Au Revoir, Rauschenberg
May 14th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Today’s papers delivered the sad news that artistic innovator Robert Rauschenberg died Monday night of heart failure at his home on Captiva Island, Florida. Rauschenberg was 82. The New York Times‘ take is here.
Rauschenberg was best known as a hybridizer of artistic forms, working at different points in modes as varied as choreography, set design, and musical composition. Even making his name as a visual artist in the 1950s, he often blurred the lines between painting and sculpture. Critics considered him a link between abstract expressionists and the pop artists that followed. His work, however, regularly obliterated such boundaries.
Rauschenberg was born in 1925 in Port Authur, an unlikely crucible of Texas talent that also spawned Janis Joplin (born 1943). Neighboring Beaumont produced painter John Alexander (born 1945), currently enjoying a career retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Rauschenberg briefly studied pharmacology at the University of Texas before being drafted into WWII. Stationed in San Diego, he saw his first paintings at a gallery there and began to consider becoming an artist. He subsequently went to Paris on the G.I. Bill and began an artistic journey encompassing stints at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, collaborations with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, travel with Cy Twombly, and loft-sharing with Jasper Johns.
Rauschenberg’ work is viewable in his home state. It can be seen most prominently at Houston’s Menil Collection, which houses many early Rauschenberg works, and where the artist’s drawings are on display as part of the Menil’s “How Artists Draw: Toward the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center, a show coming to the end of its run May 18, so hurry. The Dallas Museum of Art owns more than 50 Rauschenberg works, and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts also owns major works by the artist.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Somewhere, C-SPAN has a video of the hilarious roast of Robert Rauschenberg hosted by the Port Arthur Chamber of Commerce to honor its native son.