Robert Rauschenberg
Born – Port Arthur, USA 1925
Robert (born Milton) Rausenberg’s art has more to do with leaping the boundaries of art in the spirit of Dada than it has to do with the Abstract Expressionist movement in America with which he is associated. More significant than his attendance at the Art Institute in Kansas City from 1946-1947, and at the Academic Julian in Paris in 1948, were the periods spent studying under the “hard edge” abstract painter Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. His contact here with the experimental composer John Cage proved influential; Rauschenberg collaborated on “Happenings” and sought to expand the possibilities of his visual art beyond traditional painting or assemblage. The all-white and the all-black series of paintings that were included in his first exhibitions at the beginning of the 1950s were the minimal antithesis of work that was shortly to follow. All manner of ephemera were combined with three-dimensional objects and painting to produce unsettling, controversial works, the significance of which was formulated largely by the spectator. In The Red Painting, for example, the dripping paint, sodden material and awkward juxtaposition of the various elements has a more resounding impact than the overriding colour.
Masterpieces:
- Canyon
- Bed
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About robert rauschenberg
Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg
Calvin Tomkins
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Rauschenberg: Art and Life
Mary Lynn Kotz
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Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces (Menil Collection)
Yve-Alain Bois
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