Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg is an innovative artist, one of the most influential American masters of the second half of the 20th century, who gave impetus to the development of Pop art and Conceptual art. Throughout his long career, he experimented with almost all available forms of art, acting as an engraver, designer, sculptor, photographer and even avant-garde musician.

In 1953, Rauschenberg erased the drawing of Willem de Kooning, leaving only faint pencil marks on the surface, and exposed it under the name “Erased drawing of de Kooning”. His second demonstrative act was that he sent a telegram to the exhibition for which it was necessary to paint a portrait of gallery owner Iris Klert; he wrote, “This is a portrait of Iris Klert, if I say that”. Such actions were unusual for the society of that time and became a symbol of the transition from abstract to conceptual vision raising the question of the nature and meaning of art.

The name of the artist is inextricably linked with such famous personalities as Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol and John Cage. But the closest cooperation and personal relations were between the artist and Jasper Johns. Together they stood at the origins of Pop art, making everyday items objects of art and mastering new graphic techniques that allow expressing the atmosphere of mass culture. Actively using the methods of the Dadaists, the artist worked with the so-called “found objects” – ordinary household items that have nothing to do with painting. Robert Rauschenberg created a unique blend of multimedia art, which reflects the modern lifestyle, significant events and the whole history of mankind as if in a mirror.

Key ideas:

– Robert Rauschenberg was most worried about the role of the artist in creating a work of art. He was one of the first to think about the fact that classic pictures created with paints and brushes are only a reflection of the outside world as the artist sees it. He concluded that interacting with ready-made objects and images of popular characters is much more effective. It allows you to accurately express the artist’s idea, his unique vision.

– The early work of Robert Rauschenberg can be divided into several stages. In the beginning, he created the so-called “white paintings”, which were almost monochrome and conveyed the subtlest shades and transitions of tones. Fans of the artist’s work called them hypersensitive screens capturing the slightest changes in lighting and atmosphere, while skeptics called them “empty canvases”. The next series of works named “black paintings” consists of newspaper clippings glued to a hard surface and covered with dark varnish. The third stage was the creation of the “red painting” – canvases that included a larger number of objects, mainly nails and rusty pieces of metal connected to pieces of newspapers.

– During a trip to Europe with Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg developed a unique collage technique, which became known as “garbage art”. He loved to collect various interesting and useful items for his future work – such as empty cans of drinks, old magazines and posters, broken dishes, etc. Contemporaries of the artist claim that Rauschenberg was so keen on this “gathering” that his studio gradually turned into a real dump.

– Robert Rauschenberg believed that painting should combine life and art. Following these beliefs, he made his compositions in the form of a dialogue between the artist and the viewer, the world around and inner experiences, in which there were both banal things and references to art from different times. Preferring to leave the interpretation of his works to the audience, Rauschenberg placed the images and objects found in random order, implying the presence of several meanings for the same composition.