Press and Articles

Rauschenberg master of his domain
Edison College show offers artist's 'Scenarios'
By Mary Wozniak
mwozniak@news-press.com
Originally posted on January 12, 2007

At 81, artist Robert Rauschenberg is still in command.

From his wheelchair, he dictates the positioning of 11 massive, 7-by-11 pieces as he gets ready to display his latest work.

The mind and wit of the man many call the greatest living contemporary artist are scalpel-sharp. His body slowly fails him

"I keep moving from injuries to injuries," he said Wednesday as assistants maneuvered the new works, a little to the right or a little to the left, at his bidding.

Creating art, he says, "is my biggest medicine."

Always the rebel, the man who changed the course of modern art more than 50 years ago has new work showing at the gallery that bears his name. .

It is a continuation of a series he began in 2002, completed in 2006.

Rauschenberg's rebellion redefined art in the mid-1950s. He took ordinary objects found on the street and incorporated them into works of art he called combines. The seemingly unrelated items were combined in a mix of sculpture and painting.

His actions outraged other artists of the day, who expressed intense inner emotions by painting in an abstract manner. Jackson Pollock's drip paintings are an example of this style.

Instead of painting abstractions, Rauschenberg took images people could recognize and abstracted them into art.

Almost 60 years later, a series of strokes has left his right hand curled at his side. He had a hip replacement in 2001. He had surgery for an intestinal blockage in 2006.

Now, he rebels against his physical limitations even as his artistic possibilities are still unlimited.

But the revolution, like the artistic one, takes place quietly and behind the scenes.

He signed his new works, which have never been seen by the public, in a spidery scrawl, "Rauschenberg 2K +y left hand has to do all the work," Rauschenberg said.

"Writing used to be easier for my right hand than eating is for my left," he joked."Scenarios" is a series of images of ordinary life from across America. Again, each piece seems to be a collection of disparate images.

One, titled "Orange Oath," shows the concrete base of a light pole with a half-empty cup of beer poised in the upper left corner. A double aerial shot of a breakfast patio cafe is in the upper right center. A photo of a woman squeezing oranges at a produce stand is next to that.

In the center is a wall of graffiti that depicts a painting of two hands. Undulating words are written on the hands, such as "meltdown," "imagine," "dream," along with nonwords, such as "supprimer."

The amount of white space on the polylaminate surface seems to be equally balanced with the space taken up by images.

What does it all mean?

Rauschenberg smiled and gave a non-answer. "What you said in your question is exactly what they are," he said.

Rauschenberg acts to create the art, but the artwork isn't completed until the viewer sees and reacts to it.

The images in "Scenarios" are original photographs that are scanned into a computer, then printed in a soluble medium made with vegetable dye and transferred to the surface of the artwork. The image is transferred using hand pressure and water.

Rauschenberg developed the method, but he can no longer use a camera.

His son, Christopher, a photographer who lives in Portland, Ore., sent him a "very inventive" camera designed for use by a one-armed person, Rauschenberg said, but what he expects out of photographs can't be done with one hand.

Now he sends his assistants and staff out with a camera when his photo supply runs low.

He directs the making of his art from his studio on Captiva Island, where he has lived since 1970.

Combines aren't the only breakthrough Rauschenberg pioneered in his drive to create something new in the art world.

He started experimenting with the use of silkscreen and repetitive images in 1962, anticipating the Pop Art movement.

He also embraced performance art.

As a student at the avant- garde Black Mountain College near Asheville, N.C., Rauschenberg collaborated with composer John Cage and dancer Merce Cunningham in what became known as the first "happening" in 1952.

Perhaps his greatest piece of performance art was "Erase de Kooning Drawing," completed in 1953.

Willem de Kooning is widely considered the greatest of the Abstract Expressionists. Rauschenberg decided he had to erase a de Kooning as an act of art.

"That wasn't audacity. That was respect," Rauschenberg said.

"I worked for weeks erasing my own drawings, but that was too easily misunderstood as a technique," he said. "I was very successfully unknown." If it was going to be art, "it had to start off as art and be well-known as art before it could be honorably erased." So Rauschenberg knocked on the great artist's door with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand and made the request.

"He didn't like it, but he understood it," Rauschenberg said. De Kooning walked over to one portfolio and then said, "'No, I'm going to give you something I'd miss,'" Rauschenberg said.

The master finally gave him a piece he thought would be impossible forRauschenberg to erase."It was crayon, pencil, ink ..." Rauschenberg said. "It took me a month." The erased piece hangs in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Rauschenberg said.

What would Rauschenberg do if another young artist came to him and asked to "erase" or de-construct a Rauschenberg? He has already been asked several times, and the answer is no, Rauschenberg said.

"Because I've done it."

• What: The opening of "Rauschenberg: Scenarios" features the newest additions to a series of work that the artist began in 2002.

• When: 6 p.m. today

• Where: Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, L Building, Edison College, Summerlin Road and College Parkway, south Fort Myers.

• Cost: Free; begins with a 6 p.m. lecture by Mary Lynn Kotz, author of "Rauschenberg/Art and Life," in Corbin Auditorium, J Building, and continues with a book signing and opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Rauschenberg gallery.

• Gallery hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday; 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The gallery is closed Sunday. The exhibit runs through Feb. 24.

• Information: Call 489-9313 or visit www.edison.edu/lee/gallery/index.shtml.

"Rauschenberg: Scenarios" opens at 6 p.m. today at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Edison College in south Fort Myers.