Rauschenberg's approach was sometimes called "
Neo-Dadaist," a label he shared with the painter
Jasper Johns. Rauschenberg famously stated that "painting relates to both art and life," and he wanted to work "in the gap between the two." Like many of his
Dadaist predecessors, Rauschenberg questioned the distinction between art objects and everyday objects, and his use of readymade materials reprised the intellectual issues raised by
Marcel Duchamp's
Fountain (1917). Duchamp's Dadaist influence can also be observed in
Jasper Johns' paintings of targets, numerals, and flags, which were familiar cultural symbols: "things the mind already knows." in 2022 At
Black Mountain College, Rauschenberg experimented with a variety of artistic mediums including printmaking, drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, and theatre; his works often featured some combination of these. He created his
Night Blooming paintings (1951) at Black Mountain by pressing pebbles and gravel into black pigment on canvas. In the very same year he made full body blueprints in collaboration with Susan Weil in his New York apartment, which "they hope to turn [...] into screen and wallpaper designs". From the fall of 1952 to the spring of 1953, Rauschenberg traveled in Italy and
North Africa with his fellow artist and partner
Cy Twombly. There, he created collages and small sculptures, including the
Scatole Personali and
Feticci Personali, out of found materials. He exhibited them at galleries in
Rome and
Florence. To Rauschenberg's surprise, a number of the works sold; many that did not he threw into the river
Arno, following the suggestion of an art critic who reviewed his show. Upon his return to
New York City in 1953, Rauschenberg began creating sculpture with found materials from his Lower Manhattan neighborhood, such as scrap metal, wood, and twine. The silkscreen paintings made between 1962 and 1964 led critics to identify Rauschenberg's work with
Pop art. During this period Rauschenberg created
Barge, a 32 foot long silkscreen and oil work created predominantly over a 24 hour period. Images recognizable in the work include trucks, spacecraft, text and parts of
Diego Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, among others. Rauschenberg had experimented with technology in his artworks since the making of his early Combines in the mid-1950s, where he sometimes used working radios, clocks, and electric fans as sculptural materials. He later explored his interest in technology while working with Bell Laboratories research scientist
Billy Klüver. Together they realized some of Rauschenberg's most ambitious technology-based experiments, such as
Soundings (1968), a light installation which responded to ambient sound. In 1966, Klüver and Rauschenberg officially launched
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit organization established to promote collaborations between artists and engineers. In 1969,
NASA invited Rauschenberg to witness the launch of
Apollo 11. In response to this landmark event, Rauschenberg created his
Stoned Moon Series of
lithographs. This involved combining diagrams and other images from NASA's archives with his own drawings and handwritten text. From 1970, Rauschenberg worked from his home and studio in
Captiva, Florida. The first works he created in his new studio were
Cardboards (1971–72) and
Early Egyptians (1973–74), for which he relied on locally sourced materials such as cardboard and sand. Where his previous works had often highlighted urban imagery and materials, Rauschenberg now favored the effect of natural fibers found in fabric and paper. He printed on textiles using his solvent-transfer technique to make the
Hoarfrost (1974–76) and
Spread (1975–82) series; the latter featured large stretches of collaged fabric on wood panels. Rauschenberg created his
Jammer (1975–76) series using colorful fabrics inspired by his trip to
Ahmedabad, India, a city famous for its textiles. The imageless simplicity of the Jammer series is a striking contrast with the image-filled Hoarfrosts and the grittiness of his earliest works made in
New York City. International travel became a central part of Rauschenberg's artistic process after 1975. In 1984, Rauschenberg announced the start of his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) at the
United Nations. Almost entirely funded by the artist, the ROCI project consisted of a seven-year tour to ten countries around the world. Rauschenberg took photographs in each location and made artworks inspired by the cultures he visited. The resulting works were displayed in a local exhibition in each country. Rauschenberg often donated an artwork to a local cultural institution. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Rauschenberg focused on silkscreening imagery onto a variety of differently treated metals, such as steel and mirrored aluminum. He created many series of so-called "metal paintings," including:
Borealis (1988–92),
Urban Bourbons (1988–1996),
Phantoms (1991), and
Night Shades (1991). In addition, throughout the 1990s, Rauschenberg continued to utilize new materials while still working with more rudimentary techniques. As part of his engagement with the latest technological innovations, in his late painting series he transferred digital inkjet photographic images to a variety of painting supports. For his
Arcadian Retreats (1996) he transferred imagery to wet fresco. His
Love Hotel [Anagram (A Pun)] from 1998, and made out of vegetable dye transfer on polylaminate, is included in the permanent collection of the
Pérez Art Museum Miami, in Florida, the artist's home state for nearly forty years. In keeping with his commitment to the environment, Rauschenberg used biodegradable dyes and pigments, and water rather than chemicals in the transfer process.
The White Paintings, black paintings, and Red Paintings In 1951 Rauschenberg created his
White Painting series in the tradition of
monochromatic painting established by
Kazimir Malevich, who reduced painting to its most essential qualities for an experience of aesthetic purity and infinity. The
White Paintings were shown at Eleanor Ward's
Stable Gallery in New York in fall 1953. Rauschenberg used everyday white house paint and paint rollers to create smooth, unembellished surfaces which at first appear as blank canvas. Instead of perceiving them to be without content, however,
John Cage described the
White Paintings as "airports for the lights, shadows and particles"; surfaces which reflected delicate atmospheric changes in the room. Rauschenberg himself said that they were affected by ambient conditions, "so you could almost tell how many people are in the room." Like the
White Paintings, the black paintings of 1951–1953 were executed on multiple panels and were predominantly single color works. Rauschenberg applied matte and glossy black paint to textured grounds of newspaper on canvas, occasionally allowing the newspaper to remain visible. By 1953 Rauschenberg had moved from the
White Painting and black painting series to the heightened expressionism of his
Red Painting series. He regarded red as "the most difficult color" with which to paint, and accepted the challenge by dripping, pasting, and squeezing layers of red pigment directly onto canvas grounds that included patterned fabric, newspaper, wood, and nails. The complex material surfaces of the
Red Paintings were forerunners of Rauschenberg's well-known Combine series (1954-1964). Rauschenberg's comment concerning the gap between art and life provides the departure point for an understanding of his contributions as an artist. but Rauschenberg described Bed as "one of the friendliest pictures I've ever painted." Among his most famous Combines are those that incorporate taxidermied animals, such as
Monogram (1955–1959) which includes a stuffed
angora goat, and
Canyon (1959), which features a stuffed
golden eagle. Although the eagle was salvaged from the trash, Canyon drew government ire due to the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Critics originally viewed the Combines in terms of their formal qualities: color, texture, and composition. The formalist view of the 1960s was later refuted by critic
Leo Steinberg, who said that each Combine was "a receptor surface on which objects are scattered, on which data is entered." According to Steinberg, the horizontality of what he called Rauschenberg's "flatbed picture plane" had replaced the traditional verticality of painting, and subsequently allowed for the uniquely material-bound surfaces of Rauschenberg's work. In 2006, the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in association with the
Metropolitan Museum of Art presented
Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, an exhibition of over 65 of his works. It was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 20, 2005 – April 2, 2006, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, May 21, 2006 – September 4, 2006.
Performance and dance Rauschenberg began exploring his interest in dance after moving to New York in the early 1950s. He was first exposed to avant-garde dance and performance art at Black Mountain College, where he participated in John Cage's
Theatre Piece No. 1 (1952), often considered the first
Happening. He began designing sets, lighting, and costumes for
Merce Cunningham and
Paul Taylor. In the early 1960s he was involved in the radical dance-theater experiments at
Judson Memorial Church in
Greenwich Village, and he choreographed his first performance,
Pelican (1963), for the Judson Dance Theater in May 1963. Rauschenberg was close friends with Cunningham-affiliated dancers including
Carolyn Brown,
Viola Farber, and
Steve Paxton, all of whom featured in his choreographed works. Rauschenberg's full-time connection to the
Merce Cunningham Dance Company ended following its 1964 world tour. In 1966, Rauschenberg created the
Open Score performance for part of
9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering at the
69th Regiment Armory, New York. The series was instrumental in the formation of
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). In 1977 Rauschenberg, Cunningham, and Cage reconnected as collaborators for the first time in thirteen years to create
Travelogue (1977), for which Rauschenberg contributed the costume and set designs. On December 30, 1979, the
Miami Herald printed 650,000 copies of
Tropic, its Sunday magazine, with a cover designed by Rauschenberg. In 1983, he won a
Grammy Award for his album design of
Talking Heads' album
Speaking in Tongues. In 1986 Rauschenberg was commissioned by
BMW to paint a full size
BMW 635 CSi for the sixth installment of the famed
BMW Art Car Project. Rauschenberg's car was the first in the project to feature reproductions of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as well as his own photographs. In 1998, the
Vatican commissioned a work by Rauschenberg in honor of the
Jubilee year 2000 to be displayed in the
Padre Pio Liturgical Hall, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy. Working around the theme of the
Last Judgement, Rauschenberg created
The Happy Apocalypse (1999), a twenty-foot-long
maquette. It was ultimately rejected by the Vatican on the grounds that Rauschenberg's depiction of God as a satellite dish was an inappropriate theological reference. ==Works==