Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008)
American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s.
(art is) a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.
I used to think of that line in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’, about the ‘sad cup of coffee’.. ..I have had cold coffee and hot coffee and lousy coffee, But I’ve never had a sad cup of coffee.
Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two)
I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness. (around 1965, fh)
Work is my joy.. ..Work is my therapy, I don’t know anybody who loves work as much as I do.
..I don’t think he (Joseph Albers, fh) ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended.. ..I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn’t have any ideas to support that sort of thing – I didn’t want color to serve me, in other words.
The photo can insist on reviewing moments that were unseen, or not know they were seen but passed in viewing. John Cage said (I don’t know if they were his own remarks or Zen) his goal was not to get somewhere; he just wanted to enjoy the trip. That’s the quality I want in all of my work, that a specific goal or accomplishment would be allied to the fact. I noticed a long time age, when I went to a strange country, that I had the best time and the greatest experiences when I thought I was lost, because when you are lost you look so much harder.
(we gave) permission to do what we wanted.. .. It would be hard to imagine my work at that time (around 1956 – 1960, fh) without his (Jasper Johns, fh) encouragement.
One gets as much information as a witness of activity from a fleeting glance (in the photo, fh), like a quick look, sometimes in motion, as one does staring at the subject. Because even if you remain stationary your mind wanders, and it’s that kind of activity that I would like to get into the photograph – a confirmation of the fact that everything is moving.
I didn’t even know that there was art until I left Texas when I was eighteen. The only painting I knew (and I didn’t know it was a ‘painting’ until much later) was Hope, the woman sitting on the globe with.. ,that green you only get in reproductions! I think that negates the idea of a painter’s relation to official – old master art. It was neutral ground – that one picture – I responded to visual things.. ..Hope (the painter, fh) was just sort of visual thing there, not art.
1948 Black Mountain College N.C. Disciplined by Albers . Learned photography. Worked hard but poorly for Albers. Made contact with music and modern dance. Felt too isolated, Sue (Weil, they married soon, fh) and I moved to NYC. Went to Art Students League. Vytlacil & Kantor. Best work made at home. Wht. Painting with no.’s best example. Summer 1950, Outer Island Conn. Married Sue Weil. Christoher (son) Born July 16, 1951 in NYC. First one man show Betty Parsons’s (autobiographic notes)
It is completely irrelevant that I am making them. ‘Today’ is their creator. (1950, comment on his series ‘White Paintings’)
I feel a conscious attempt to be more and more related to society. That’s what’s important to me as a person. I’m not going to let other people make all the changes; and if you do that, you can’t curt yourself of.. ..I’m only against the most obvious things, like wars and stuff like that. I don’t have any particular concept about an utopian way things should be. I have a prejudice or a bias, it is that there shouldn’t be any particular way. Being a complex human organ, we are capable of a variety; we can do so much. The big fear is that we don’t do enough with our senses, with our activities, with our areas of consideration; and these have got to get bigger year after year.
I don’t feel any direct relationship between what I do and existing art. Though there is un unavoidable progression: the things all paintings have in common are paint, and color, and some means of application. With the standard you can make any two pictures appear either alike of different. I don’t think whether they’re alike or different is really very interesting.
Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made.
(I) could not design forms and colors that would achieve some preconceived result.. ..I wasn’t going to hire them. I was more interested in working WITH them than in their working for me.
With the black ones I was interested in getting complexity without their revealing much – in the fact that there was much to see but not much showing. I wanted to show a painting that could have the dignity of not calling attention to itself. In both the blacks and the whites (paintings, fh) there was none of the familiar aggressiveness of art that says, ‘Well, here it is, whether you like it or not’. (on his Black Paintings', fh)
It’s because I wait, I wait until it’s there again. Whatever is there (in the eye of the camera, fh) is a truth, but a truth you have to believe in. What you see in front of you is a fact. You click when you believe it’s the truth. The information is waiting to become in essence a concentration, concentrated so clearly that it can be projected back into real life, into your recognition. It could be any size.
I am always afraid of explaining what I am doing, because my mind works so perversely. If I know why I am doing something it immediately goes to another channel and I try not to do that anymore. So in any interview there is a possibility that I have to leave the interview and change my entire life. I think I´ll stop now and let the works answer the questions. To much information is an obstacle to seeing. My works are created to be seen.
Every minute everything is different everywhere. It is all flowing.. ..The duty or beauty of a painting is that there is no reason to do it nor any reason not to. It can be done as a direct act or contact with the moment and that is the moment you are awake and moving. It all passes and is never true literally as the present again leaving more work to be done.