Robert Rauschenberg
How does the art practice of Robert Rauschenberg relate to the unit theme of the ordinary and how does he use ordinary objects within his artworks to create works with depth, meaning and beauty?
Innovative and experimental in approach, contemporary American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) has long been considered the pioneer of the modern art world, spanning his late 20th to early 21st century artistic career to the blurring and challenging of boundaries and distinctions between the artist, the art world and the audience. By his combinative exploration of multiple art forms including painting, sculpture, photography, performance and screen-printing, much of Rauschenberg’s practice exemplify the artist’s long held aim of transitioning subject matter to ordinary and found materials, as means of questioning the alienation of everyday life in the approaches of the prominent artists and art styles of his time. Particularly in a period of abstract expressionism where personalisation and highly emotionally charged works fuelled belief in the artist’s conceptualisation being key to the appreciation of their respective works, it is by Rauschenberg’s deliberate confrontation of the disconnect of the artist’s personal and circadian realities that enables his works to retain avant-garde in meaning and definition of artistic beauty, easing the audience’s ability to interpret his works due to its universal theme of the ordinary.
Rauschenberg’s ability to manipulate and appropriate mundane and images of popular culture beyond its contextual limitations notably lies in his creation of the art form ‘combines’, the hybrid of painting and sculpture that broke conventions of the artist’s canvas. In challenge of the recognized doctrine of medium specificity (an element supported and endorsed by many art critics of his time), Robert Rauschenberg explicitly juxtaposed both the 2D and 3D forms in such combines, providing the meta-narrative to his works through the now
Innovative and experimental in approach, contemporary American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) has long been considered the pioneer of the modern art world, spanning his late 20th to early 21st century artistic career to the blurring and challenging of boundaries and distinctions between the artist, the art world and the audience. By his combinative exploration of multiple art forms including painting, sculpture, photography, performance and screen-printing, much of Rauschenberg’s practice exemplify the artist’s long held aim of transitioning subject matter to ordinary and found materials, as means of questioning the alienation of everyday life in the approaches of the prominent artists and art styles of his time. Particularly in a period of abstract expressionism where personalisation and highly emotionally charged works fuelled belief in the artist’s conceptualisation being key to the appreciation of their respective works, it is by Rauschenberg’s deliberate confrontation of the disconnect of the artist’s personal and circadian realities that enables his works to retain avant-garde in meaning and definition of artistic beauty, easing the audience’s ability to interpret his works due to its universal theme of the ordinary.
Rauschenberg’s ability to manipulate and appropriate mundane and images of popular culture beyond its contextual limitations notably lies in his creation of the art form ‘combines’, the hybrid of painting and sculpture that broke conventions of the artist’s canvas. In challenge of the recognized doctrine of medium specificity (an element supported and endorsed by many art critics of his time), Robert Rauschenberg explicitly juxtaposed both the 2D and 3D forms in such combines, providing the meta-narrative to his works through the now