Goodbye, Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg, who died yesterday night, was one of the first artists I came to care about during art school. Not just because he famously erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning (one of the first artists whose work I came to loathe), nor just because his medium-ambiguous works helped make possible much of what we take for granted in contemporary art, but because his work, while decidedly experimental and ground-breaking, was really beautiful. No, really! And here I mean “beautiful” not in some perverse, attenuated sense that might be paraphrased “ugly in an interesting way”, but more in the sense of “extremely pleasing to the senses”.
The NY Times obituary has plenty to say about Rauschenberg’s massive contributions to 20th century art in these respects, his connections to kindred spirits John Cage and Jasper Johns, and so forth, so I won’t repeat the obvious. I will simply ask you to take a good look at his Monogram in a moment of silence. Can you imagine that tire being around anything besides that goat–or that goat being anywhere but inside that tire? Of course you can. But that’s where they ended up, via Robert Rauschenberg’s actions, and the result elevates goat, tire, art, and man. RR, we will miss you.
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I felt sad in this way when Vonnegut died. Brilliant, maverick octogenarians are few and far between. Goodbye, Rauschie.
If David Hockney dies I’m going to be really friggin pissed.