Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs: 1949-1962

Description

Robert Rauschenberg's engagement with photography began in the late 1940s under the tutelage of Hazel Larsen Archer at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. This exposure (or experience) was so great that for a time Rauschenberg was unsure whether to pursue painting or photography as a career. Instead, he chose both, and found ways to fold photography into his Combines, maintained a practice of photographing friends and family, documented the evolution of artworks and occasionally dramatized them by inserting himself into the picture frame. As Walter Hopps wrote, "The use of photography has long been an essential device for Rauschenberg's melding of imagery... [and] a vital means for Rauschenberg's aesthetic investigations of how humans perceive, select and combine visual information. Without photography, much of Rauschenberg's oeuvre would scarcely exist." The artist himself affirmed, "I've never stopped being a photographer." This volume gathers and surveys for the first time Rauschenberg's numerous uses of photography. This publication includes portraits of friends such as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, studio shots, photographs used in the Combines and Silkscreen paintings, photographs of lost artworks and works in process. This allows us to re-imagine almost the entirety of the artist's output in light of his always inventive uses of photography, while also supplying previously unseen glimpses into his social milieu of the 1950s and early 60s.
Painter, sculptor, printmaker and photographer Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) provided a crucial bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. After studying at Black Mountain College under Josef Albers, Rauschenberg moved to New York where he formed close allegiances with Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, began his groundbreaking Combines, collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and co-launched the non-profit Experiments in Art and Technology. Considered one of the most innovative artists of his era, he died in 2008. (20110921)

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Robert Rauschenberg: Combines

Description

Poetic and lush, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This approach, first explored by Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, proved prescient and has become increasingly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most ground-breaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials and the complexity of forms that are characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and iconographical, subject-driven early Pop art. This book focuses on the works created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the artist's 50-year career, and constitutes the most complete survey of the Combines ever presented, as well as the most rigorous analysis of their political, social, autobiographical and aesthetic significance. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel titled "Reading Rauschenberg" offers an iconographic analysis of the earlier Combines, based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Other texts help to contextualize the Combines, such as Thomas Crow's essay that calls them the major artistic statement of their time, and the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own from de Kooning to Pop art.

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Rauschenberg: Art and Life

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A revised edition of a retrospective on the Venice Biennale grand prize-winning artist incorporates the last ten years of his career including his retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1997, in a lavishly illustrated portrait that traces his early years, the creation of his famous combines, his work with new technologies, and the establishm

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Robert Rauschenberg (MoMA Artist Series)

Description

Robert Rauschenberg made a tremendous impact on Modern art in the twentieth century. As a pioneer of Pop art, he was a key figure in the postwar tradition that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. This new volume in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favorite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guides readers through a dozen of the artist's most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of Modern art and the artist's own life. This volume provides a unique overview of someone who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and is an excellent resource for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the Modern canon.

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Robert Rauschenberg

Description

An essential volume on the work of Robert Rauschenberg, this relevatory selection of rarely seen masterworks is curated in collaboration with the artist s estate and includes an extensive chronology. In a career of nearly sixty years, Robert Rauschenberg changed the course of art history, art making, and viewers' experience of art. An artist of protean creativity, he transformed the mediums of sculpture, painting, prints, and photography. He elevated seemingly casual, everyday images and embraced discarded and found materials, reintroducing content to art after decades when abstraction held sway. This book covers the full span of the artist's career, from 1950 to 2007, focusing on key works from the collection of the artist's estate, including many that have not been shown since they were first made and exhibited more than thirty years ago, as well as masterpieces that have recently been seen in museum exhibitions. Texts by James Lawrence and John Richardson are accompanied by more than sixty colour plates and over fifty black-and-white historical photographs. Also featured is an extensive chronology by Susan Davidson detailing the artist's life and career that will become a fundamental reference for students of Rauschenberg's influential oeuvre.

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Robert Rauschenberg (October Files)

Description

From the moment art historian Leo Steinberg championed his work in opposition to Clement Greenberg?s rigid formalism, Robert Rauschenberg has played a pivotal role in the development and understanding of postmodern art. Challenging nearly all the prevailing assumptions about the visual arts of his time, he pioneered the postwar revival of collage, photography, silkscreen, technology, and performance.This book focuses on Rauschenberg?s work during the critical period of the 1950s and 1960s. It opens with a newly prefaced version of Leo Steinberg?s "Reflections on the State of Criticism," the first published version of his famous 1972 essay, "Other Criteria," which remains the single most important text on Rauschenberg. Rosalind Krauss?s "Rauschenberg and the Materialized Image" builds on Steinberg?s essay, arguing that Rauschenberg?s work represents a decisive shift in contemporary art. Douglas Crimp?s "On the Museum?s Ruins" examines Rauschenberg?s silkscreens in the context of the modern museum. Helen Molesworth?s "Before Bed" uses psychoanalytic and economic structures to examine the artist?s Black Paintings of the early 1950s. A second essay by Krauss, "Perpetual Inventory," revisits both her and Steinberg?s articles of nearly twenty-five years earlier. Finally, Branden Joseph?s "A Duplication Containing Duplications" views Rauschenberg?s silkscreens in relation to the artist?s interests in technology, particularly television.

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