Robert Rauschenberg dies at 82

[Ray]

In today's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/arts/des...amp;oref=slogin

And from Macaulay, "Rauschenberg and Dance, Partners for Life":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/arts/dan...&oref=login

[dirac]

Thank you for posting, Ray. Sad news, but also a long life and a magnificent career to be celebrated. A quote from Macaulay's article.

Mr. Rauschenberg wasn’t just the designer of most pieces Mr. Cunningham had choreographed in the previous 10 years; he was also a permanent colleague. He toured America and, in 1964, the world as stage manager to the Cunningham company, adjusting the lighting and costumes, making several of the dancers into his long-term friends, helping turn the itinerary of a dance company into a fulcrum of ideas.

[bart]

Macaulay's point is a good one. A number of us may know Rauschenberg's work even more from his designs for modern dance than from museum or gallery shows.

Here's another statement of Macaulay's that I appreciated:

When he won the international grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, he said he regarded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as his biggest canvas. Although the remark offended some in Cunningham circles (primarily the composer John Cage, who seems to have felt it sounded too proprietorial), it was completely justified. At that time there was no better place to see the range of Mr. Rauschenberg’s inventiveness than the Cunningham repertory.

And not only Cunningham. Rauschenberg's creative collaboration brought visual richness to dance in America and extended its artistic reach. Not unlike the collaboration of serious artists and the Diaghilev company a couple of generations earlier.

[Marga]

Robert Rauschenberg's death marks the passing of another larger-than-life innovator in the world of contemporary American culture.

Personally, the notice of his passing was another jab to my heart, as I was lucky to be a participant in one of his dance/visual art collaborations at the end of the 1960s. Viola Farber recruited some of us for that project, thus helping out her good friend Rauschenberg, with whom she had a connection via Merce Cunningham. Rauschenberg's art was so quirkily avant-garde and unique in the 1950s - '60s and he remained, often whimsically, cutting edge throughout his life. I remember how soft-spoken, friendly, and approachable he was while he worked with us.

In fact, the whole group of cultural icons -- legends! -- consisting of Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham (both still with us), and John Cage (gone for over 15 years) -- made their mark while maintaining low-key, affable personalities (at least in social demeanor to which I can attest), and extreme generosity of spirit and sharing of resources, including providing financial aid unasked and wherever needed, among their friends and causes. Role models, all.

Robert Rauschenberg, you were one of the inspirational people in my life.

With a great smile and certain sadness, I celebrate yours.

[dirac]

Thank you for those recollections, Marga.

[Helene]

Cunningham spoke in the NPR story yesterday on Rauschenberg.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=90401687

[Paul Parish]

Macaulay's article's very fine --

I hope the'rell be more testimonials like Marga's -- from people who were there and know what the spirit was like in the creation and performance of those things.HTe stories I've heard all atestt to that -- how the lights went out in the middle of your turn and you had to fall onto a rug and get whisked off-stage on the rug....

ther'es a WONDERFUL photograph of Ellen Cornfield in blue Rauschenberg tights and in mid-air next to an outlandishly colorful construct of Rauschenberg's in Herbert Migdoll's wonderful old book "Dancers Dancing"-- big outsized pictures, very exuberant.

[dirac]

Jed Perl rudely interrupts the amen chorus.

Whilethe truth is that a lot of people who loved Pop Art never thought Rauschenberg was anywhere near as important as Johns or Warhol, for some years there was a general agreement that he was America's unofficial avant-garde ambassador-at-large, spreading the anything-can-be-art Dadaist gospel to the four corners of the earth, teaching people all over the world that, by god, you too can make a collage, you too can act in the gap between art and life. The only trouble with all of this was that there never has been a gap between art and life. There is art. There is life. For all I know, Rauschenberg's has been a life well lived. As for his art, it stank in the 1950s and it doesn't look any better today.

[Ray]

Jed Perl rudely interrupts the amen chorus.

While the truth is that a lot of people who loved Pop Art never thought Rauschenberg was anywhere near as important as Johns or Warhol, for some years there was a general agreement that he was America's unofficial avant-garde ambassador-at-large, spreading the anything-can-be-art Dadaist gospel to the four corners of the earth, teaching people all over the world that, by god, you too can make a collage, you too can act in the gap between art and life. The only trouble with all of this was that there never has been a gap between art and life. There is art. There is life. For all I know, Rauschenberg's has been a life well lived. As for his art, it stank in the 1950s and it doesn't look any better today.

This reminds me of the derogatory editorials published in the NY Times after the deaths of Derrida and Said. Someone's death should inspire us to rise above our own personal likes and dislikes and assess the person's effect on the world (I think many BTers did so after the death of Bejart, for instance), esp. if one has the luxury of a public forum like the New Republic. Doing so begins a conversation; asserting a judgment based solely on taste cuts one off or starts an argument, neither suitable on the occasion of a death (unless the situation is extraordinary--i.e., a political funeral in Apartheid-era South Africa). And while I certainly agree with interrogating commonplace formulations such as "the gap between art and life," I don't know that it does much to assert, categorically, that "there never has been a gap between art and life. There is art. There is life."

[bart]

Perl's disagrees with Rauschenberg's philosophy. He thinks the artist has been overpraised. He disllikes a number of individual pieces.

All of this has little to do with Rauschenberg's contributions to dance, which were -- at least those I saw -- interesting, varied and rich on their own, and amazingly non-distracting from the dancing. For a while (and during our lifetimes) Rauschenberg and his friends gave us the chance to see dance in the framework of something like "total art." It was a brave effort, and one worth praising.

[dirac]

This reminds me of the derogatory editorials published in the NY Times after the deaths of Derrida and Said. Someone's death should inspire us to rise above our own personal likes and dislikes and assess the person's effect on the world (I think many BTers did so after the death of Bejart, for instance), esp. if one has the luxury of a public forum like the New Republic.

In the cases of Derrida and Said, the tone of the NYT obits bothered me because of a) the prominence of the NYT as a forum and b) they were part of a pattern reflected elsewhere. I happen to like Perl’s writing, but I also think he’s speaking a bit strongly because the tone of the Rauschenberg obits has been so bland.

[kfw]

This reminds me of the derogatory editorials published in the NY Times after the deaths of Derrida and Said. Someone's death should inspire us to rise above our own personal likes and dislikes and assess the person's effect on the world (I think many BTers did so after the death of Bejart, for instance), esp. if one has the luxury of a public forum like the New Republic. Doing so begins a conversation; asserting a judgment based solely on taste cuts one off or starts an argument, neither suitable on the occasion of a death (unless the situation is extraordinary--i.e., a political funeral in Apartheid-era South Africa).

I've never cared for much of Raushenberg's art, but it could be that my taste is lacking in that respect. But Perl is writing as an art critic, and it's his job to assess the man's art and its affect on the art scene. That's what he did, and it will no doubt start a conversation.

[Ray]

I've never cared for much of Raushenberg's art, but it could be that my taste is lacking in that respect. But Perl is writing as an art critic, and it's his job to assess the man's art and its affect on the art scene. That's what he did, and it will no doubt start a conversation.

I agree that that's one of the many functions an art critic may have, but I think Perl does a poor job of assessing the cultural effect of RR's career; we learn mostly about its effect on himself. I think the reactionary timing shows a lack of simple respect, and for what? The thrill of the buzz it will undoubtedly stir up? The job description of Art Critic can certainly include a sense of propriety, can't it? There's always time to mount a critique if the arguments hold water--and for me, that's part of a critic's job: to persuade me, not just pontificate.

[Quiggin]

I've never understood Jed Perl's project or taste. At one time he didn't like Jasper Johns, but now he says the Rauschenberg is less important than Johns. He doesn't like Pollock and Kline, but champions far less interesting artists like Jean Helion and Kitaj. He seems to want set up a topsy turvy, artistically old-fashioned, Huntington Hartfordy version of the Museum of Modern art, without walls. John Updike, of all people, takes Perl to task for his conservative taste and fuzzy critical vocabulary: "The words 'existential' and 'empirical' remain hazy, as much as Perl loves and uses them. And I can't find 'existentialize"' in my dictionary."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/books/re...perl&st=nyt

And Kimmelman's obituary does, as dirac says, seem a bit bland and cozy. He characterizes the great period of the 1950's, when Rauschenberg's best work was done, thusly "[he began] by making quirky, small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan..." Hardly. It was a brave and passionate and nutty period in which Rauschenberg erased a deKooning painting and signed the erasure as his own, and did these annoyingly interesting all black paintings on a support of woven of newspaper.

Way before he met Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg brought Cy Twombly to Black Mountain College where they studied with watchful Charles Olson and sweet but cranky Joseph Albers. Albers had been at the Bauhaus with Rauschenberg's seemingly greatest influence, Kurt Schwitters.

Here is a bit of a 1953 review by "N.N." of a show in Italy from "Writings on Twombly" as a example of a rare positive review.

"The two artists demonstrate a quality of outrage. To leave behind such a clamorously dynamic and standardized world as North America so as to engage with cutting-edge European sensibility by making signs and magical objects that echo mysterious and disconcerting ancestral cultures, as Rauschenberg evokes and expresses them through his haunted gaze, and through Moroccan tapestries aimed, according to Twombly, at soliciting an esthetic response of a penetrating and subtle kind, is evidence of an imaginative sensibility verging on distressed oddity."

Another, but on Twombly alone, by Copeland C. Burg in 1951 goes: "The most curious and worst exhibition of paintings I ever saw in Chicago is hanging in the handsome new Seven Stairs Gallery at 670 N. Michigan av...The paintings are revolting--nothing else describes them. They are strong in the sense that they repel, as a rattlesnake in the hot sand. It is truly shocking to confront them...." Perhaps this takes us full circle.

[Ray]

I've never understood Jed Perl's project or taste. At one time he didn't like Jasper Johns, but now he says the Rauschenberg is less important than Johns. He doesn't like Pollock and Kline, but champions far less interesting artists like Jean Helion and Kitaj. He seems to want set up a topsy turvy, artistically old-fashioned, Huntington Hartfordy version of the Museum of Modern art, without walls. John Updike, of all people, takes Perl to task for his conservative taste and fuzzy critical vocabulary: "The words 'existential' and 'empirical' remain hazy, as much as Perl loves and uses them. And I can't find 'existentialize"' in my dictionary." [...]

Thanks, Quiggin. I learned more from your response than from Perl's essay!

[kfw]

I agree that that's one of the many functions an art critic may have, but I think Perl does a poor job of assessing the cultural effect of RR's career; we learn mostly about its effect on himself. I think the reactionary timing shows a lack of simple respect, and for what? The thrill of the buzz it will undoubtedly stir up? The job description of Art Critic can certainly include a sense of propriety, can't it? There's always time to mount a critique if the arguments hold water--and for me, that's part of a critic's job: to persuade me, not just pontificate.

I can understand your feelings but I can't agree with your argument. I think Perl's timing was dictated by Rauschenberg's death -- when an artist dies, critics are asked to assess his or her career. And in writing

Of the dead, speak no evil. But of the works of the dead, it seems to me that we have a perfect right to say whatever we think

he anticipates and rebuts the charge that he's being disrepectful. At the end of his piece he again distinguishes between the man and the art.

I also find it refreshing to see someone challenging the conventional wisdom that Rauschenberg's work exemplifies

the allure of the quotidian

and I appreciate his quoting what Shattuck had to say about juxtaposition in modern art. Having said that, I wish I liked the work more than I do. I'd also love to see people discuss his work with Merce Cunningham. Guess it's time to pull Carolyn Brown's "Chance and Circumstance" back off the shelf.

[Ray]

I can understand your feelings but I can't agree with your argument. I think Perl's timing was dictated by Rauschenberg's death -- when an artist dies, critics are asked to assess his or her career. And in writing

Of the dead, speak no evil. But of the works of the dead, it seems to me that we have a perfect right to say whatever we think

he anticipates and rebuts the charge that he's being disrepectful. At the end of his piece he again distinguishes between the man and the art.

I also find it refreshing to see someone challenging the conventional wisdom that Rauschenberg's work exemplifies

the allure of the quotidian

and I appreciate his quoting what Shattuck had to say about juxtaposition in modern art.

Sorry, but we won't agree on this. I think it's fine and necessary to challenge conventional wisdom; ballet certainly gives us plenty of opportunities for that! What I don't like is the occasion for doing it--it's just too easy in this case to grab the limelight to toot one's own horn. It's just bad form. And to me, Perl's "rebuttal" just amounts to a bald assetion. Yes of course we have the right to say whatever we think--about the man too, by the way; it's America, after all--but that doesn't mean it's the civil thing to do. I guess I'm getting soft in my dotage and am seeing deaths as occasions for reflecting on the times rather than full-scale attacks on individuals--or their works. I'd give Perl some slack if he at least indicted the art world in valorizing RR's work for so many years. After all, he didn't canonize himself.

[dirac]

I also find it refreshing to see someone challenging the conventional wisdom that Rauschenberg's work exemplifies

In Rauschenberg’s case, it seems to be the critics with conservative taste who are stirring the pot, while the majority give him the respectful Old Master treatment. His art was controversial in a wild artistic era but as Quiggin notes you’d not know it from reading some of these obituaries.

John Updike, of all people, takes Perl to task for his conservative taste and fuzzy critical vocabulary: "The words 'existential' and 'empirical' remain hazy, as much as Perl loves and uses them. And I can't find 'existentialize"' in my dictionary."

I’m no more in favor of neologisms with the suffix “-ize” than Updike is, but surely writers use a fair number of words that haven’t yet made it into the dictionary??

(I've enjoyed reading these responses, everyone.)

[Helene]

Rauschenberg's Huge "Echo" has a place of honor at Seattle's Benaroya Hall, at the top of a short flight of stairs from the main lobby to the first landing. Sadly, the official website has no photos, only a description:

http://www.seattlesymphony.org/benaroya/about/art.aspx

[kfw]

(I've enjoyed reading these responses, everyone.)

So have I. :blush: