Study visit - Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg features big on this course so I felt I had to go and see the exhibition. I was busy last weekend when there was the OCA study visit but going alone gave me plenty of time to sit and ponder. From my earlier research I felt that Rauschenberg wasn't visually my cup of tea but it's often difficult to get a feel from the net. Whilst I see the point of the Retroactive II which is used extensively in the publicity material it irritates me because the image of Kennedy is so large and dominating and the woman in the top right hand corner isn't properly reflected in the mirror which is me deliberately missing the point and isn't a reasonable reaction.

On the recommendation of Red Squirel on the forum I watched the Artsnight documentary before I went which gave me a better view of Rauschenberg as a person although I'm not sure how much I should be allowing that to influence my interpretation of him as an artist.

I did like Blueprint with its ghost figures though I wondered how it was created. Multiple exposures? This is the first half of a print designed to exist in passing time could be relevant for the next part of the course but I don't see much information about it's contents.
Black painting using sheets of paint soaked newspaper. Some are whole sheets some are fragments. Were the fragments torn before application or peeled off? Was this early stage subtraction leading to the Erased De Kooning (which was rather unspectacular in real life, I think that the associated X-rays and examination, found elsewhere, are more interesting).
Why was Scatoli Personali considered so offensive? They seem very innocuous to me.
Automobile tyre print works because of it's size, it's big enough to defend it's own space.
Dirt Painting (for John Cage) is unexpectedly beautiful. I like the shape of the cracks and the subtle colour.
Charlene, like many of his combines, may have mellowed with the patina of age. I think that it looks better in a good photograph than in real life.

Without seeing the documentary I would have had no idea of the imagery of Monogram It doesn't speak to me, although the placing of the tennis ball behind the goat is amusing.

There are some interesting marks in Pantomime but I don't understand the relevance of the fans Yve-Alain Bois says"I find all the objects grafted on the late Combines, no matter how protruding, strangely inactive, and perhaps all the more so if they themselves are destined to move like the electric fans of Pantomime, 1961," (Coldbacon) I guess that if they were moving, drying the paint, they would seem more relevant.

The illustrations for Dante's Inferno are lovely. Delicate, subtle colours and interesting use of bolder dark lines at times. I'm not familiar with the story so I can't understand the references but I can see the influence of this work in modern illustrations. The traces of the rubbing to reveal the transfer give a drawn quality to the work.

Estate was my favourite painting in the exhibition. Because it's large and in portrait format it's difficult to appreciate online. 

It's quite amazing that Mud Muse was made to work and continues to work more than 40 years later.

(on my computer this video only works if you click on arrow at the bottom left NOT the big arrow in the middle of the screen!)

We have all seen the shapes of The Cardboards but overlooked them. His skill, and bravery, was to lift them out of the trash and onto the gallery wall where they are actually looked at. 

A drawing of the interesting middle bit of Untitled (Cardboard)

For me Rauschenberg's importance was in his willingness to try new things and experiment. I don't always like the "finished" works, they seem untidy and a bit slapdash, but they provided a starting point which other artists have moved forward. When the world encourages artists to find a sale and stick to it (e.g. Michael Craig Martin) it's good to see that it can be possible to work diversely and have success. It is fascinating to see how one person can prepare the ground for so many other people.