R.I.P Robert Rauschenberg
(1958)
Robert Rauschenberg,
Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82
He is a totally secular, un-fundamentalist good ol’ boy from an oil port in Texas – Port Arthur, also the home of the late Janis Joplin, with whose randy generosity, narrative howl and sense of pathos Rauschenberg has more than a little in common. But if there is any other American artist Rauschenberg’s combines of 50 years ago remind you strongly of, it’s Walt Whitman: the poet who was not afraid to contradict himself, who said he contained multitudes, who spoke for Americans in general but to no class of them in particular. (Spirit of the Age by Robert Hughes)
“I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.” (See a great photo of R.R. by Dennis Hopper, via Placebokatz)
See Big and Little Bullys (Ruminations),Visitation and more here. Rauschenberg has continually set new standards and broken the barriers of modern printmaking.
On erasing De Kooning
Erased de Kooning was the first major work of Rauschenberg’s career, and it showed many of the qualities for which he would eventually become known: a paradoxical originality (or perhaps an original paradoxicalness), energy, iconoclasm, unerring instinct. There have been a lot of artists who have used art to assault art’s own verities, but few of them did so as gracefully and cheerfully as Rauschenberg.
He thought of art not as a monument but as the record of a passing moment. I suspect he knew, too, how melancholy an idea that can be. That’s the thing about moments: They pass. And now Rauschenberg has as well, and there’s that much more to miss. (Greatness and golden slippers by Jim Lewis)
A skeleton 
in front of his astrological birth chart.
See “Autobiography” here – James Wagner
Rauschenberg talked briefly about the above piece in A Conversation with Robert Rauschenberg – Charlie Rose (1998)
Lotus Bed 
(via)
Bob and Jasper Johns early years
From the start, Rauschenberg embraced Johns in unabashedly romantic terms, “I have photos of him then that would break your heart. Jasper was soft, beautiful, lean and poetic. (Jasper Johns’ Alley Oop – Jonathan Katz) via James Wagner (a great photo of young Bob and Jasper included)
And more here from Tyler Green.
Robert Rauschenberg and dance, partners for life
Something inherently theatrical about Robert Rauschenberg’s talent — always evident in his radical feeling for color, light, composition and new ingredients and juxtapositions —prompted him to his boldest and freshest conceptions when he worked onstage. From the early 1950s until 2007 he designed for dance. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when he first came to fame, he was recurrently (at times constantly) occupied in dance theater.