Remembering Rauschenberg
post a comment | posted May 14
Robert Rauschenberg at his home studio in Captiva Florida, 2005.
Almost four years ago, I took a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. It was my first time there and I think I walked through every single exhibit. One piece in particular stood out for me. It was a collage, painting sort of thing that had a predominantly placed upside-down stop sign right in the middle. That piece of art stuck with me all these years and served as inspiration for a lot of my personal design experimentation. I later discovered that this work of art was actually "Estate 1963" and was the work of Robert Rauschenberg.
About a month ago, in my art history class, we started talking about Rauschenberg and my fascination with his work came flooding back to me. His sort of abstract, mixed media work virtually reshaped art in the 20th century. The New York Times says of Rauschenberg: "A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked."
Perhaps just as much as his work, this idea of what an artist is has had a great impact on my own personal work. No longer was an artist strictly a painter or only a sculptor. Mr. Rauschenberg worked in a variety of mediums blurring the lines making it hard to fit his work into one category. This is something I've longed to do, as I am continually switching mediums, from the computer to the camera to the brush to the pencil.
Over the years, Mr. Rauschenberg's work has time and again reshaped what we know as art. For instance, his piece "Canyon" features a stuffed eagle fixed to a canvas or "Bed' which had sheets and a pillow covered in paint reminiscent of blood then framed and hung on a wall. He never seemed afraid to experiment or try something new and different. In an interview in 2000, he said "I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop."
There is no doubt Robert Rauschenberg influenced many of today's most prominent artists and was instrumental in defining modern art. On a personal level, his art has inspired me to push towards new ideas and influenced a lot of my recent work. And with that, I'm saddened to learn Mr. Rauschenberg died of heart failure Monday night. He was 82.