Everything about Robert Rauschenberg totally explained
Robert Rauschenberg (born
Milton Ernst Rauschenberg;
October 22 1925 –
May 12 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from
Abstract Expressionism to
Pop Art.
Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both
painting and
sculpture, Rauschenberg has also worked with
photography,
printmaking,
papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg had a tendency to pick up the trash that interested him on the streets of New York City and bringing it back to his studio to use it in his works. He claimed he "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."
In 1953, Rauschenberg stunned the art world by erasing a drawing by
de Kooning. In 1964 Rauschenberg was the first American artist to win the Grand Prize at the
Venice Biennale (
Mark Tobey and
James Whistler had previously won the Painting Prize). Since then he's enjoyed a rare degree of institutional support. Rauschenberg lived and worked in
New York City and on
Captiva Island,
Florida until his death on
May 12,
2008, from heart failure. His father was of
German and
Cherokee ancestry and his mother of
Anglo-Saxon descent. His parents were
Fundamentalist Christians.
At Black Mountain his painting instructor was the renowned
Bauhaus figure
Josef Albers, whose strict discipline and sense of method inspired Rauschenberg, as he once said, to do "exactly the reverse" of what Albers taught him. From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied at the
Art Students League of New York, where he met
Knox Martin and
Cy Twombly. Rauschenberg and Susan Weil were married in the summer of 1950.
Composer
John Cage, whose music of chance occurrences and found sounds perfectly suited Rauschenberg's personality, was also a member of the Black Mountain faculty. The "white paintings" produced by Rauschenberg at Black Mountain in 1951 and exhibited at Eleanor Ward's
Stable Gallery in New York during October of 1953, while they contain no images at all, are said to be so exceptionally blank and reflective that their surfaces respond and change in sympathy with the ambient conditions in which they're shown,
"so you could almost tell how many people are in the room," as Rauschenberg once commented. The White Paintings are said to have directly influenced Cage in the composition of his completely "silent" piece titled
4'33" the following year.
Career
In 1952 Rauschenberg began his series of "Black Paintings" and "Red Paintings," in which large,
expressionistically brushed areas of color were combined with
collage and
found objects attached to the canvas. These so-called "Combine Paintings" ultimately came to include such heretofore un-painterly objects as a stuffed goat and the artist's own bed quilt, breaking down traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture, reportedly prompting one Abstract Expressionist painter to remark, "If this is Modern Art, then I quit!" Rauschenberg's Combines provided inspiration for a generation of artists seeking alternatives to traditional artistic media.
Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called "
Neo-Dada," a label he shared with the painter, close friend, and sometime lover
Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg's oft-repeated quote that he wanted to work "in the gap between art and life" suggested a questioning of the distinction between art objects and everyday objects, reminiscent of the issues raised by the notorious "Fountain" of
Dada pioneer
Marcel Duchamp. At the same time, Johns' paintings of numerals, flags, and the like, were reprising Duchamp's message of the role of the observer in creating art's meaning.
Alternatively, in 1961, Rauschenberg took a step in what could be considered the opposite direction by championing the role of
creator in creating art's meaning. Rauschenberg was invited to participate in an exhibition at the
Galerie Iris Clert, where artists were to create and display a portrait of the owner,
Iris Clert. Rauschenberg's submission consisted of a telegram sent to the gallery declaring "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so."
By 1962, Rauschenberg's paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well - photographs transferred to the canvas by means of the
silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that that implies. In this respect, his work is contemporaneous with that of
Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American
Pop Art.
In 1966,
Billy Klüver and Rauschenberg officially launched
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) a non-profit organization established to promote collaborations between artists and engineers.
In 1984, Rauschenberg announced his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, or ROCI, at the United Nations. This would culminate in a seven year, ten country tour to encourage "world peace and understanding," through Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Beijing, Lhasa (Tibet), Japan, Cuba, Soviet Union, Berlin, and Malaysia in which he left a piece of art, and was influenced by the cultures he visited. Paintings, often on reflective surfaces, as well as drawings, photographs, assemblages and other multimedia were produced, inspired by these surroundings, and this was considered some of his strongest works. The ROCI venture, supported by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., went on view in 1991.
In addition to painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg's long career has also included significant contributions to
printmaking and
Performance Art. He also won a
Grammy Award for his album design of
Talking Heads' album
Speaking in Tongues. As of 2003 he worked from his home and studio in
Captiva,
Florida.
Personal life
Rauschenberg married the painter
Susan Weil in 1950. The two met while attending the Academie Julian in Paris, and in 1948 both decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina to study under
Josef Albers. Their only child, Christopher, was born
July 16,
1951. They divorced in 1953.
(External Link
) According to a 1987 oral history by the composer
Morton Feldman, after the end of his marriage, Rauschenberg had romantic relationships with fellow artists
Cy Twombly and
Jasper Johns.
(External Link) An article by scholar
Jonathan D. Katz states that Rauschenberg's affair with Twombly began during his marriage to Susan Weil.
(External Link)
Rauschenberg died on
May 12 2008 of heart failure after his personal decision to go off life support , on
Captiva Island in Florida. Rauschenberg is survived by his partner of 25 years artist
Darryl Pottorf, his former assistant.
Rauschenberg is also survived by his son Christopher Rauschenberg and his sister Janet Begneaud.
Quotes
- "It is impossible to have progress without conscience."
- "I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out of the real world."
- "The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history."
- "You begin with the possibilities of the material."
- "An empty canvas is full only if you want it to be full."
- "I work in the gap between art and life."
- "You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist."
- "I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun."
- "People ask me, "Don't you ever run out of ideas?" In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I've an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity."
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