Robert Rauschenberg

About the Artist

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.^[1][2]

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.^[3]

Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida, until his death on May 12, 2008.^[4]

Life and career[edit]

Rauschenberg was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Dora Carolina (née Matson) and Ernest R. Rauschenberg.^[5][6][7] His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Dutch descent.^[8] His father worked for Gulf States Utilities, a light and power company. His parents were Fundamentalist Christians.^[9] He had a younger sister named Janet Begneaud.^[10][11]

At 18, Rauschenberg was admitted to the University of Texas at Austin where he began studying pharmacology, but he dropped out shortly after due to the difficulty of the coursework—not realizing at this point that he was dyslexic—and because of his unwillingness to dissect a frog in biology class.^[12] He was drafted into the United States Navy in 1944. Based in California, he served as a neuropsychiatric technician in a Navy hospital until his discharge in 1945 or 1946.^[12]

Rauschenberg subsequently studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris,^[13] France, where he met fellow art student Susan Weil. In 1948 Rauschenberg joined Weil in enrolling at Black Mountain College in North Carolina.^[14][15]

At Black Mountain, Rauschenberg sought out Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus in Germany, whom he had read about in an August 1948 issue of Time magazine. He hoped that Albers' rigorous teaching methods might curb his habitual sloppiness.^[16] Albers' preliminary design courses relied on strict discipline that did not allow for any "uninfluenced experimentation."^[17][18]

Rauschenberg became, in his own words, "Albers' dunce, the outstanding example of what he was not talking about".^[19] Although Rauschenberg considered Albers his most important teacher, he found a more compatible sensibility in John Cage, an established composer of avant-garde music. Like Rauschenberg, Cage had moved away from the disciplinarian teachings of his instructor, Arnold Schönberg, in favor of a more experimentalist approach to music. Cage provided Rauschenberg with much-needed support and encouragement during the early years of his career, and the two remained friends and artistic collaborators for decades to follow.^[16]

From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York,^[20] where he met fellow artists Knox Martin and Cy Twombly.^[21]

Rauschenberg married Susan Weil in the summer of 1950 at the Weil family home in Outer Island, Connecticut. Their only child, Christopher, was born July 16, 1951. The two separated in June 1952 and divorced in 1953.^[22] Thereafter, Rauschenberg had romantic relationships with fellow artists Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns, among others.^[23][24] His partner for the last 25 years of his life was artist Darryl Pottorf,^[25] his former assistant.^[20]

In the 1970s he moved into NoHo in Manhattan in New York City.^[26]

Rauschenberg purchased the Beach House, his first property on Captiva Island, on July 26, 1968. However, the property did not become his permanent residence until the fall of 1970.^[27]