Gay History Month: Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist whose work provided the transition between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. The mediums he’s often associated with are painting, graphic art and conceptual art.
Rauschenberg was born in Texas in 1925. He attended art school in Kansas City and studied abroad in Paris before returning to the United States to study at Black Mountain College, an experimental institution of higher learning that became a hot bed of avant-garde artists at that time. Rauschenberg studied under the German artist Josef Albers.
Rauschenberg employed elements of Dada in his art work. Most noticeably, the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades” influenced Rauschenberg’s “combine” pieces, which put together unorthodox objects with everyday items to an innovative effect, often fusing these objects together in paintings. Rauschenberg’s combines anticipated the Pop Art movement.
In the field of painting, Rauschenberg’s contributions also include the monochromatic (single color) Black Paintings, White Paintings and Red Paintings. Examples of his graphic art include the cover of the Talking Heads’ 1983 album, Speaking in Tongues, for which he won a Grammy.
Rauschenberg’s conceptual art pieces include Portrait of Iris Clert, which consists of a telegram he sent to the Iris Clert Gallery declaring “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so,” and Erased de Kooning Drawing, which is a drawing by artist Willem de Kooning which Rauschenberg erased and presented in a gallery exhibition.
He continued to produce and exhibit art until 2008, when he died of heart failure at the age 0f 82.
