black Mountain College]]] 'anything went'&mdash;between the students and the faculty ... As I said to my wife the other day, 'I think I'm a good old man now, but I was a very bad boy.' ... She agreed. We had a little house, my family and me, and he would arrive every morning with a little bouquet of wild flowers, and singing. Eventually our relationship became very intimate, so I brought him back to New York ... and obviously, we didn't live together, steadily, because I had my family. We were quite close together until 1974, so that's a long period of time. From '48 to '74, twenty some years. Because it was a very intimate relationship, a loving relationship. And it would be very hard for me to separate him as a person from his work. I don't think I could do that.<ref>{{cite AV media|last=Walter|first=John|title=How to Draw a Bunny|title-link=How to Draw a Bunny|year=2002|publisher=Palm Pictures|time=22–24 mins}}</ref></blockquote>