MoMa
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends
“My whole area of art has always been
addressed to working with other people. Ideas are not real estate.”
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, exhibition at MoMa, until September 17, is the first 21st-century retrospective
of the artist, and presents over 250 works across mediums from his six-decade
career. Collaboration was always critical to Rauschenberg, and his
inclusiveness did not stop at the point of making; it often involved the
viewer. To highlight the importance of exchange for Rauschenberg, this
exhibition is structured as an “open monograph”—as other artists came into
Rauschenberg’s creative life, their work comes into these galleries, mapping
the play of ideas.
Robert Rauschenberg – Grand Black Tie Sperm Glut
– 1987
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends
Jasper Johns – Flag - 1954-55
Robert Rauschenberg – Short Circuit
– 1955
Created
for the Stable Gallery’s Annual Group
Show, Rauschenberg invited four artist to participate, though as his
friends were not accepted, he invited each one to provide a work to be
incorporated in Short Circuit, only Susan Weil and Jasper Johns submitted works, which he placed within shallow
cabinets with the word “open” written on the door, prompts discovery of what is
inside.
Robert Rauschenberg – White Painting –
1951
repainted,
likely by Brice Marden – 1968
7
panels
Rauschenberg
used a roller to apply house paint, producing a surface without brushstrokes; Cy Twombly worked on them as well, and
he said that they were to be repainted if they became marred. Later on Rauschenberg had the White Paintings were remade by others;
this one was remade by artist Brice
Marden, who worked as his assistant in the 1960s.
Robert Rauschenberg – Rebus
– 1955
drawing
by Cy Twombly
Rauschenberg
gathered many of the materials featured in rebus from and near his studio on Fulton Street, Lower Manhattan, later
describing the work as
“A concentration of that particular week in that particular
neighborhood.”
The
painting includes drawings by his friend Cy
Twombly, who often worked in his studio. Believing that titles “should
function as another element in the work,” Rauschenberg named Rebus after a game in which words and
pictures can be used interchangeably.
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends
Andy Warhol – Campbell’s Soup Cans
– 1962
32
canvases
Robert Rauschenberg – Mud Muse
– 1968-71
with
engineers
Carl Adams – George Carr – Lewis Ellmore - Frank LaHaye
Jim Wilkinson
The
basin of Mud Muse is filled with 8,000
pounds of mud made of bentonite, used while drilling oil or natural gas
wells. Sound-activated pneumatic tubes
installed in its base pump air through the mud in response to a tape recording
of the sounds of the burbling clay itself.
The resulting work seems simultaneously primordial – evoking ancient tar
pits – and futuristic.
“Painting relates to both art and
life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)”
Robert Rauschenberg - 1959
When Rauschenberg launched his career in the
early 1950s, the heroic gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism was in its heyday. He challenged this
tradition with an egalitarian approach to materials, bringing the stuff of the
everyday world into his art. Often working in collaboration with artists,
dancers, musicians, and writers, he invented new interdisciplinary modes of
artistic practice that helped set the course for art of the present day. The
ethos that permeates Rauschenberg’s work—openness to the world, commitment to
dialogue and collaboration, and global curiosity—also makes him a touchstone
for our time.
Robert Rauschenberg – Monogram – 1955-59
Robert Rauschenberg – ACE – 1962
five panels
Playing with
the conventions of painting, Rauschenberg
signed this work in two parts and on opposite ends, with a printed R on the bottom. Far left and the rest
of his name “auschenberg” stenciled
in pencil on the far right. “Ace” was Rauschenberg’s nickname for
the dancer and choreographer Steve
Paxton.
Robert Rauschenberg – Black Market – 1961
At the Art in Motion exhibition in Amsterdam, Rauschenberg placed a
suitcase attached to the painting on the floor below it with an assortment of
objects inside. Viewers were invited to
take an item and replace it with one of their own, and to make a drawing of
their contribution on one of the clipboards attached to the canvas. When he found out that visitors were simply
stealing the objects, he withdrew the invitation.
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends
Roy Lichtenstein – Drowning Girl
- 1963
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends
Marcel Duchamp - Bottle Rack
- 1960
(third
version, after lost 1914 original)
Rauschenberg purchased
this work for three dollars after he saw it in an exhibition called Art and the Found Object, in which his
own work was displayed. He asked Duchamp
to sign it with the inscription that reads “Impossible de me rappeler la phase originale
/ M.D. Marcel Duchamp /1960. Proudly displaying Bottle Rack in his studio among treasured works by other artists,
he latter recalled, “It became one of the most important works in my
collection.”
Robert Rauschenberg – Urban Katydid (Glut) – 1968
detail