Untitled (Double Silhouette)

This collage, a portrait of sorts, is grounded by two superimposed silhouettes belonging to Bill Wilson and May Wilson. Ray Johnson met Bill in 1956 and began corresponding with him and his mother, May, later that year. Bill would soon become Johnson’s foremost critic and collector, as well as the artist’s self-appointed archivist, eventually amassing the largest collection of Johnson’s works, including Untitled (Silhouette). Over the next thirty years, Johnson maintained close ties with Bill and with May, an artist herself. Here, their profiles appear fused and engulfed by Johnson’s cache of recurring motifs, including snakes, bunny heads, and the handwritten name of the poet Marianne Moore. Near the top of the image, Johnson also incorporated his own photographic likeness—upside down, repeated, and enclosed in perforated squares that suggest postage stamps. Though he engaged it obliquely, portraiture was a natural extension of Johnson’s interest in people and a means of weaving an interconnected web of intimate relationships.