Robert Rauschenberg

if you feel challenged or confused by much of modern art blame it on Robert Rauschenberg he's the painter who pushed back the boundaries of what we call art he was an inventor of contemporary performance art he brought technology to fine art he put art on dancers he developed groundbreaking techniques for putting images on paper or anything else he works in what he calls the gap between art and life 50 years ago is outrageous creations made him the bad boy of the artwork and now he's compared to Picasso American masters brought to you by Conceicao how do you plan on of funding your retirement Conceicao can help Conseco step up support for American masters is also provided by the park foundation dedicated to education and quality television additional funding for American masters is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts Rosalind P Walter Jack Rudin the Blanche and Irving Laurie foundation the Andre and Elizabeth Kurdish foundation and by viewers like you funding for Robert Rauschenberg inventive genius was also provided by Jerome and Don green and by the following it starts as I'm someplace where there's something that I want to photograph and from then on it's all uphill it's a quick slide when when all the processes are completed I always thought what it would be like to be around Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci when they were alive and what a missed opportunity and then I realize I've been around Barbra Jean Bird and it's just as good I'm sure now this is where we're hoping we'd get a bad image got close to it yep that's good if you knew that there was something wonderful happening if there's a parade coming down the street you want to get out be in the parade you know and there's a way in which that's kind of how his work is it's like well that looks like really fun give me one of those batons I'm gonna come along do you know and and you're welcomed in Bob washing berg says it wasn't until he was 18 years old that even knew there was such a thing as art one weekend one furlough from the Navy he went for the first time to a museum where he saw Gainsborough's Blue Boy and Thomas Lawrence's pink he recognized the paintings that because he had seen them reproduced on playing cards but it struck him for the first time that somebody had made these somebody whose profession it was to do these and it was something that you could do in the world that just had never occurred to him before born in 1925 Robert Rauschenberg was raised in the gritty oil refinery town of Port Arthur Texas at one time he'd wanted to become a preacher but is a van Jellicle Church for bed dancing so after high school despite troubles reading he went to the University of Texas to study pharmacy rajan Berg objected to dissecting a live frog and biology class which put an end to college so in 1944 he joined the Navy there he had shown a talent for drawing and after the war he entered art school in Kansas City Missouri then he went on to Paris from the GI Bill I couldn't understand the instructions that I was getting and so I just went out on the streets it got too embarrassing after a point because all the other people in the class how they weren't doing very interesting work they were doing Picasso's and ledges and Matisse's but in different colors and that didn't interest me brushin Berg returned to the United States with his future bride Suwon taking up studies at Black Mountain College an experimental art school in Western North Carolina Black Mountain was a magnet for many of the artists to its shape American culture hmong painter side Twombley architect Buckminster Fuller dancer Merce Cunningham Black Mountain was such a different kind of place that it's not that one would always expect something odd but if something odd came along that was perfectly all right and everybody was involved for me that was aside from the dance part was the quite marvelous experience to be involved with people from so many different areas the autocratic director of the art program was Bauhaus artist Josef Albers who drilled into his students a respect for color line and form he was a tough disciplinarian and Roger Berg found him an impossible person yet the best teacher he ever had the studios were small so I painted under the studio building Albers was a very nosy man and I had enough of him in class and I didn't see any reason why I should have more I was painting with tar and red LED and white LED too so to hide them you'd still be wet but I had to go to class and I just turned him over in the gravel and they got very interesting because where the paint was so thick and made out of tar you know I discovered pavement which had already been discovered unfortunately the newly emergent art movement of the day was Abstract Expressionism which had developed after World War Two was such a force at the international center of art shifted from Paris to New York these action painters were burly athletic types artists like Jackson Pollock Franz Kline William de Kooning who expressed their angst about contemporary life with large sweeping brushstrokes and Mark Rothko used fields of color to convey emotion they felt that they were dealing with the major issues of all time as Rothko described his tragedy ecstasy doom and so forth Bob's generation were also reacting against this kind of heavy psychological philosophical input Bob rauschenberg studied with the Abstract Expressionists with Motherwell with de Kooning and he learned about the importance of the gesture he studied the swipes and swaths of a Willem de Kooning and a the drips and dribbles of a Jackson Pollock and he he loved that he was excited by that style but what Bob did he led the break away from Abstract Expressionism I was trained as a junior abstract expressionist and in fact I was before I was me I was de Kooning and Rauschenberg provided perhaps a direct entrance out of what I was doing as a kind of junior abstract expressionist he showed the way Bob kept pushing the envelope he kept trying more things endless curiosity endless energy endless inventive genius Rosenberg put white house paint on canvas he put John cage at the wheel of a Model A Ford and Inc the tire creating automobile tire print as cage drove across a length of paper

Channel: studentsofbingham

Views: 56,981

Keywords: Robert, Rauschenberg

Id: PnPKx7Kq3Bg

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2010