One of my favorite artists died last night. The New York Times has posted an obituary for Robert Rauschenberg.
With White Painting, 1951.
Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made . . . A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric.
—Robert Rauschenberg, 1959.
Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp), 1960.
Untitled, 1955.
Untitled, 1952.
7 Comments
we have his retroactive 1 print framed in our guest room.
It was so sad to hear about this.
Oh no! I hadn’t heard this.
He was one of my very favorites. So sad.
His death has saddened me. If you want to read about him, dancer Carolyn Brown, who met him back when he was a struggling artist, talks a lot about him and his collaboratin with Merce Cunningham in her fabulous book ‘Chance and Circumstance’
I was really sad to hear about this. I studied a lot of his in college and was really influenced by him.
A real loss. He had such a talent.
I’m late to hear this but still very sad. I was always happy to see his work maybe because he just went for it. This is a lovely (and true) RR quote (from that NYT obit):
“Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”