Home > Robert Rauschenberg

Born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on October 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, before enrolling in 1948 at the legendary Black Mountain College in North Carolina. There his painting instructor was the renowned Bauhaus figure Josef Albers, whose rigid discipline and sense of method inspired Rauschenberg, as he once said, to do "exactly the reverse" of what Albers taught him.

More often, Rauschenberg's early works reflected the aesthetic of his friend, composer John Cage, another member of the Black Mountain faculty, whose music of chance occurrences and found sounds perfectly suited Rauschenberg's personality. The "white paintings' produced by Rauschenberg at Black Mountain in 1951, while they contain no image 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 are 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.

In 1952 Rauschenberg began his series of "Black Paintings" and "Red Paintings," in which large, expressionisticallyExpressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for emotional effect. Expressionism is exhibited in many art forms, including painting, literature, film, and architecture. Additionally, the term often implies emotional angst the number of ch brushed areas of color were combined with collageCollage is the assemblage of different forms creating a new whole. For example, an artistic collage work may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, photographs, etc. glued to a solid support or canvas. Decoupage is a ty and found objects attached to the canvas. These so-called "Combine Paintings" ultimately came to include such theretofore un-painterly objects as a stuffed goat and the artist's own bed, breaking down traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture, and 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. See AssemblageAn assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artefacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context. Where similar assemblages are found to be consistently present within a limited time period and area, they, Arte Povera .

Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called "Neo-Dada," a label he shared with the painter Jasper JohnsJasper Johns, Jr. born May 15, 1930 in Augusta, Georgia) is an American artist. He is best known for his painting Flag ( 1954). His work is often described as a Neo-Dadaist', as opposed to Pop Art, even though his subject matter often includes images and, with whom he had a long artistic and personal relationship. 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 DuchampMarcel Duchamp ( July 28, 1887 October 2, 1968) was a French/American artist. Armory Show viewing Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 Born Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie Region of France, he came from. 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.

By 1962Events January January 1 Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand January 3 Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro January 4 New York City introduces a train that operates without a crew on-board January 8 Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is e, 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 exactly contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art.

In addition to painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg's long career has also included significant contributions to printmaking and Performance Art. As of 2003 he continues to work from his home and studio in Captiva, Florida.