Book Description
Poetic and lush, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This approach, first explored by Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, proved prescient and has become increasingly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most ground-breaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials, and the complexity of forms that are characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and iconographical, subject-driven early Pop Art. This book focuses on the works created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the artist's 50-year career, and constitutes the most complete survey of the Combines ever presented, as well as the most rigorous analysis of their political, social, autobiographical, and aesthetic significance. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel titled "Reading Rauschenberg" offers an iconographic analysis of the earlier Combines, based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Other texts help to contextualize the Combines, such as Thomas Crow's essay that calls them the major artistic statement of their time, and the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own from De Kooning to Pop art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Must have for fans
Living in a place where its rare to see an original Rauschenberg combine, this book has standout photgraphs of the works, with detailed views to complement the full image- the first two essays also provide some keen insights into the processes and influences on Rauschenberg's life and work. Definitely recommend for artists
or interested art followers. These works constitute what I think were the finest in his career.

The best art exhibitof 2006
It is great to be able to have this book as a remembrance of the great exhibition it illustrates. Every single piece reproduced here is a masterpiece of creativity and the quality of the reproductions do justice to the works of art, which is no small achievement considering that the Combines are intricate mixtures of sculptures and paintings. You also discover what a master of color the artist is, an aspect often overlooked by his critics. I love Rauschenberg's Combines, they give me joy, they make me happy and so does this book.

Robert Rauschenberg: Man or Genius Man?
This book blatantly rocks my world. It has a very nice selection of images, and is much more affordable than the godly $900 retrospective catalogue. Amen.

daringly junky, breathtaking, beautiful
This book is a catalogue for current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and then the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and in Europe at the Pompidou Center, Paris and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

As installed at the Metropolitan Museum of art, the show is stunning. It's astonishing that this exhibit is the first time these works from the 1950's have been shown together. These "combines" -- art somewhere between painting, collage, and sculpture -- are a foundation of modern art, so much so that art of the second half of the century is hardly conceivable without them. This makes looking at the work afresh more difficult than usual, since seeing these pieces together in 2006 means also viewing through a legacy and school of influence.

But what phenomenal pieces they are! You can see Rauschenberg gobbling down visual techniques whole - collage, assemblage, juxtaposing printed images, materials, sculpture. They are daringly junky and breathtakingly beautiful. I have know idea whether you'd call this conceptual art, or the most luscious, messy opposite of conceptual art you've ever seen. The works are fearlessness. Really inspiring.

The catalogue has excellent reproductions, and the photography is quite good at conveying the depth of the pieces - some of the works are presented from several angles so the more sculptural pieces are well conveyed.

A Richly Rewarding Survey of the Gifts of Robert Rauschenberg
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: COMBIINESis the name of an exhibition currently on display and one garnering some of the warmest acceptance by both critics and public alike of any retrospective survey in years.Not that Rauschenberg is a 'discovery' unearthed by this generous volume: there have been many excellent monographs and catalogues printed about this extraordinarily gifted artist who for the past half century has been creating art from found and constructed objects.

Rauschenberg's art has always had secondary messages - political, anti-war, ethnic, sexual, and ecological statements - housed in the fascinatingly complex assemblages that are part of the collections of the major museums around the world.This fine book limits its survey to the prescient years 1954 to 1964, that period during which Rauschenberg became well known and highly respected for his art and beliefs.Curator Paul Schimmel writes a fine essay about this period and accompanies his own perceptions with those garnered from a very informative shared conversation with Rauschenberg himself. Likewise Thomas Crow writes an immensely readable chapter on just how Rauschenberg came in this realm of artistic expression and from Crow's writing we learn much about the mid-century changes in American art.

The reproductions of the art works are excellent and if there aren't as many images as one would wish, it is because of the self-imposed limited time frame in Rauschenberg's career of the exhibition.A fine volume, highly recommended for all art history majors and for those under the spell of this great artist.Grady Harp, February 06 ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Rauschenberg's best
These works have a special place in Rauschenberg's oeuvre, taking his marriage of art and life to the extreme. They are profoundly literal, and to my mind, the most audacious things he's ever done. Here it is. If you want art in the modern world, if you want to see beauty in the world around you, take a cardboard box and put it on the wall. That's it. Funny how his imagination then drove him to elaborate on this theme, from simple compositions to complex phrasings in cardboard boxes, to the extremes of trompe l'oeil, flourescent back-lighting, and other technically refined means, all to explore the basic premise: beauty is all around us, even in our cast-offs. And what we think of as disposable says a lot about our priorities. The superb essays in this book do their job of illuminating the art without smothering it in analysis. The works speak for themselves. I wish I could have seen the exhibition at Menil, though I did get to see many of these pieces at Sonnabend Gallery in NYC in the early 90s. This is a great book for the lover of modern art, but also anyone who's ever spent quality time staring in rapt adoration at an oily mud puddle or a pile of raked leaves. Essential!!! ... Read more

Book Description
Robert Rauschenberg is one of the most important visual artists of the second half of the twentieth century. In Random Order, Branden Joseph examines Rauschenberg's work in the context of the American neo-avant-garde. One of the foundations of his study is Rauschenberg's professional relationship with experimental composer John Cage. From the moment of their encounter at Black Mountain College in 1952, Joseph argues, Rauschenberg and Cage initiated a new avant-garde project, one that approached the idea of difference not in terms of negation but as a positive force. Claiming that Rauschenberg's work cannot be understood solely from the standpoint of the Frankfurt School--whose theories have dominated discussions of avant-garde and neo-avant-garde aesthetics--Joseph turns to the theoretical positions of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Rauschenberg's neo-avant-garde was not a simple repetition of earlier avant-garde movements, Joseph shows, but a series of practices that opposed the rise of postwar spectacle, commodification, and mass conformity.

Beginning with the White Paintings, Joseph examines Rauschenberg?s artistic development from 1951 to 1971. He looks at the black paintings, Red Paintings, Elemental Paintings and Elemental Sculptures, Combines and Combine paintings, transfer drawings and silkscreens, performances, and explorations in art and technology. Joseph's study not only offers new interpretations of Rauschenberg's work, but also deepens our understanding of the entire neo-avant-garde project. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Indispensable
This study of Rauschenberg will doubtless make itself pretty much indispensable in the literature on the artist.It's a brilliant study- Joseph is in command of the literature on the topic, demonstrates a great deal of theoretical sophistication, as well as showing a lot of sensitivity to the works and their context.

Joseph's contention is to explore Rauschenberg's work in relation to the Neo-avant-garde, seeking to show that his work (along with his colleague John Cage) was neither a farcical repetition of 1920s Dada (ie jaded attempts to "shock" the viewer), nor was it an ironic casting-off of the avant-garde project in favour of a capitulation to commodity capitalism (ie through his pop culture references and so on).Instead, Joseph argues- convincingly- that Rauschenberg (and Cage) sought to escape the tyranny of the self- the "ego" of Absract Expressionism, in order to open up perception to differentiation and multiplicity- an attempt to open up a space beyond the totalised structures of late capitalism. (Joseph's concerns give away his being an ex-student of Benjamin Buchloh- hence these particularly Frankfurt School concerns).So for Joseph, Rauschenberg's White Paintings, or his Tire Print with John Cage, were not simply juvenile pranks, nor farcical, worn-out shock tactics, but serious attempts to disclocate habitual modes of perception and cognition- in this way, Rauschenberg both differs from, and continues the avant-garde project of political change.

Joseph makes a good case- in particular, his first chapter, on Rauschenberg and Cage, where he examines their interest in temporality and flux in relation to the ideas of Bergson, is quite brilliant.But the level of discussion is sustained throughout- it's a compelling and fascinating read which will doubtless provoke a great deal of thought.

As you would expect from the MIT Press, its not a study for the lay reader- the usual phalanx of thinkers are brought to bear- Foucault, Deleuze, Bataille and the like- although Joseph draws on them judiciously, without detracting from the focus of his study.In fact its very readable indeed- Joseph hasn't succumbed (yet) to the puffed-up rhetorical excesses of some of his October colleagues. ... Read more

Book Description
Iconoclastic, generous, inventive, impulsive, sensitive, gregarious, prodigious: these are just some of the words to describe Robert Rauschenberg and the art he has been making now for 50 years. From the age of 38, when he received the grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Rauschenberg has been a pivotal figure in the art of our time. This revised edition of the classic biography of the artist, first published in 1994, adds 36 new pages to cover the significant moments in the last ten years of his career, including his monumental career retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1997.

With 230 illustrations, 112 in full color, Rauschenberg: Art and Life is a richly impressive and highly readable portrait of the artist. Showing the astonishing dexterity and range of Rauschenberg's art even as an emerging artist; the creation of his now famous combines; his eagerness to bridge art and technology; and the establishment of ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), this is a book, as one reviewer put it, "to grab from a burning house." AUTHOR BIO: Mary Lynn Kotz is the author of the best-selling Upstairs at the White House, Marvella, and A Passion for Equality (with Nick Kotz). She is a contributing editor to ARTnews and has written for many major magazines in her 20-year career as a journalist. She lives in Washington, D.C. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Expanded Biography of Robert Rauschenberg
'Notes to accompany an exhibition' would be a fitting title for this book for those who are unaware of Mary Lynn Kotz' revised/updated biography of Robert Rauschenberg as they currently enjoy the spectacular traveling exhibition of his works, COMBINES, currently filling the generous spaces of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.Though the accompanying exhibition catalogue/book COMBINES, also available through Amazon.com, touches on many aspects of Rauschenberg's life, Kotz is a bit more conversational and adds to the art history aspect of the painter's life by a broader survey of his output.

Rauschenberg is about as American as they come, being born in Texas to a conservative family, destined for a career in the ministry but instead electing to flee the home and settle in New York where his more bohemian aspects blossomed into the important art figure he has become. His life has been enriched by alliances with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, by struggle with some addictions, a bumpy personal life, but he has always been a warm, friendly, rather selfless artist who was unafraid to create art that reflects his life and times.

Some of the more helpful information Kotz delivers concerns Rauschenberg's idiosyncratic art techniques, creative modes in painting, photography, collage, construction, print making, and contributions to the theater (not only with sets designed for ballets, but incorporating poetry and media in a poignant manner into his sculptural works).Rauschenberg the Humanitarian also emerges as an icon for other artists to emulate in his serious work with global communication within the arts as a manner of inviting meaningful international conversation.

The book contains a generous number of full color plates of his art and his conceptual stages.The broad aspect of the works Kotz elects to include is very much in her favor as a biographer.For those who wish to understand the man behind the extraordinary art that is traveling the country, add this fine volume to the library.Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 06 ... Read more

Book Description
Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s, when he began to look seriously at contemporary art. While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting Double Feature, Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been [his] ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of Off the Wall, which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world.Off the Wall chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. Featuring the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim--Tomkins's stylish and witty portrait of one of America's most original and inspiring artists is fascinating, enlightening, and very entertaining. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Sycophant
I did appreciate the authors insight on a man he obviously admired and personally new.But this book fails just because Tomkins devotion is absolute, blinding the writer and reader from a coherent understanding of Rauschenberg's life and art.

Insightful review of Raschenberg's life and work
I had just read Tomkins exhaustive and excellent biography of Duchamp when I picked up this book to read.This book is very entertaining and eye opening yet not quite the detailed book that he wrote of Duchamp.

That said, I would highly recommend you read this book, not just for the insight into Raschenberg's life and art, but also for the detail that Tompkins exercises about the Abstract Expressionist movement among others, and the contemporary artists whom Raschenberg interacted with during his time in New York.

BEST Book on Rauschenberg, Johns, et al.
Incredibly informative.Thomkins provides excrutiating detail in the most interesting way.Never a dull moment.If you have any interest in Rauschenberg, Johns, Happenings, etc., then you should read this book.There is no way that you will walk away without learning MANY new things.

A fascinating insider's view of the New York art world
Lucky, lucky, lucky.That's how I felt after a friend lent me a copy of this out-of-print book.Here was a first hand chronicle of the New York art scene from the 50s to the 70s.Although Rauschenberg was the mainartist featured, interesting vignettes about other artists were included,from Jasper Johns to Marcel Duchamp, from De Kooning to Andy Warhol.Didyou know that it was Rauschenberg who influenced Jasper Johns to quit hisbookstore job and go full-time into art?Rauschenberg's career isfascinating itself.Read and enjoy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Wonderful, though more text than I wanted
I was very pleased by the large number of high-quality reproductions. Still, as far as I'm concerned there should have been *more*. The book contains (a rough count) about 280 pages containing text or mostly text, out of about 630 total pages. However, I'm very happy with the book.

Excellent well presented book
The problem with art books is that they go out of print too quickly.This is a beautifully presented book on Rauschenberg that was released with the big retrospective at the Guggenheim in 97/98.Barnes and Noble still hadcopies avaiable as of Sept. 99, so check there -- they were evendiscounted!

This is a very comprehensive overview of Rauschenberg's work
For the fan and the collector, this book is an excellent reference guide that offers extensive illustrations of the works themselves, as well as documentary photos of the artist at work and play.A chronology,exhibition and performance histories are also included. I was also veryinterested in the information regarding Rauschenberg's work processes andcollaborations with other artists. This is a fine addition to any artlibrary.

This book was offered in paperback during a recent exhibition atthe San Francisco MOMA, so if you can find the hard cover you should buyit.

Rauschenberg, the book
The book is beautiful, if very heavy. The fault lies not with the catalog but with the show itself. THERE'S TOO MUCH STUFF and not all of it is worth looking at. The book will prove to be an invaluable companion to the catalog from the National Gallery of Art's 1976 retrospective. But it (and the show) sure could have used some editing. ... Read more

Book Description
Robert Rauschenberg, one of the most prolific and influential artists of the postwar period, has created an astonishing variety of works during a career spanning more than fifty years. To illuminate the meaning of Rauschenberg's art and the reasons behind his artistic choices, Robert Mattison in this book focuses closely on a small selection of the artist's projects. Mattison offers an interpretation of Rauschenberg's output that is both original and uniquely insightful, based on extensive research and first-hand observation of the artist at work in his studio.Like Rauschenberg's own work, the book ranges across a variety of disciplines. Mattison relates the artist's output to the visual arts, politics, technology, dance, urban theory, and other intriguing contemporary issues. The book examines Rauschenberg's working process, the effect of his dyslexia on his art, his seminal Combine paintings of the 1950s, fascination with the "space race," and collaboration with well-known choreographer Trisha Brown. A final chapter explores the art Rauschenberg exhibited in Chile during the dangerous and repressive rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A decent effort
This study of Rauschenberg is a good source of biographical information, and will be useful to those new to the artist's work, but for those wanting to pursue the more complex theoretical implications of Rauschenberg's practice, they would be advised to look elsewhere.This is because Mattison's study takes the form of a relatively conventional monograph, and it doesnt really pay much attention to some of the most interesting literature on the artist by scholars like Leo Steinberg or Rosalind Krauss. Furthermore, it treats Rauschenberg as though he were a canonised "Old Master"- this is obvious from the introduction, where Mattison treats us to a detailed description of the artist's custom-built studio in Florida- the implication being that Rauschenberg is a kind of modern-day Rubens, turning out masterpieces with the help of his eager assistants.However, Rauschenberg's work (especially his early, seminal work), seriously calls into question notions of genius, authenticity, originality, and the like- all those sacred cows of art history.But Mattison avoids these thorny questions, mainly because I think that the book is aimed at a more mainstream audience.

There is some interesting stuff here- the section on Rauschenberg's dyslexia, and how it could help us shed light on his silkscreen printing, was good, as was the section on the development of "lateral thinking" in psychology, which was contemporaneous with Rauschenberg's emergence, and ties in nicely with some of his concerns, i.e. getting away from fixed, preconceived ideas and logical (or "vertical") thinking.Also, the section on New York's urban development in the late 50s was also enlightening with regard to Rauschenberg's combines from that time.There is also a lot of information about the artist's "Stoned Moon" book, produced during his trip to Cape Canaveral in 1969.

Overall, though, its a book to sift information from, rather than to sit down and enjoy- its relatively conventional nature means that its not an especially exciting read, although those new to the artist (and art history generally) may think differently.

patchwork collage of the mind
Reflections of an artist mind unleashed, Rauschenberg's images of political and social issues are portayed through scattered images and expressive paint strokes. His use of mixed media portrays an intensitybetween his paintings and the connection expressed in his life and hissurroundings. ... Read more

Book Description
From the moment art historian Leo Steinberg championed his work in opposition to Clement Greenberg's rigid formalism, Robert Rauschenberg has played a pivotal role in the development and understanding of postmodern art. Challenging nearly all the prevailing assumptions about the visual arts of his time, he pioneered the postwar revival of collage, photography, silkscreen, technology, and performance.

This book focuses on Rauschenberg's work during the critical period of the 1950s and 1960s. It opens with a newly prefaced version of Leo Steinberg's "Reflections on the State of Criticism," the first published version of his famous 1972 essay, "Other Criteria," which remains the single most important text on Rauschenberg. Rosalind Krauss's "Rauschenberg and the Materialized Image" builds on Steinberg's essay, arguing that Rauschenberg's work represents a decisive shift in contemporary art. Douglas Crimp's "On the Museum's Ruins" examines Rauschenberg's silkscreens in the context of the modern museum. Helen Molesworth's "Before Bed" uses psychoanalytic and economic structures to examine the artist's Black Paintings of the early 1950s. A second essay by Krauss, "Perpetual Inventory," revisits both her and Steinberg's articles of nearly twenty-five years earlier. Finally, Branden Joseph's "A Duplication Containing Duplications" views Rauschenberg's silkscreens in relation to the artist's interests in technology, particularly television. ... Read more

Book Description
Featuring 42 of Robert Rauschenberg's pioneering Transfer Drawings of the 1960s, this book reproduces almost half of the works that were made in that tumultuous decade. The historical watershed of 1968 is especially well represented by 23 drawings, at least 15 of which were shown in the influential Ileana Sonnabend Gallery, Paris, in October of that year. They have never been seen before now in the U.S. The imagery in these drawings suggests a growing political consciousness, first engaging the civil rights movement, followed by the Vietnam War and other events of the stormy era. This small but exquisite volume is an absorbing sequel to the 2005-06 international touring exhibition of Rauschenberg's Combines, taking up where those multi-media constructions left off. Among the featured works are "Mainspring" (1965), the largest of the transfer drawings, and selections from the artist's own collection. ... Read more

Book Description
In the late 1940s, several prominent artists of the New York School--among them Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella--were intently studying the color black. That work, interrelated but not collaborative, resulted in an astonishing number of almost monochromatic black paintings, which today are considered treasures of many major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art's. For the first time, Black Paintings gathers all of the best of the title artist's black works together: textured black, striped black, blue-black, brown-black, black-black. In thorough illustration and thoughtful analysis, it sheds light on the differences between these postwar works as well as their commonalities. For Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg, black was a way to disappear into something new, a way to a new artistic vocabulary. For Mark Rothko, it stood for emptiness and nothingness; it asked the spectator to reflect back on it. For Ad Reinhardt, it offered denial and invisibility. Each artist's black portfolio reflects a breakthrough or transition in his own work, and, combined, they represent a larger moment of transition. The Black Paintings marked both a beginning and an end: the end of painting as illusion, as a window onto the world, and the beginning of painting as the mode for the creation of self-sufficient perceptual objects--a change that granted new roles to both artist and viewer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Black is Light
Black Paintings offers a unique view of the creative process of image making among some of the prominent painters of our time. The book has an unusual format - the font used and layout of the text, almost as though it was done on a typewriter.
The quality of the reproductions is very good although some of them require taking a hard look to see the nuances of tonal differences within the dark shades of black.
I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the art of painting. ... Read more

Book Description
Throughout his career, the American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg has consistently challenged the prevailing ideologies and techniques of the art world, and can even be said to have changed the course of art history. In the 1950s, Rauschenberg redefined the very materials that art could be made of, rebelling against the predominant Abstract Expressionism of the time with the impeccable logic that, "I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out of the real world." His boldness in pushing technical and aesthetic frontiers as well as his influential dissemination of photography, film, and television in his own work altered both painting and art at large. Rauschenberg's seminal works--from his Combines (urban trash on painted surfaces) to his silk screens--are reproduced here in full color; and more recent projects--including ROCI, Rauschenberg's own exhibition organization, which showcases artists from all over the world--are also highlighted by author Sam Hunter of Princeton University. This essential volume includes important interviews with the artist by Alain Sayag and Richard Kostelanetz, as well as a key selection of Rauschenberg's own writings. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Epoca, published by Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA) on December 28, 1998. The length of the article is 721 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Todo Rauschenberg.(Robert Rauschenberg; pintura; Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao, España)(TT: All Rauschenberg.)(TA: Robert Rauschenberg; painting; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain)
Publication: Epoca (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 28, 1998
Publisher: Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA)
Page: 74(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more