Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

Source: NY Times


May 14, 2008
Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82.

His death was confirmed by his gallery, PaceWildenstein in Manhattan.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.” ....more at link...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/arts/design/14rauschenberg.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

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My husband and I have known Bob for 30 years -- my husband has worked with him many, many times. This news is so sad.

What a shame he's died. He'll be missed.

From 1963, I believe:

and truly a Titan, she said, shuttering as she envisioned a world with nothing but works of Thomas Kinkaid.

Source: New York Times

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82.

He died of heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the artist's gallery in Manhattan.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/arts/design/14rauschenberg.html?hp

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This is a truly sad event. I never met the man, but he was a friend of friends, and I have personally benefitted from his generosity. He used his financial success to help out organizations which were promoting new and radical work. Not only was he a giant figure in the history of American art, he has also made so much other work possible. A great loss for me, my friends, and our culture.

I was just the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in LA a few days ago. Spent lots of time with my friend in front of his paintings, saying how much he influenced us and the world.

Source: yahoo news

TAMPA, Fla. - Artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him regard as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture and dance, has died, a his gallery representative said Tuesday. He was 82.

Rauschenberg died Monday, said Jennifer Joy, his representative at Pace Wildenstein.

Rauschenberg, who first gained fame in the 1950s, didn't mine popular culture wholesale as Andy Warhol (Campbell's Soup cans) and Roy Lichtenstein (comic books) did. But his "combines," incongruous combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint, shared pop's blurring of art and objects from modern life.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080513/ap_on_re_us/obit_rauschenberg;_ylt=AipEqP6x_xnFM.g1XzQSSPSs0NUE

for the art world.

I got to meet Mr. Rauschenberg back in the late 70s when my parents hosted an overflow party from the Newport Art Association. I was just a kid, but my mother knew that art-world luminaries like Rauschenberg, artist Roy Lichtenstein, and art dealer Irving Bloom would be attending, so she made my recently completed science project (a papier-mache Tyrannosaurus) the centerpiece in the living room. It was a hit (Irving Bloom signed our family's guest book "your future art dealer" and Rauschenberg quizzed me at length on my technique).

:)

through a friend of mine who worked closely with him in the Judson Dance Theatre days and beyond. My condolences to you and your husband.

An extraordinarily creative spirit.

Two out of those four gone already.

RIP guys.