When he moved to New York two years later, Rauschenberg received an equally chilly reception from the hard-drinking abstract expressionists who hung out at the Cedar Tavern in the East Village.
"The idea here is to cut off from the life that you have in big cities, or even small cities: cars, traffic, lots of information, lots of advertising, mobile phones," he said in the village's reception area, where we sat drinking coffee.
The one man not drinking at his own midweek reception was Martin.
At bars, at parties, at receptions and family gatherings, more and more people are drinking wine the way they used to drink spirits and beer, as a social gesture.
"She said she would not go to the reception, but she did, sitting in a wheelchair, drinking a glass of Champagne, her sister's favorite".
He was as unsocialised as a wild beast, and at one fancy reception distractedly began to eat his glass after drinking its contents.
So rather than cancel a camping weekend in Wales, I went ahead - climbing Snowdon on three hours' sleep and drinking enough whisky to support a state reception.
Speeding down the motorway with the curtains closed we carry on drinking and cracking jokes, buzzing from the reception at Sankeys and exchanging stories about what we'd seen during the night.
He stayed for almost three years and seems to have talked to virtually everyone princes and commoners, businessmen and bloggers spending hours drinking tiny cups of coffee in cushion-lined reception rooms.
According to other sources who were at Kim Kardashian's wedding, Lindsay Lohan was schwasted during the reception of the big event, ordering "shots from the bar" and drinking heavily all into the night.
