Remembering Rauschenberg

NEW YORK—The contemporary art universe lost one its most brilliant, influential, and popular stars earlier this month when Bob Rauschenberg died of heart failure at the age of 82.

Rauschenberg made his name after he came to New York City in 1949, shortly before Abstract Expressionism’s all-or-nothing romanticism began to appear formulaic. Over the next few years, he tapped into the more intellectual, iconoclastic vein of artists like Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, creating groundbreaking art that both extended Abstract Expressionism and suggested a viable route away from it. This work — sometimes dubbed neo-Dada — depended on the then radical assumption that art’s traditional materials were no different from the ordinary ones available in the day-to-day world. In that these objects introduced not just new media but also new subject matter, Rauschenberg is justifiably regarded as the forerunner of Pop art.

Born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg to a dirt-poor fundamentalist Christian family in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, the world-renowned artist (who as an adult scrapped Milton in favor of his nickname, Bob, and later Robert) said he didn’t even see art until he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Significantly, though, he believed he could make it himself, and did so in a remarkably novel way. He brought few formal or technical preconceptions to his activity, talked about “collaborating with” his materials, and in his heyday famously worked to the accompaniment of radio, television, and the liquor bottle — often all at the same time.

Click on the photo gallery at left to read ARTINFO’s appreciation of one of the most important artists of our time.