Rauschenberg was an American artist, born in Texas in 1925. He was both a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was mostly known for assembling found objects without any apparent order or meaning. His famous Combines, combined painting and found objects, declared his authority as artist to determine what was art, while his lack of commentary on his own work empowered viewers to decide their own interpretation. As a side note, I really see my love for found object art in my own style and media and I gladly put Rauschenberg to blame. He is said to belong to the pop art movement.
Following his parents' wishes, he attended the University of Texas in Austin to study pharmacology, but was expelled freshman year after refusing to dissect a frog. The draft letter that arrived in 1943 saved him from breaking the news to his parents. Refusing to kill on the battlefield, he was posted to a hospital caring for combat survivors in San Diego. While on leave, he saw oil paintings in person for the first time at the East Huntington Library. After the war ended, Rauschenberg drifted, eventually using the G.I. Bill to pay for art classes at Kansas State University in 1947, and a year later, at the Academie Julian in Paris. In the late 1940's he attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina much like many other artists we have gone over in class. All I can say is thank goodness for all those bizarre events or we wouldn't have had him as an artist.
One thing I always found interesting was the fact that he was actually married to another artist named Susan and they even had a son together but then after they divorced, Rauschenberg met the young painter Jasper Johns in 1954 and after several months of friendship, the two became romantic and artistic partners. In 1955, Rauschenberg moved into the same building as Johns, and the two artist saw each other every day, exchanging ideas and encouraging their mutual exploration of the boundaries of art. Though their styles were too different to form a new movement, the intensity of their artistic partnership has been compared to the partnership between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. As Rauschenberg said, he and Johns gave each other "permission to do what we wanted." The pair also grew close to minimalist composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, who had attended Black Mountain College with Rauschenberg. The four artists shared a similar philosophy, rejecting the coded psychology of Abstract Expressionist paintings and embracing the unplanned beauty in everyday life. Rauschenberg's close relationship with Johns did not last, however. Johns was featured on the cover of Art News in 1957 and three of his works were bought by The Modern Museum of Art. This explosion of fame caused tension between Johns and Rauschenberg, and the they ended their relationship in 1958. Regardless, Rauschenberg remained friend and collaborator to Cage and Cunningham.
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