Farewell, old friend.
Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82.
October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008
Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died May 12, 2008. He was 82.
Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.
A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.
Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art - not to mention between art and life.
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The New York Times-- Robert Robert Rauschenberg, American Artist, Dead at 82
I always felt a little kinship to that island, near my family's home, and to its neighbor of Sanibel, where we spent our holidays when I was a kid. In this regard Rauschenberg sort of bridged that gap between unreachable fame and the local guy at the beach pub.
Farewell, old friend. My next print will be made in your memory.