Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was a man of American nationality, he was born on October the 22^nd in 1925 in Texas and he died on may the 12^th in 2008 in florida. Rauschenberg was a man that worked in many different medias such as printmaking, graphic art, painting, photography and papermaker, some of his early work was in the era and style of popart and is well known for his combine paintings which are built up of non-traditional materials and objects being used together..

 Rauschenberg was very interested in the iconography of American popular culture. He worked in the style of Abstract Expressionists without losing the expressiveness by developing a style that included collage and used materials that were easy to come across such as house paint. Rauschenberg used unusual techniques such painting with a tire that he had dipped in ink. He expanded his collages by uaing three and two dimensional objects in one piece of work, which he referred to as “combines.” This ground-breaking technique contributed to the course of modern art and creative expression. The works are sometimes called Neo-Dada. Rauschenberg’s fascination with popular imagery and his anything goes attitude when it came to his work strongly influenced Pop Art.

Rauschenberg used images of current events which he gathered from magazines and the newspapers for his 1964 collage Retroactive 1 (1964). A large press photograph of John F. Kennedy speaking at a televised news conference was the source for this screen print on canvas. He combined the image of Kennedy with another photo silkscreen of a parachuting astronaut. The overlapping of the two images creates a colourful visual commentary on a culture struggling to come to grips with the television era.

Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas city art institute, at the academie Julian in paris, france and also at the black mountain college in north Carolina. From 1949 until 1952 rauschenberg was a student at the arts students league of newyork.

In a lot of his work Rauschenberg used the process of silk screen printing to transfer photographs on to a canvas. In 1951 Rauschenberg created a series of work known as the White Paintings, in the style of monochromatic painting, the purpose of which was to make a painting seem its most essential nature, and to give the impression of being pure.

 When I look at Robert Rauschenberg’s work straight away I can see that most pieces of his work are in the style of abstract expressionism, I knew this by the old free lashings of paint in different colours and also by looking at the way that he layers images and paint over eachother this gives he work a lack of control, abstract feel to it  and it works really well in most pieces of his work.

I also really like the way that Rauschenberg uses different media in his work he incorporates printing into his work as well as painting and other methods of creating an image and I think that this is what makes rauschenberg’s work different from other artists that work in the abstract expressionist style.