Robert Rauschenberg-pioneer of pop art

Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg is an American artist who is part of the first dozen in the ranking of contemporary art. Actually, he is only almost an American artist , because the "street cocking mixture" (winking self -quotation) looks back on Indian and German roots: the grandmother was a Cherokee, the grandfather had his homeland in Berlin.

His artistic work is as complex as its origin, Rauschenberg worked as a painter and photographer, graphic artist and object artist . Even if he was chosen as the pioneer of the pop art of the 20th century, his works cannot be assigned to a single style. On the contrary: Hardly any other artist has been as willful in the last century the boundaries between genera and styles as he did.

Early years and first characteristics

Rauschenberg was born on October 22, 1925 in South Texas in the city of Port Arthur, and it is only known about his childhood that he grew up under rather poor conditions in strict Puritaners. The education in his youth definitely led to Rauschenberg planning to become a preacher after the high school, but then he started studying pharmacy at the University of Austin/Texas in the early 1940s. He quickly broke off this studies because he rejected animal experiments.

In 1943, Rauschenberg was drafted into a military . Because he refused weapon service, he was assigned to the psychiatry of the US Navy Hospital Corps as a nurse. It is said to have been on a vacation during the army period when Rauschenberg was able to view art in the original in the California Huntington Art Gallery for the first time in his life, pictures by Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Lawrence, which he previously only knew from printing on the back of playing cards.

Rauschenberg was fascinated to the highest degree, he later remembered that he would have had the realization in front of these pictures and at that moment that he could lead his life as an artist, so it sounds.

So Rauschenberg studied art after the war, only in 1946 and 1947 at the Kansas City Art Institute. In between, he has to work as a window decorator and in a factory to finance his life. In 1947 he exchanged his first name Milton against that of his grandfather, the newly baked Robert is now going after Paris and sets his Artistic training For half a year on the respected, privately managed académie Julian Fort.

Return to the USA

In 1948 Rauschenberg returned to the USA and studied in North Carolina on Black Mountain College until 1949. At that time, the college was the most important institution for interdisciplinary, predominantly artistic training.

For example, many Bauhaus artists appointed to the Black Mountain after their emigration from Germany. So Rauschenberg also got John Cage and through this Merce Cunningham , with both of them, he often worked together during performances and happening.

From North Carolina we went to New York in 1949, to the Art Students League, where he Cy Twombly . During this time, Rauschenberg had significant abstract expressionists among his teachers : Jack Tworkov, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, who represented abstract expressionism and surrealism.

These influences were fruitful: According to Alber's model, the first known picture of Rauschenberg (from 1949) shows on a white background. But neither the color field painting of Alber 'nor the wildly abstract work de Kooning's satisfied Rauschenberg in the long run, he was looking for an “art-life equation” into which the real living environment was to be integrated and shaped there. He continued to search, also with Joseph Beuys and Kurt Schwitters, in 1951 he was ready for the self -determined artistic departure.

White, Black, Red, Combine ...

Only now did the "White Paintings" , seven evenly white boards, which according to Rauschenberg's statement should "erase painting" by simply showing silence. With these white paintings, Rauschenberg had his first solo exhibition in the New York Betty Parson Gallery. Then he etched a drawing from Willem de Kooning , an consent but still radical gesture that wanted to settle with the American abstract expressionists and their supremacy.

This was followed by the "Black Paintings" , a self -limitation to "nothing" or also not knowledge of your own development, which Rauschenberg should serve in the further search for yourself. This development led to object boxes with bones, stones and wood (1952) and to the "Red Paintings" , in which Rauschenberg paints out material scraps with red tones, they become "Combine Paintings" .

With this inclusion of objects of daily life to help combine reality and art, Rauschenberg becomes perhaps most important pioneer in pop art. To date, the picture series in white, black and red are considered the most radical work of Rauschenberg, even if the pop art has declared the later work "Pink Door" (1954) and "Bed" (1955) from the combine series about their early works.

In the following years, Rauschenberg travels a lot, again and again to Europe, to Paris and Italy, but also to North Africa. He works with Merce Cunningham Decorations and choreographies For his dance company, works with Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely on Performances in Paris, discovered at the same time as Andy Warhol the screen printing (But uses him for more complex statements) and produces his first lithographs.

In 1966 he made his first film ("Canoe") and founded the EAT, the "Experiments in Art and Technology" project, which is intended to explore the interactions of technology or electronics, industry and art (with the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and the artist Robert Whitman).

In 1967, Rauschenberg combined screen printing technology and lithographing technology in some long -term work on the relationship between humans and technology (e.g. “boosters”). print experiment workshop with Robert Petersen , 1974 to 1976 he worked with Alain Robbe-Grillet on a book, at the end of the 1970s Rauschenberg's response to Cambodia and Vietnam: “The 1⁄4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece”, a work with a length of more than 400 meters that is composed of paintings, collages and objects.

In 1984 Rauschenberg's most exciting project, the “Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange” (Roci) , began a hiking exhibition of around 200 works of art. Until 1991 the project led by 10 countries, the works were created in cooperation with the artists at the exhibition location.

The Roci was in Berlin, Chile and Japan, Mexico and the Soviet Union, Venezuela and Tibet. It is immediately believed that Rauschenberg has never regretted his decision "to do something about the world crisis instead of the Midlife Crisis".

In the continuation of these experiences, the artist founded the “Robert Rauschenberg Foundation” , a non -profit organization in which he supports political and social educational work and scientific research projects. The artist awarded with many honors died on May 12, 2008 at the age of 82 on Captiva Island in Florida.