Robert Rauschenberg's tactics - Essay Example

Explain the different tactics Robert Rauschenberg used in his work to contest abstract expressionism. Consider, as part of your response, the following quote: "It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art." Robert Rauschenberg was a celebrated American artist who gained stardom for his work during the 1950s. It was after the Second World War that Rauschenberg found art to be his true calling. He had a great contribution to the field of art, reshaping it at various points in history.1 He is most popularly known for his combines- a combination of paintings and sculptures. It was in the 1950s when Rauschenberg started incorporating mass-media images into his art. His intention for making such works was to present them in a new light; the nature of the works was receptive and unguarded while being indeterminate. The combines that he started creating during this period were exclusive representation of such an approach to art. In essence, the combines tend to show Rauschenberg’s depiction of the art that already exists. The combines were presented in different ways. Some combines had three-dimensional objects embedded in them along with the paintings. Others would contain paintings embedded in specific parts of the artwork. The 1950s saw a general trend in artwork. The assemblages were typically characteristic of art reproductions, magazines and newspaper sections. Moreover they usually had parts which were painted in a particular style i.e. Abstract Expressionism.2 Abstract expressionism refers to the art movement that emerged and gained impetus after the Second World War. It was considered as the first most important US movement towards the achievement of a global influence and power. The movement was aimed at positioning New York at the heart of the western world art; a position that was previously held by Paris. At the time that Abstract expressionism was gaining popularity in the 1950s, art in the form of combined manufactured goods was also on the rise. Artists had started to bring about changes in their art, inculcating household items and items of daily use into artwork. This type of art is seen in the works of Robert Rauschenberg, more specifically in his combines. His combines were the classic precursors of the Pop Art movement that Rauschenberg became interested in after the 1950s. Rauschenberg was an artist who entered art at the time Abstract expressionism was in its heyday after the Second World War. However he came to reject that form of art. Leo Steinberg refers to Rauschenberg's art as a flatbed image surface since his art came to compromise of ethnic and cultural pictorial representations and related objects. Such a form of imagery and art were in an open conflict with the previous forms of art practiced earlier which fell under the category of modernism and premodernism. Rauschenberg was known for making use of found pictures in his work but he juxtaposed these images with real objects. His artwork is regarded as Neo-Dada since it incorporates found elements as well as real objects. The found elements were initially used by artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters. Rauschenberg was motivated by the works of Schwitters and it was this inspiration that drove him to walk around neighborhoods, looking for objects to incorporate into his paintings. He was of the point of view that his combines should at least be as attention-grabbing as events occurring outside the window are. The reason for such an assertion was that he felt that since he was making use of real objects in his paintings and collages, the artwork would resemble the real world more once it is completed. Rauschenberg worked with collages extensively and he built upon them and diversified the elements that could be incorporated into them by the process of silkscreening photographs.3 This opened a vista of opportunities and choices for him. He used pictures from a range of sources such as the film, magazines and television and converted them to any size or color that befitted his work. In a way the elements were used to symbolically delineate the role of media in our lives. The common man has a lot of exposure to pictures and images everyday; most of them are not committed to memory while others are stored in our minds subconsciously. It was this visual noise that the artist conveyed through his artworks and which became a tool for transition. Although some of the elements that he embedded in his works were common to those used by Abstract expressionists, it was apparent that Rauschenberg distanced himself from the field of Abstract expressionism. The noise that he used in his paintings subserved to negate and refute the subjectivity promulgated by Abstract expressionists.4 According to some artists, the works of Rauschenberg have been important in representing the opposition that a new form of art receives. Where other artists have regarded the work of Rauschenberg to be a transformation from the nature to a more ethnic and cultural form of art, Craig Owens is of the perspective that his work is integral in identifying the difficulty and the challenges explicit in pursuing a form of art that defies the norms of common artwork. Moreover, other artists such as Douglas Kellner regarded Rauschenberg to be a member of the class of artists responsible for bringing about a transformational stage between the modernist and the postmodernist forms of artwork. So how was Rauschenberg's work in the postmodernist era different from the work he did in the modernist time. The most striking difference lies in the fact that the artist used pictorial representations of simple and mundane items, and sometimes the items themselves were used, to depict the concept. Nevertheless, Rauschenberg did not forego all the elements of modernist era. His postmodernist artwork was characteristic of some of the elements of abstract art as well. In the late 1950s and onwards, Pop Art emerged as a successor to the Abstract expressionism movement. Pop Art was an open rejection of the elements of Abstract expressionism and purported the use of consumerism in paintings and artwork. The period also saw a surge in the use of photography in the field of art. During the same time that Abstract expressionism started to disappear, a very incongruent faction of artists started to delve in forms of action painting that other artists had not ventured into. The various elements of action painting that these artists experimented with included gestural freedom, chance efforts and artistic concepts related to urban living. This gave rise to myriad of techniques which are seen particularly in the work of Rauschenberg. His work was focused on bridging the gap between nature and life and his techniques and tactics were also aimed at achieving this purpose. His earlier obsession with combines was now transformed into a more photographic medium of expressing himself. From the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Rauschenberg started to use photographic images from different media sources such as the newspapers. By the process of silkscreening, he embedded the pictures into the canvas, with his artwork representing a mixture of pictures from newspapers and painted passages. The pictures were introduced in a rebus-like pattern. The work was classified as neo-avant-garde and Rauschenberg “adapted the shock tactics of World War I-era Dada collagists such as Kurt Schwitters to the new postwar context of American hegemonic power”.5 Rauschenberg had a significant contribution in moving American art from Abstract expressionism to its successors. Although the later forms of art were direct responses to Abstract expressionism, he had an important part in making the shift onward. He was a connection between the works of artists of the modernist era and those of the postmodernist era. Jackson and Willem de Kooning and artists who were recognized by their works in Pop, Conceptualism, Process Art etc had a transformative link with each other by the artwork of Rauschenberg. According to Jasper Johns, no American artist creatively came up with new art more than Rauschenberg. Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, although incongruent and disparate in their perspectives and artworks, were the pioneers of a new period of experimentation in US culture. Regarding Rauschenberg, John Cage is observed to have said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look”.6 This statement is particularly useful in highlighting the strategy that Rauschenberg used to reject Abstract expressionism. The statement explained how Rauschenberg had influenced the perception of the common man. He was influential in making people realize that items of common use and junk items such as those from the street can also be used in artworks. Moreover, he helped to develop the perception that such stuff can become the part of an art seeking to be beautiful. This implied that Rauschenberg saw potential artistic beauty in the very core of consumer superfluity. Rauschenberg believed in experimenting and opposed the attitude of being correct all the time. He was of the viewpoint that the most important process is one which incorporates an unprepared, contrary to intuition attitude. It is this attitude that made him look out of the box and let his imagination run wild. He thought of life beyond the conservative limits that artists had set on art and it was this take on life and nature that makes his efforts influential in rejecting Abstract expressionism. Whenever he was working and developing new pieces of art, he used to ask himself the question if his experimentation has produced good art. This philosophy later impacted a troupe of artists who were identified with the postmodernist era. The postmodernist generation went against the typical forms of art being practiced in the 1950s and was a direct response to the works of artists of modernist era including Pollock. Rauschenberg’s paintings were influenced by some of the works of modernist artists and the all-black and all-red paintings were thought to be influenced by Pollock.7 According to Jerry Saltz, whatever the traits and characteristics of Abstract expressionism were, Rauschenberg’s artwork was different from them. Saltz describes Abstract expressionism as huge, supercilious and abstract; something that was created by older men. On the other hand, the art that emerged in the 1960s and later was the opposite of this. Neo-dada, proto-Pop and Pop art were petite, figurative, vernacular, fresh art movements; also such art was frequently made by younger gay artists. Rauschenberg himself admitted that he could not adapt Abstract expressionism. He was of the view that traits like tortured, struggle and pain would not be incorporated into his work; he could not see his artwork representing these characteristics. Therefore his paintings are in an open denial with those of the past. This can be exemplified by White Paintings; these paintings were completely rivaling the techniques used by Joseph Albers. The paintings incorporated shadows of the viewers, which according to Allan Kaprow, opened up frightening new possibilities of experimentation.8 Albers instructed his students to give respect to color, on which Rauschenberg said that it would take years for him to use two or more colors together in his works. He challenged the view of Albers that adding different colors enhanced their looks by saying that each color merely represented itself.9 He questioned the use of red to represent strong emotions such as passion; for him, red is simply red. Rauschenberg also contended that he worked on a daily basis along with his colleague, Jasper, to make the shift onward from Abstract expressionism. He employed various tactics in his art to make this shift. In 1953 when Abstract expressionism was starting to wane and the movement towards Pop Art was gaining momentum, Rauschenberg produced a unique piece of art that exemplified a painting of the postmodernist era. In 1953, Rauschenberg came up with Erased de Kooning Drawing. The painting was an attempt to remove the master of Abstract expressionist, Joseph Albers.10 Saltz observes that despite the untypical way with which he made the painting, by 15 erasers and a dark drawing, Rauschenberg referred to his work as art. He regarded it as “a monochrome no-image”.11 He said that the artwork was a means of cleansing himself and making use of and implementing the range of options that arise from using mundane objects. He also asserted that he would go to any lengths to replace opinions formed in advance of sufficient knowledge as well as change artistic perceptions related to scrupulous and methodical consideration. Rauschenberg’s Bed was one such work of art where he challenged the opinions formed in advance of sufficient knowledge and experience. The painting broke the preconceptions that arose out of a quilt. He painted on the quilt but the entire artwork gave off an impression of sheets after lovemaking. He also added toothpaste and nail polish to the artwork. The painting presented a three rotation of intuitive and visual space. When a person looks down on the painting, he both sees on, and into the painting at the same time. The painting presented an anti- Greenbergian look and it was at this connotation that Leo Steinberg said that this shift of space is the “flatbed picture plane”, a tactic that represented the most fundamental transformation in the essence of art. The painting was characteristic of a transformation from nature to culture12. Saltz also talks about another transformational painting by Rauschenberg. Monogram, with a stuffed angora goat surrounded by a tire, was a shamanic depiction of Rauschenberg. Saltz observes that the works of Rauschenberg were unique in experimenting creatively with visual syntax and optical structure. According to Roy Lichtenstein, the distinctive combines that Rauschenberg created were instrumental in bringing the era of Abstract expressionism to a stop and in bringing the subject back to art. The combines used tactics to make the shift onward from Abstract expressionism by radically bringing together paintings, sculpture, photography and items of daily use. Saltz observes that the incorporation of photography into the combines is a quality that sets these assemblages apart from previous artworks. The creative use of visual syntax and representations helped to form a new kind of visual poetry and provided Rauschenberg with a fresh form of artistic wisdom which aided in breaking the artistic norms of preconceptions. It was his skill at introducing a new kind of unpredictability and doubt into his paintings that set him apart from Abstract expressionists and paved way for a new era of Pop art. Another tactic that Rauschenberg used was to subvert and undermine the typical aspects of the object and viewer. The spatial transformations that he experimented with changed the way how the viewer normally looks at art. These tactics contested the strategies that had been used by Abstract expressionists earlier and made them angry. Abstract expressionists regarded Rauschenberg as an artist who rebelled against the very teachings of Christ. He considered him the American artist who would take art to hell. Even the well-known critic, Clement Greenberg, leveled criticisms against the works of Rauschenberg. In 1967, Greenberg is reported to have said that Rauschenberg’s works were nothing more than novelty art. The works were markedly different from the conventional artwork; however they failed to even equal Grant Wood. At the time when the art world was starting to move out of Abstract expressionism, Rauschenberg’s combines were initially seen as jokes and not considered art. Clement Greenberg did not have any praises for the combines and was responsible for making anti-Rauschenberg feelings stronger.13 Rauschenberg’s paintings were a combination of both life and art and it was in this that he found his niche as an artist. In one of his pieces, where a traffic sign was connected by a string to another box, the items used were representative of how he brought together heterogeneous goods into a single art piece. In the painting, the string linked heterogeneous items symbolically. The painting made use of ordinary items and linked them together in an artistic and creative way; it was presented in a different spatial organization than typical artwork to boot. Honnef explains how Rauschenberg was able to reject the norms of Abstract expressionism and make the shift towards Pop art. Honnef talks about how Rauschenberg purchased pieces of art made by other artists and experimented with them. These works were characteristically approved by Clement Greenberg and Abstract expressionism in general for their absolute and sublime nature. What Rauschenberg did was to destabilize and weaken the unyielding categories and artistic notions of the avant-garde. The very use of the tactic of not making his work a complete painting or a complete sculpture is a portrayal of his motives. His works were primarily focused on important happenings and events and the artist gave second priority to space and place. He is regarded to be amongst the precursor of Pop Art since he profusely made use of the elements of transportation and typography in his works.14 O’Doherty also supports the perspective that Rauschenberg worked for years against the conventional forms of art and had an important part to play in the progression towards freedom from Abstract expressionism. Rauschenberg was not a lonely and isolated voice and the striking feature of his work is the subjugation of ordinary items of daily life over the bridgehead of Abstract expressionism. O’Doherty contends that Rauschenberg tries to give substance to an uncertain and doubtful limbo present in the chasm between art and life. The combines are in essence a way of redefining how art has been perceived immediately after the Second World War. When collages, paintings, items of daily use and sculptures are considered together, one can appreciate how they present anti-logic of what is perceived by the subconscious. O’Doherty argues that it is this anti-logic that helps to make the transformation from Abstract expressionism of the modernist era to Pop art. The strategy by which the artist is able to bring about a change is to use a method that embodies life completely and delineates it in a transformed form which aspires to art. This manifest itself in the artist’s quote that Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art. Many artists including Alan R. Solomon consider the works of Rauschenberg to be a bridge between art and life, a conviction supported by Rauschenberg himself. Thus in conclusion, Rauschenberg and his contemporaries such as Cage and Cunningham, challenged the chief principles of modernism. In doing so, they distanced themselves from the deliberateness and preconceptions that bolstered the ethos of Abstract expressionism and ultimately contributed towards the shift from modernist art to postmodernist art.15 Read More