When I was a senior in high school, I had to do one final, huge project on a subject of my choice (I chose modern art, not realizing how broad a topic it was). I don’t think I got a very good grade on the project, mostly because I waited until the last minute to do the actual ‘project’ part. I blame this on Robert Rauschenberg. I got so interested in reading about him and the other artists of the 50s and 60s that I just couldn’t stop reading and start writing. So, I was sad to learn last night that Robert Rauschenberg passed away on Monday at the age of 82.
In case you don’t know much about Robert Rauschenberg, or just need to brush up on your old Art History class, he was an abstract painter and collage artist, most famous for his “combines.” Combines are combinations of paint, found objects, and sometimes chairs, quilts, plastic bottles, newspapers….you name it. According to the AP article, the famous ‘Bed’ painting was created on a quilt because he couldn’t afford a canvas (and toothpaste was one of the mediums used).
“I don’t ever want to go,” he told Harper’s Bazaar in 1997 when asked of his own death. “I don’t have a sense of great reality about the next world; my feet are too ugly to wear those golden slippers. But I’m working on my fear of it. And my fear is that something interesting will happen, and I’ll miss it.” -AP
I heard an interesting interview with Rauschenberg on NPR in which he discussed his process of making art. He said that he was often asked where he gets his ideas or if he ever worries about running out of ideas. He replied, “I don’t work with ideas. I work with materials.” This is something that really resonated with me after art school. I was so tired of these transitive conceptual classes that by the end I wasn’t even inspired to work with materials, to get my hands dirty. I am a big believer in the idea of concepts born of process versus process born of concepts. I think that’s why I loved RR so much.