Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg worked in a wide range of mediums including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, and performance, over the span of six decades. He emerged on the American art scene at the time that Abstract Expressionism was dominant, and through the course of his practice he challenged the gestural abstract painting and the model of the heroic, self-expressive artist championed by that movement.
In his landmark series of Combines (1954–64) he mixed the materials of artmaking with ordinary things, writing, “I consider the text of a newspaper, the detail of photograph, the stitch in a baseball, and the filament in a light bulb as fundamental to the painting as brush stroke or enamel drip of paint.”1 In Bed (1955), for example, he covered a large wall-mounted board with a pillow and patchwork quilt which he then marked with graphite scrawls and exuberant lashings of paint, the latter perhaps an ironic nod to Abstract Expressionism.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg studied at a variety of art schools including the experimental Black Mountain College outside of Asheville, North Carolina, where the artist and former Bauhaus instructor Josef Albers was his teacher. There, his mentors and collaborators included the composer John Cage, the artist Cy Twombly, and the choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he would collaborate on more than twenty dance compositions. Rauschenberg’s engagement with performance was enduring and a defining influence in his work. As his career began to gather steam in New York in the mid-1950s, he also began a crucial dialogue with the artist Jasper Johns that shaped the work of both: together the two artists pushed each other away from defined models of practice towards new modes that integrated the signs, images, and materials of the everyday world.
Photography and printmaking were two of Rauschenberg’s abiding interests. In the 1958–60 series based on the thirty-four Cantos of Dante’s Inferno, he used a solvent to transfer photographs from contemporary magazines and newspapers onto drawing paper. The series is emblematic of a lifetime of experimentation with the ways the deluge of images in modern media culture could be transmitted and transformed.
Introduction by Rebecca Lowery, Museum Research Consortium Fellow, Department of Painting and Sculpture, 2015
- Introduction
- Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artworks which incorporated everyday objects as art materials and which blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking and performance.Rauschenberg received numerous awards during his nearly 60-year artistic career. Among the most prominent were the International Grand Prize in Painting at the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993.Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida, until his death on May 12, 2008.
- Wikidata
- Q164358
- Introduction
- Robert Rauschenberg attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied with Josef Albers and was influenced by fellow student John Cage. Rauschenberg subsequently moved to New York. An early and notorious piece involved the erasure of a DeKooning drawing. In 1953, he began creating sculptures using organic materials and common items. By 1963, Rauschenberg had become so well-known that he had a retrospective exhibition at the Jewish Museum. By the 1970s, Rauschenberg had begun experimenting with performance art and film.
- Nationality
- American
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Collagist, Mixed-Media Artist, Painter, Performance Artist, Photographer, Sculptor
- Names
- Robert Rauschenberg, Milton Ernest Rauschenberg, Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg
- Ulan
- 500002941
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Read the interview with Rauschenberg from The Museum’s Oral History
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View the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
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View SFMoMA’s Rauschenberg Research
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Read a short essay about Robert Rauschenberg at the post
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Read a short essay about Robert Rauschenberg at the post website (part
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Read a short essay about Robert Rauschenberg at the post website (part
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Exhibitions
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408: Everyday Encounters
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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408: Stamp, Scavenge, Crush
Oct 21, 2019–Sep 20, 2020
MoMA
Collection gallery
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407: Frank O’Hara, Lunchtime Poet
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done
Sep 16, 2018–Feb 3, 2019
MoMA
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Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund
Apr 29–Jul 22, 2018
MoMA
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Robert Rauschenberg has
154 exhibitionsonline.
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled 1949
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Robert Rauschenberg Cy Twombly c. 1949
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Robert Rauschenberg Charleston Street 1952
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Asheville Citizen) c. 1952
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Mirror) (1952)
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled c. 1953
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled c. 1953
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Robert Rauschenberg Bed 1955
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Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Weil Untitled c. 1950
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Robert Rauschenberg Rebus 1955
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Robert Rauschenberg Rhyme 1956
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Robert Rauschenberg Factum II 1957
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto I: The Dark Wood of Error from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto II: The Descent from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto III: The Vestibule of Hell, The Opportunists from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto IV: Limbo, Circle One, The Virtuous Pagans from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto V: Circle Two, The Carnal from the series Thirty-Four lIlustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto VI: Circle Three, The Gluttons from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1958)
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Robert Rauschenberg Quiz 1958
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Robert Rauschenberg Canyon 1959
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto VII: Circle Four, The Hoarders and The Wasters; Circle Five, The Wrathful and The Sullen from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto VIII: Circle Five, The Styx, The Wrathful; Circle Six, Dis, Capital of Hell, The Fallen Angels from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto IX: Circle Six, The Heretics from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto X: Circle Six, The Heretics from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XI: Circle Six, The Heretics from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XII: Circle Seven, Round 1, The Violent Against Neighbors from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XIII: Circle Seven, Round 2, The Violent Against Themselves from the series Thirty- Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XIV: Circle Seven, Round 3, The Violent Against God, Nature, and Art, from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XV: Circle Seven, Round 3, The Violent Against Nature from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XVI: Circle Seven, Round 3, The Violent Against Nature and Art from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XVII: Circle Seven, Round 3, The Violent Against Art, The Usurers, Geryon from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations from Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XVIII: Circle Eight, Malebolge, The Evil Ditches, The Fraudulent and Malicious: Bolgia 1, The Panderers and Seducers; Bolgia 2, The Flatterers from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XIX: Circle Eight, Bolgia 3, The Simoniacs from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XX: Circle Eight, Bolgia 4, The Fortune Tellers and Diviners from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXI: Circle Eight, Bolgia 5, The Grafters from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXII: Circle Eight, Bolgia 5, The Grafters from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXIII: Circle Eight, Bolgia 6, The Hypocrites from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXIV: Circle Eight, Bolgia 7, The Thieves from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXV: Circle Eight, Bolgia 7, The Thieves, from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXVI: Circle Eight, Bolgia 8, The Evil Counselors, from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXVII: Circle Eight, Bolgia 8, The Evil Counselors from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXVIII: Circle Eight, Bolgia 9, The Sowers of Discord: The Sowers of Religious and Political Discord Between Kinsmen from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXIX: Circle Eight, Bolgia 10, The Falsifiers: Class 1, The Alchemists from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXX: Circle Eight, Bolgia 10, The Falsifiers: The Evil Impersonators, Counterfeiters, and False Witnesses from the series Thirty- Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXXI: The Central Pit of Malebolge, The Giants from the series Thirty- Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXXII: Circle Nine, Cocytus, Compound Fraud: Round 1, Caina, Treacherous to Kin; Round 2, Antenora, Treacherous to Country from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXXIII: Circle Nine, Cocytus, Compound Fraud: Round 2, Antenora, Treacherous to Country; Round 3, Ptolomea, Treacherous to Guests and Hosts from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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Robert Rauschenberg Canto XXXIV: Circle Nine, Cocytus, Compound Fraud: Round 4, Judecca, Treacherous to their Masters, from the series Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno (1959-60)
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