Robert Rauschenberg neo-dada

Born: Texas, 1925Died: Florida, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg is considered to have opened the door for every artist since 1960 who has challenged the modernist view of painting and sculpture.

Rauschenberg's influences: Society and Art

American art of that era

Post-war affluence The 1950s in American saw a growth in the affluent society. Television, advertising, and the media in general, now reproduced images with a speed that brought visual information into the average person's routine as never before.

Economic prosperity meant an excess of consumer goods, and these helped to shape culture. In this new society, the seriousness of abstract expressionism looked increasingly out of place.

The 1950s in American saw a growth in the affluent society. Television, advertising, and the media in general, now reproduced images with a speed that brought visual information into the average person's routine as never before.

Economic prosperity meant an excess of consumer goods, and these helped to shape culture. In this new society, the seriousness of abstract expressionism looked increasingly out of place.

Rauschenberg's influences: Artists

New York painters

The Dadaists

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

Rauschenberg had been influenced by the New York painters, especially De Kooning,- not so much their theories, styles and techniques, more their rebellious spirit..

Another influence was the Dadaists of the 1920s, whose ridicule of the establishment and 'high-jinks' were amplified by their so-called anti-art.

Duchamp was another influence. When he saw 'Bicycle Wheel' (1913) in 1953, he thought it the most fantastic piece of sculpture he had ever seen.

Duchamp: Bicycle Wheel (1913)

Rauschenberg's influences: Cornell

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972)

Cassiopeia 1 (1960)

Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage.

Rauschenberg's influences: Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)

Something or other (1922)

Another influence was the assemblages of German artists Kurt Schwitters, although Rauschenberg says he didn't actually see his work until 1959..

Rauschenberg: Neo Dada Movement

Neo Dada

The bridge into Pop Art

Jasper Johns

Neo-Dada is the term sometime applied to the work of Rauschenberg and fellow American Jasper Johns (born in 1930). It is considered a transitional phase into Pop Art. It started in New York in the late 1950s when they began using collage and assemblage with found materials (often from the streets). Their agenda was anti-aesthetic.

The term Neo-Dada has some justification due to the presence in New York of the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, whose ideas were becoming increasingly influential. Rauschenberg is associated with neo-Dada, although he was too much of an individualist ever to be fully a part of any movement.

Rauschenberg acted as an important bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. He can be credited as one of the major influences in the return to favour of Representational Art in America.

Jasper Johns

The Critic Smiles (1969)

Numbers in color (1958-59)

Johns: Three flags (1968)

Jasper Johns once said “No American artist, invented more than Rauschenberg”

All white and Black Paintings

Works similar to Rauschenberg

Lucio Fontana (1899-1968)

Pananti (1960)

In the early 1950s, Rauschenberg painted a series of all-white paintings, using ordinary household paint applied with a roller – where the only image was the spectator's own shadow.

Later, a series of black paintings, in which he built up irregular surfaces on the canvas with torn and crumpled newspaper pasted down, coated with a layer of black enamel.

Similar examples had previously been done by Italian painter Lucio Fontana, who did a series of all-white canvases from the late 1940s.

Fontana can be considered one of the most important artists in the history of Italian art.

Works similar to Rauschenberg

Yves Klein (1928-1962)

Angel Blue (1961)

Yves Klein exhibited his first monochromes in 1950.

Robert Rauschenberg on "Erased de Kooning"

Click on the above link to view interview

This piece was one of Rauschenberg's most controversial.

It raised many fundamental questions about the nature of art.

The viewer was challenged to consider whether erasing another artist's work could be a creative act, as well as whether the work was only "art" because Rauschenberg was responsible.

Rauschenberg's work: Combines This is when non-traditional materials and objects are employed in innovative combinations.

Monogram (1955-59)

Later in the 1950s, Rauschenberg began moving towards Combine paintings. This is when non-traditional materials and objects are employed in innovative combinations.

A painted surface is combined with various objects, which are affixed to that surface. Sometimes the paintings develop into free-standing 3D objects such as the famous 'Stuffed Goat' which has been shown in many exhibitions of contemporary American art. This piece is a monogram, featuring a stuffed Angora Goat, mounted on a platform of paint and collage.

Rauschenberg: Bed (1955)

Bed was red paint dribbled over his own quilt, which he then stretched and exhibited.

It was controversial as critics interpreted it as a symbol of rape or violence..

Rauschenberg: First landing jump (1961)

First Landing Jump is one of the last combine paintings.

The whole work resembles a studio mock-up of an aircraft's landing gear, with a light from the undercarriage focussing on the extended wheel which rests on the ground.

Rauschenberg's work: Silk screens

Retroactive 1 (1964)

Creek (1964)

After the combines came his silk screen period, in which the image and its reproduction took an increasingly important place and co-existed with the painting.

Rauschenberg's Legacy Rauschenberg died of heart failure in 2008, aged 82. How should he be remembered?

Obscuring boundaries

Pushing art

Inspiration

He helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking etc.

He was instrumental in pushing American art onward from abstract expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged in the 1950s.

He inspired artists who came next – artists identified with Pop conceptualism, happenings, process art and other new kinds of art in which he played a significant role. After Rauschenberg it was accepted that a work of art could be made out of anything and could be shown anywhere for any duration and for any purpose.

Andy Warhol said Rauschenberg's use of objects in his combines made it possible for Warhol to do what he later did with soup cans, coke bottles, and in his multiple portraits of Marilyn Monroe...

Marilyn Monroe (1967)Coca-cola bottles (1962)

Warhol:

Roy Lichtenstein, who's use of comic strips in art followed Rauschenberg's by 10 years, acknowledged the latter's influence on him, and on pop art in general.

“The coke bottles he put into his art, the happenings and environments, all the things in which he was involved, brought up a raw, strictly American material .. merchandise as merchandise. Art became American rather than European. The Sixties, Seventies and Eighties were all influenced by that work”.