Robert Rauschenberg

American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

Milton Ernest “Robert” Rauschenbergwas 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.

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About the Robert Rauschenberg

Milton Ernest “Robert” Rauschenbergwas 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 primarily a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking and performance.

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.

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

30 Quotes by Robert Rauschenberg

  1. 1.

    There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  2. 2.

    I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  3. 3.

    I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  4. 4.

    And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  5. 5.

    Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  6. 6.

    I don’t think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  7. 7.

    Every time I’ve moved, my work has changed radically.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  8. 8.

    Pollock also… wanted one to be wrapped in the painting.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  9. 9.

    And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you’re soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  10. 10.

    And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  11. 11.

    The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  12. 12.

    I’m sure we don’t read old paintings the way they were intended.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  13. 13.

    Well, I like way downtown near the Battery. I lived down there at this time and for, I guess, the following well, this is where I moved to uptown and I’ve been here for four years and this is 1965.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  14. 14.

    I wouldn’t use the same color in a picture in more than one place.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  15. 15.

    And I think that even today, New York still has more of this unexpected quality around every corner than any place else. It’s something quite extraordinary.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  16. 16.

    The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  17. 17.

    I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don’t want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  18. 18.

    Oracle was I had started it I guess two and a half years ago, maybe even longer than that, closer to three.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  19. 19.

    If you don’t have trouble paying the rent, you have trouble doing something else; one needs just a certain amount of trouble.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  20. 20.

    I think maybe chance works better in a situation like music because music exists over a period of time, and you don’t maintain constantly the you can’t refer back from one area to another area.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  21. 21.

    So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  22. 22.

    But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  23. 23.

    You begin with the possibilities of the material.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  24. 24.

    I’m not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  25. 25.

    I think a painting is more like the real world if it’s made out the real world.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  26. 26.

    One can see that a canvas is six feet by eight feet, say, quite accurately. But you can spend two minutes and think it’s five, or thirty seconds and it’s just a different bed for activities there.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  27. 27.

    I don’t mess around with my subconscious.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  28. 28.

    An empty canvas is full.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  29. 29.

    But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)

  30. 30.

    A newspaper that you’re not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn’t think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.

    Robert Rauschenberg

    American painter and graphic artist (1925-2008)