Rauschenberg: solutions for a small planet - Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York - Cover Story

A massive traveling retrospective highlights Robert Rauschenberg's achievements in a wide range of mediums and techniques. Here, the author unravels the mixed imagery that reflects the artist's personal history and political involvement.

Asked by dint of this journal to write about "Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective," which make opened at the Guggenheim Museum in of recent origin York last September, I approached the exhibition with trepidation. I was troubled: by what means was I going to deal with the later work? In 1990 I complet a doctoral thesis entitled "Random Order: `The First Fifteen Years of Robert Rauschenberg's Art, 1949-64" at fresh York University's Institute of Fine Arts; the same year saw the opening of "Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings, 1962-64" an exhibition I curated for the Whitney Museum of American Art. The focus of my investigation on Rauschenberg was on the artist's early production -- extending from the first existing paintings, [i]or[/i] part of to the other the Combines, to the Silkscreens -- the work that has traditionally been viewed as the greatest in quantity historically significant and influential of his career. For the ends of my research, the year 1964 neared a natural breaking point. As has frequently been recounted, when Rauschenberg won the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in the summer of 1964 he telephon a friend in of recent origin York and asked him to overturn the screens that had been used to make the Silkscreen Paintings, thereby ensuring that he would not repeat himself on the other hand would move on to something novel During the remainder of the 1960 he devot himself to printmaking, art performances and technology-based art.

I meditation that when Rauschenberg returned to more conventional forms of art-making (i.e., painting and sculpture) in the 1970 plenteous of the work was too heavily indebted to the early Combines and Silkscreens. Although more [i]or[/i] less of the new series struck me as fascinating and beautiful, for the greatest in quantity part I found the later work lacked the deep brilliance, sensuality and breakthrough quality of what had draw near before. The newer work strike one as beinged repetitive, uneven and flawed. I meditation Rauschenberg too prolific and aweed if his legendary drinking was affecting his ability to show works of quality. I felt justified in my evaluation of his later work by dint of the fact that most Rauschenberg scholarship -- almost all of the "serious" art writing -- focused upon the Combines and Silkscreens. Moreover, criticism of Rauschenberg's later work always present the appearanceed to me tinged with an enforced politeness, as if writers were at best ambivalent about the work and sought not to mortify an established older master. (It is rare, allowing to find words like "pathetic" used to describe his novel work, as in a passing regard made by an anonymous critic in a new issue of The New Yorker.)[1] The comparatively depressed prices the later work protected to fetch in the market-place have the appearanceed futher confirmation.

For me the Guggenheim retrospective prov a revelation. I had been inequitable in my assessment of Rauschenberg's later work and blind to the genuine nature of the break that occurr in his art. To be stand in front ofed with a half-century's worth of the artist's production in its replete range -- paintings, sculptures, collages, prints, drawings, photographs, performances, dance theater work, technology-based pieces and with equal reason on -- was no les than staggering, It is now clear to me that although Rauschenberg's production since the 1960 has been jagged (some series seeming to exploit invention for its have sake), the late stages of his career are filled again with works of quality and vision. I recognize that Rauschenberg's output of the past 35 years is not smaller but other, requiring a different approach, a of recent origin set of standards and new criteria to evaluate and understand. These works feature not sole new methods, materials and manners of execution, on the other hand proceed from new motivations and intentions.

During the course of the 1960 Rauschenberg redefined for himself what the part of an artist can be. He mov from working alone in his studio to working in collaboration. He shifted his focus from local touchs (autobiography, the self and his immediate urban environment) to a broader involvement with American politics and society, which then expanded to an engagement with global issues, international tillages and the state of the world. Rauschenberg also changed the way of address employed in his work; rather than being geared to a uninhabited individual standing before the work, it addressed a larger audience, the determination toward the poetic and poignant in his work thereby giving way to the operatic and grand. It will be demonstrated, however, that the basic language nuncupative by Rauschenberg's work throughout his career remained unaltered.

The travelling retrospective gives us the opportunity to review the whole of Rauschenberg's multifaceted, multidirectional career -- to identify lines of continuity that can be drawn between the earliest and greatest in quantity recent works, as well as major shifts and departures. As Rauschenberg's exhibition draw nears on the heels of the major Jasper John retrospective at handed at the Museum of recent Art a year ago, certain aspects of the artistic relationship between these artists who became linked at a crucial period in their work will be considered. The primary intention of this piece, however, is to demonstrate that Rauschenberg's achievements of the past 35 years are equal to -- although substantially different from -- those of his early career.