ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
A Quake in Paradise (Labyrinth), 1994 (installation view) Photo: David Dashiell Diver image courtesy of the Aaron Siskind Foundation
Robert Rauschenberg: A Brief History Robert Rauschenberg shocked New York’s art world when he exhibited Monogram at Leo Castelli gallery in 1959. A taxidermied goat, wearing a tire around its middle, stands astride a wood platform mounted on casters—one could easily imagine the base hanging on a wall. Rauschenberg claimed that he chose the title because the interlocking of the goat and the tire reminded him of a monogram—a characteristically lighthearted justification, which nevertheless hints at the artist’s interest in the relationship of the materials. “I don’t really trust ideas— especially good ones,” Rauschenberg once said. “Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.” 1 Monogram was part of a series of works that Rauschenberg dubbed “Combines,” executed between 1954 and 1964, which blended elements of painting and sculpture.2 Rauschenberg’s Combines also comingle media traditionally used in visual art (paint, canvas, stone) with quotidian objects (tires, sign letters, bottles)— material evidence of his conviction that “painting relates to both art and life.” 3 He believed that a cover: A Quake in Paradise (Labyrinth), 1994 (detail) Photo: Jason Reinhold Diver image courtesy of the Aaron Siskind Foundation
familiar object must remain recognizable when included in his work, “But somehow the context should be able to free it or open it up to thinking about it differently.” 4 A sense of openness to the world around him would remain central to Rauschenberg’s work over the course of his decades-long career, which encompassed a vast array of media, from assemblage, painting, and photomontage to performance and set- and costume-design.
1 Q uoted in John Gruen, “Robert Rauschenberg: An Audience of One,” ARTnews 76, no. 2 (February, 1977), 48. 2 W ith his Combines, Rauschenberg rethought abstract painting’s accustomed upright, vertical orientation and sculpture’s relationship to the horizontal plane that he once quipped, describing what defines a Combine, “it’s a freestanding picture.” [Robert Rauschenberg, interview with Richard Kostelanetz, “I never thought of it much as an ability” (1968).] For an in-depth discussion of Rauschenberg’s turn away from the vertical nature of traditional painting praxis, see Leo Steinberg’s discussion of “the flatbed picture plane” in his essay, “Other Criteria” (1972). 3 Robert Rauschenberg, untitled statement, in Dorothy C. Miller, ed., Sixteen Americans, with statements by artists and others (New York: MoMA, 1959). 4 Robert Raushenberg, interviewed by David Sylvester (1964) in Interviews with American Artists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 134.
He continuously sought to combine objects, images, and materials without a preconceived— or, as he put it, “predigested”—notion of the meaning of the work, inviting viewers to interpret the works for themselves. In The Lurid Attack of the Monsters from the Postal News, August 1875 (Kabal American Zephyr), 1981 – 82 —an imposing, saw-backed behemoth— Rauschenberg combined familiar gothic imagery, including owls and skeletons, with photographs of people wearing gas masks and copies of stock tables. The temporally disjointed references resist a single, straightforward narrative. Meanwhile, the shape of Rauschenberg’s A Quake in Paradise (Labyrinth), 1994, changes with each installation, the resulting juxtapositions prompting new associations. Its panels—laid out in groups of two, three, and four—combine silkscreens of
photographic imagery taken from contemporary life with images quoted from art history. As visitors wind their way through A Quake…’s labyrinthine geometries, they glimpse their own hazy reflection in some panels, while looking through others, offering fractured glimpses of a greater whole. Rauschenberg believed in the power of artistic practice to generate connections to our daily lives, as well as in its capacity to create bonds between seemingly disparate cultures and
5 D eborah Seckler, Oral history interview with Robert Rauschenberg, Dec. 21, 1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 6 R obert Rauschenberg, “Tobago Statement” (1984), quoted in Hiroko Ikegami,“ROCI East: Rauschenberg’s Encounters in China,” in East-West Interchanges in American Art: A Long and Tumultuous Relationship (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2011), 177.
Monogram, 1955–59 Combine: oil, paper, fabric, printed paper, printed reproductions, metal, wood, rubber shoe heel, and tennis ball on canvas with oil and rubber tire on Angora goat on wood platform mounted on four casters; 42 × 63¼ × 64½ inches Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Purchased in 1965 with contribution from Moderna Museets Vänner/The Friends of Moderna Museet
individual people. In his statement on the mission of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), he wrote, “I feel strong in my beliefs, based on my varied and widely traveled collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent and peaceful powers, and is the most nonelitist way to share exotic and common information, seducing us into creative mutual understandings for the benefit of all.” This conviction continues to inform the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s mission, particularly as embodied by its Captiva residency program. The residency, on Rauschenberg’s 20-acre estate and former studio on Captiva Island, Florida, was his home for 40 years until his death in 2008, and remains a vibrant site for multidisciplinary creativity. MASS MoCA’s current exhibition of work by Dawn DeDeaux and Lonnie Holley— Rauschenberg in front of the Fish House, Captiva, Florida, 1979. Photo: Terry Van Brunt
former artists-in-residence at Captiva—along with its installations of Rauschenberg’s own work, were realized in collaboration with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. MASS MoCA’s current exhibitions with the Rauschenberg Foundation build on convictions central to both organizations’ missions: the fluid interrelationship between the visual and performing arts, the importance of nurturing new works by both established and emerging artists, and the ability of the arts to foster progressive change in the world at large, one person at a time. — Alexandra Foradas Robert Rauschenberg On view beginning May 28, 2017 Major exhibition support is provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Barr Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.