Robert Rauschenberg is known as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century and a forerunner of every significant artistic movement since Abstract Expressionism. By working in a wide range of subjects, styles, and materials, his oeuvre explores the relationships between painting and sculpture, the artist’s hand and the mechanically reproduced image, and the handmade and the readymade. His work explores themes including collaboration, technology, activism, and asks viewers to expand their beliefs about what a work of art can be.
Rauschenberg was born on October 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, an oil refinery town near the Louisiana border. Between 1944 and 1946, Rauschenberg served in the U.S. Navy, primarily as a neuropsychiatric technician in San Diego treating traumatized soldiers. During this time, he visited the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and upon viewing works such as Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy (1770), Rauschenberg realized for the first time that he too could become an artist.
After being honorably discharged from the Navy, Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris on the G.I. Bill. It was not until he arrived at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina in 1948, however, that he began to mature as an artist. While studying under Bauhaus painter Josef Albers, Rauschenberg met fellow creatives such as choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage, who would become essential friends and collaborators, with Rauschenberg frequently contributing set and costume designs for Cunningham’s performances over the years. Rauschenberg’s monochrome White Paintings (1951), likewise, were cited by Cage as influencing his famed 4'33"(1952). He would continue working with other choreographers such as Trisha Brown on costume and set design throughout his career.
In 1953, Rauschenberg began his series of Red Paintings (1953–54), which were executed with red paint on top of a ground of newspaper and patterned fabrics attached to the canvas. These paintings evolved into what are perhaps his best-known works: the Combines (1954–64). The Combines directly challenged the seemingly established line between painting and sculpture by incorporating found objects such as street signs, a quilt, and a stuffed goat onto the canvas. Rauschenberg further blurred the boundaries between mediums in 1962, when he started to silkscreen mostly found images along with a few of his own photographs onto the canvas. Although critics were initially skeptical of these advances, Rauschenberg quickly solidified his position in art history with his first retrospective exhibition at the Jewish Museum in 1963 and through receipt of the International Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1964.
By the end of the decade, Rauschenberg was ready for a change, and in 1970 he established a permanent residence and studio in Captiva, Florida—an island in the Gulf of Mexico. The difference of scenery made an indelible impression on his work as he moved away from urban imagery towards an exploration of materials, including the discarded cardboard boxes used for the Cardboard (1971–72) series and the natural fabric used as supports in the Hoarfrost (1974–76) and Jammer (1975–76) series. These works likewise illustrate Rauschenberg’s longstanding interest in printmaking, and he continued to experiment with its processes and materials throughout his career in series such as the Urban Bourbons (1988–96) and Borealis (1988–92). This interest further manifested in longstanding relationships with Universal Limited Art Editions in West Islip, New York and Gemini G.E.L in Los Angeles, which inspired his own print studio, Untitled Press, Inc., in Captiva.
Travel and activism were two additional points of importance for Rauschenberg and often intersected. Rauschenberg was committed to expanding artists’ rights, including petitioning for an artist resale right across the country and lobbying for additional funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, among other causes. Likewise, a trip to India in 1975 inspired the fabrics used in the Jammer series and a trip to China in 1982 raised Rauschenberg’s awareness of the need to make art accessible to people around the world. This led to his ambitious project, the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) (1984–91), which aimed to expand communication and understanding among diverse cultures through art. Eleven countries, including the United States, were chosen to participate in the project, in which Rauschenberg would spend weeks traveling through each destination before making a body of work based on his experiences that would then be exhibited in that location.
Rauschenberg has been the subject of numerous significant solo exhibitions, including surveys at the Jewish Museum, New York (1963); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1964); National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington D.C. (1976); Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin (1980); Fundación Juan March, Madrid (1985); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (1995); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1997); Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara (2004); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2005–06). The latest retrospective traveled to Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016–18). His work can be found in the permanent collections of nearly every major museum, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kunsthaus, Zürich; and Tate Modern, London, among many others.
Robert Rauschenberg passed away in 2008 at the age of eighty-two in his studio in Captiva.
By Linda Yablonsky
Robert Rauschenberg counts among the few artists who truly were legends in their own time. Yet history has been kinder to him than the secondary market. If collectors are willing to pay a premium for his silkscreen and combine paintings, they attach greater value to the work of his peers Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly.
That is partly why Rauschenberg’s namesake foundation has released a number of unknown or under-exposed works for sale through a trio of high-level galleries: Gladstone and Mnuchin in New York, and Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg. Each is presenting a different body of work in a separate environment, producing a separate exhibition catalogue to go with it.
While such collaborations between competitors are not unheard of—in 2020, Pace, Gagosian and Acquavella jointly represented the Donald B. Marron Family Collection in a private sale—they are rare, especially when the involve exhibitions. The question is: can this three-pronged strategy effect real change in the perception of an artist best known for his paintings, but whose restless experimentalism and fondness for scavenging junkyards took him well beyond painting. His appropriations of existing materials and collaborations with scientists and choreographers led to work in collage, performance, film, sound, set and costume design, and kinetic sculpture?
According to Allan Schwartzman, the adviser and private curator who masterminded the rollout, “Sometimes it takes a while for the art market to catch up with history.” Arguably, it’s Rauschenberg more than anyone who continues to influence succeeding generations of artists, some of whom get more attention in the market than their inspiration.
“I can’t think of an artist more prescient than Bob,” says Kathy Halbreich, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s director. As an example, she cites the current interest in appropriation, textiles, clay, performance, film, technology and the environment among artists of varying ages and sensibilities who pay a debt to Rauschenberg every time they go into their studios.
Dozens who flocked to Gladstone’s two spaces in Chelsea for last month’s opening of Robert Rauschenberg: Venetians and Early Egyptians, 1972-1974 were visibly moved by what they saw: seemingly fragile yet revelatory sculptures of rope, cardboard and timber, each containing a multitude of ideas. Most of these works had hardly been seen in public since their making, if at all. It didn’t seem possible that, at this late date, so much that was historic had gone unnoticed. “I spent a lot of time with these works in the warehouse,” Schwartzman says, “but seeing them in the gallery was a whole other experience.”
That sense of wonderment infused the atmosphere at the dinner that followed, where the reigning spirit of Rauschenberg’s inventiveness and openness to others had many beneficiaries around the room. Perhaps most striking was the absence of collectors among the 85 artists, curators and writers; not that they don’t deserve a place at the table, but the flow of conversation was notably relaxed, possibly because it grew from common ground.
Indeed, one could draw a direct line from Rauschenberg to such disparate talents in attendance as Rachel Harrison, Matthew Barney, Gedi Sibony, Richard Aldrich, Ugo Rondinone, Paul Chan and Precious Okoyomon, who was accompanied by her lap dog, Gravity. Also seated at the dinner was Rauschenberg’s son and only child Christopher, a photographer, whose mother is the printmaker and painter Susan Weil.
According to Halbreich, “artists don’t always like talking about what came before them, but that night they all did. LaToya Ruby Frazier came from Chicago just to see this work, which came out of a life, not a production”.
I was seated beside Eric N. Mack, a young textile artist who claims Rauschenberg as a spiritual mentor, especially after Mack was given the artist’s studio during his foundation residency in Captiva, Florida. “I did the best work of my life there,” he told me. Indeed, he recently signed with a prominent gallery in Chelsea.
Speaking to the commercial prospects of the Rauschenbergs currently on show—large wall-bound works at Mnuchin, the post-minimalist sculptures at Gladstone, and little-known appropriations on clay at Ropac made in over a decade’s worth of trips to Japan—Schwartzman admits: “It’s hard for a market to grab hold of an artist whose work doesn’t register as iconic. In Rauschenberg’s case, it’s the combines, but the diversity and nimbleness of his creativity is vast, and these exhibitions open the door to him in a fresh, clear, contemporary way that the market can connect to.”
Halbreich adds: “I believe in artists, and if artists are interested in another artist, people pay attention.”
• Robert Rauschenberg: Venetians and Early Egyptians,1972-1974, Gladstone Gallery, New York, until 18 June; Robert Rauschenberg: Exceptional Works, 1971-1999, Mnuchin Gallery, New York, until 11 June; Robert Rauschenberg: Japanese Clayworks, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, until 9 July
By Melanie Gerlis
Three major galleries are joining forces for a transatlantic showing of lesser-known late works by American heavyweight Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008). Thaddaeus Ropac, a longtime gallery partner of the artist’s foundation, will open a show in Salzburg (April 8-July 9) followed by New York’s Gladstone Gallery and Mnuchin Gallery at the beginning of May.
Each show will be of different bodies of work from the foundation, all of which have had limited exposure. Ropac has two related series of Clayworks, made on and from ceramic in the 1980s. Rauschenberg created these in Japan, which he first visited on tour with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1964. Gladstone Gallery has two bodies of sculptural works — The Venetians (1972-73) and Early Egyptians (1973-74) — while Mnuchin will show key works from 14 of Rauschenberg’s series made between 1971 and 1999.
Most works are for sale, confirms the foundation’s adviser, Allan Schwartzman, who says Rauschenberg is about much more than the Combines and silkscreen paintings for which he is best known. “He was extraordinarily inventive throughout his life, unbound by any style, medium, imagery or treatment of surfaces,” Schwartzman says. He believes Rauschenberg is “the most undervalued artist of the postwar period”.
Last year’s Macklowe auction makes the point: Rauschenberg’s “Crocus” silkscreen (1962) may have sold for an above-estimate $11mn, but this was considerably below prices made for artists such as Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.
By: Eileen Kinsella
Despite Robert Rauschenberg’s status as a towering figure in postwar American art, there is an undeniable gap between him and his peers. In both the public imagination and the marketplace, he has been overshadowed by figures like Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.
Now, the Rauschenberg Foundation, which the artist established before his death in 2008, is hoping to ignite the enthusiasm of art lovers and buyers alike. This spring, the foundation is collaborating with three galleries—Gladstone and Mnuchin in New York and Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg—for focused shows that will “make visible the stylistic diversity and conceptual continuity of this radically inventive artist,” the foundation said in a statement.
