Rauschenberg, Robert (1925– ). American painter, printmaker, designer, and experimental artist; with his friend Jasper Johns, whom he met in 1954, he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the move away from the Abstract Expressionism that had dominated American art in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, and became interested in art after a chance visit to a gallery while serving in the US Navy as a neuro-psychiatric technician, 1942–5. He said of his work in the navy: ‘This is where I learned how little difference there is between sanity and insanity and realized that a combination is essential.’ After leaving the navy he studied at Kansas City Art Institute, 1946–8, the Académie Julian, Paris, 1948, Black Mountain College, 1948–9, and the Art Students League of New York, 1949–52. Black Mountain College made the greatest impact on him and he returned several times in the early 1950s. The people he met there included the composer John Cage and the dancer Merce Cunningham (1919– ), both of whom influenced him greatly (he was designer for Cunningham's dance company from 1955 to 1965).

Rauschenberg had his first one-man show (coolly received) at the Betty Parsons gallery, New York, in 1951. At this period his work included minimalist monochromatic paintings. In the mid-1950s he began to incorporate three-dimensional objects into what he called ‘combine paintings'. The best-known example is probably Monogram (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1955–9), which features a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre around its middle, splashed with paint in a manner recalling Action Painting. Other objects he used included Coca-Cola bottles, fragments of clothing, electric fans, and radios, and because of his preoccupation with such consumer products he has been hailed as one of the pioneers of Pop art. In 1958 he was given a one-man show by Leo Castelli and from this time his career began to take off. By the early 1960s he was building up an international reputation, and in 1964 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. This caused great controversy, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano describing the award as ‘the total and general defeat of culture'.

In the 1960s Rauschenberg returned to working on a flat surface and was particularly active in the medium of screenprinting. He has been interested in combining art with new technological developments and in 1966 he helped to form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), an organization to help artists and engineers work together. ‘I am, I think, constantly involved in evoking other people's sensibilities. My work is about wanting to change your mind. Not for the art's sake, not for the sake of that individual piece, but for the sake of the mutual coexistence of the entire environment.’ In line with these beliefs, in 1985 he launched Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Exchange (ROCI), an exhibition dedicated to world peace that toured the world and included works created specifically for each place visited. Since 1971 Rauschenberg has lived mainly on Captiva Island off the coast of Florida.

Robert Rauschenberg

The American painter and printmaker Robert Rauschenberg (born 1925) experimented freely with avant-garde concepts and techniques. His wild inventiveness and frank eclecticism were tempered by his almost unerring sense of color and design.

Robert Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, of German and Cherokee lineage. He attended the local public schools before becoming a naval corpsman. He began his formal art education at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1946. The following year he went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian.

In 1948 Rauschenberg returned to America to study with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Albers stressed design as a discipline, and Rauschenberg felt he needed such training. He later admitted that Albers was the teacher most important to his development. About 1950 Rauschenberg began to paint his all-white, then all-black, paintings. From these ascetic exercises in total minimalism he turned to making giant, richly textured and colored collage-assemblages, which he called "combines."

In 1952 Rauschenberg traveled in Italy and North Africa. The following year he was living in New York City and developing his concept of the combine. His best-known and most audacious combines are the Bed (1955), an upright bed, complete with a patchwork quilt and pillow, that has been spattered with paint; and the amazing Monogram (1959), a collagelike painting-platform resting flat on the floor, in the center of which stands a stuffed, horned ram with a rubber tire around its middle. About his art Rauschenberg explained: "Painting relates to both art and life. I try to act in the gap between the two." In the 1950s he participated in "happenings," an improvisational type of theater.

In 1958 Rauschenberg had an exhibition in New York City that catapulted him to prominence, and his paintings soon entered the collections of every large museum in America and abroad. Not satisfied with cultivating his career as a painter, in 1963 he toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Theater as an active participant. In 1964 Rauschenberg received first prize at the Venice Biennale. In the late 1960s he concentrated on developing series of silk-screen prints and lithographs. Current (1970), a set of giant silk-screen prints, was politically inspired.

Rauschenberg remains active in the art world. Started in the late 1980s, he created the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Exchange. The exchange was created to broaden cultural ties. In each county he visited, he would create art and leave one piece behind. The others were added to the ever growing collection.

Rauschenberg remained active with his art throughout the 1990s as well. In 1994, the World Federation of United Nations Associations selected his painting to appear on a stamp. He continues to create unique pieces of art.

Further Reading

The most extensive monograph on Rauschenberg is Andrew Forge, Rauschenberg (1969), which offers a comprehensive collection of illustrations, 47 of them in color, biographical material, and a brief autobiography. An essay on Rauschenberg and background material are in Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art (1965). □

Robert Rauschenberg , 1925–2008, American painter, b. Port Arthur, Tex., as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College, and at New York's Art Students League. In the late 1950s he came under the influence of Marcel Duchamp . With his friend Jasper Johns , Rauschenberg became a pivotal figure in the emerging pop art movement, and together they were vital to initiating a new era of experimentation in American art. A constant innovator and improviser, Rauschenberg moved from style to style and medium to medium, blurring the lines between painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and even performance and dance.

Rauschenberg's enormously inventive paintings, some of which incorporate silkscreen, include everyday images and objects and are executed in a loose, spontaneous style. He also experimented extensively with assemblage. Gloria (1956; Cleveland Mus. of Art), Canyon (1959), Summer Rental III (1960; Whitney Mus., New York City), and the famous Monogram (1959; Moderna Museet, Stockholm), which incorporates a whole stuffed Angora goat encircled by an automobile tire, are characteristic of the three-dimensional collages , known as "combines," which he created from 1954 to 1964. Major works of the 1980s and 90s are mainly large constructions. Rauschenberg began using photographs in the 1950s, but photographic images are particularly prevalent in his later works, as in the massive "Scenarios" paintings of the early 2000s, which also make use of computers and digital printers. One of contemporary American art's most prolific and influential figures, he also collaborated with artists in other fields, such as composer John Cage and choreographers Merce Cunningham , Paul Taylor , and Trisha Brown .

Bibliography: See catalogs of his work ed. by L. Alloway (1976), W. Hopps et al. (1997), and P. Schimmel (2005); S. Hunter, ed., Robert Rauschenberg: Works, Writing, Interviews (2007); biography by M. L. Kotz (1994, rev. ed. 2004); studies by C. Tomkins (1980, repr. 2005), M. Ormond (1985), B. Rose (1987), L. Steinberg (2000), B. W. Joseph (2002 as ed., 2003), R. S. Mattison (2004), and B. W. Joseph (2007).

Rauschenberg, Robert (b Port Arthur, Tex., 22 Oct, 1925). American painter, printmaker, designer, and experimental artist. With his friend Jasper Johns, whom he met in 1954, he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the move away from the Abstract Expressionism that had dominated American art in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He studied at various art schools, most notably Black Mountain College. In the mid-1950s he began to incorporate three-dimensional objects into what he called ‘combine paintings’. The best-known example is probably Monogram (1955–9, Moderna Museet, Stockholm), which features a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre around its middle, splashed with paint in a manner recalling Action Painting. Other objects he used included Coca-Cola bottles, fragments of clothing, electric fans, and radios, and because of his preoccupation with such consumer products he has been hailed as one of the pioneers of Pop art. In 1958 he had a one-man show at Leo Castelli's gallery and from this time his career began to take off. By the early 1960s he was building up an international reputation, and in 1964 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. This caused great controversy, the Vatican newspaper L'osservatore romano describing the award as ‘the total and general defeat of culture’. In the 1960s Rauschenberg returned to working on a flat surface and was particularly active in the medium of screenprinting. He has been interested in combining art with new technological developments and in 1966 he helped to form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), an organization to help artists and engineers work together. In 1985 he launched Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (ROCI), an exhibition dedicated to world peace that toured the world and included works created specifically for each place visited.

Rauschenberg, Robert (1925– ). American painter, printmaker, designer, and experimental artist. With his friend Jasper Johns, whom he met in 1954, he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the move away from the Abstract Expressionism that had dominated American art in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He studied at various art schools, most notably Black Mountain College. In the mid-1950s he began to incorporate three-dimensional objects into what he called ‘combine paintings’. The best-known example is probably Monogram (1955–9, Moderna Museet, Stockholm), which features a stuffed goat with a rubber tyre around its middle, splashed with paint in a manner recalling Action Painting. Other objects he used included Coca-Cola bottles, fragments of clothing, electric fans, and radios, and because of his preoccupation with such consumer products he has been hailed as one of the pioneers of Pop art. In 1958 he had a one-man show at Leo Castelli's gallery and from this time his career began to take off. By the early 1960s he was building up an international reputation, and in 1964 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. This caused great controversy, the Vatican newspaper L'osservatore romano describing the award as ‘the total and general defeat of culture’. In the 1960s Rauschenberg returned to working on a flat surface and was particularly active in the medium of Screenprinting. He has been interested in combining art with new technological developments and in 1966 he helped to form EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), an organization to help artists and engineers work together. In 1985 he launched Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (ROCI), an exhibition dedicated to world peace that toured the world and included works created specifically for each place visited.

RAUSCHENBERG, ROBERT 1925-

Artist

Representative Artist

One of the most respected and representive artists of the 1960s, Robert Rauschenberg experimented with a variety of new styles during the decade. Like those of Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg's works bridge the transition from abstract expressionism to pop art and beyond. He was among a handful of contemporary artists to have work presented in a retrospective. At the Jewish Museum of New York in 1963 many of his "combine" paintings, which feature assorted materials such as photographs, newspapers, clocks, and stuffed animals, were displayed to an appreciative public. Similarly, an exhibition of his work at Whitechapel Gallery in London broke previous attendance records. The following year he won two mil-lion lire in the prestigious Venice Biennale. He was the first American to win the prize.

Pioneering New Styles

During the 1960s Rauschenberg also helped to design sets for experimental modern dances staged by Merce Cunningham to the equally experimental music of John Cage, and in the late 1960s he became identified as one of the artists involved in a new style called luminal art, which featured movement and light as integral aspects of the work. In 1968, when "environments" were all the rage in the art world, Rauschenberg was praised for his efforts, particularly one in which people walked through a thirty-six-foot-long room as the sounds they made triggered the projection of a series of images onto a wall.

Later Career

In the 1970s Rauschenberg became involved with performance art and other experimental styles, and he continued to influence many young artists.

Sources:

Mary Lynn Kotz, Rauschenberg, Art and Life (New York: Abrams, 1990);

Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980).

Rauschenberg, Robert (1925– ) US painter and graphic artist. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg was a pioneer of pop art in the 1950s. His works, such as Bed (1955) and Monogram (1959), combined the painting techniques of abstract expressionism with collages and assemblages of ‘junk’.

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org