Remember My Name: Rauschenberg

In this blog post I will be analysing the following piece of artwork by former American graphic artist, sculptor and painter Robert Rauschenberg, of whom was and is well known for his earlier works which anticipated the pop art movement which emerged back in 1950's America. Rauschenberg spent most of his life working in New York City creating combinations of many different materials and objects which reflected the political and cultural views of himself and others of each decade he worked in all the way up until his death at the age of 82 due to heart failure on May 12th, 2008 in Florida, USA.

In 1995, at the age of 70, Rauschenberg was rightfully awarded the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts after contributing over 40 years of his working life to innovative mark making. One of his innovations in particular was his use of 'combines' (which he coined himself to describe his work) which are basically a combination of painting and sculpture made from many different objects which are then incorporated into a painted canvas. Many of his combines were puzzles of images and words that linked together to create a narrative in a piece: such as the one shown below. Considered to be his most famous piece is a stuffed taxidermy goat passing through an automobile tire entitled Monogram (1950's) which can be seen bellow on the right:






The piece shown above to the left (the one in particular that I will be analysing in detail) is titled: 'Estate' and was found on the popular image sharing site Pinterest. It is currently owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was created in New York City back in 1963 by Rauschenberg with oil and silkscreen ink on canvas.

During this period of time, many historical events took place in America, ones in which will be remembered for years to come, for example in the year 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, November 22 and Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I have a dream' speech in front of 200,000 black and white supporters in Washington DC on August 28. These events most likely would have affected Rauschenberg's work as he was a supporter of John F. Kennedy and believed in racial equality.

This piece contains a lot of red, white, blue and black which would suggest that Robert was possibly trying to convey a generally negative emotion about certain aspects of New York City (of which many aspects of the city are shown such as The Statue of Liberty) and/or the events during this time taking place in America (listed above) as these colours are linked to themes such as danger, blood, death, coldness, sadness, lifelessness etc.

The composition also features a few counts of repetition which could be used to represent rhythm within each instance, for example in the bottom right of the canvas three images of the same filled glass of water are shown, however each image is slightly different and therefore could represent a change in people's views over time towards things such as a glass of water, maybe Rauschenberg felt that as time had progressed, the value of a simple glass of water had decreased in many people's eyes. However on the other hand, a worldwide iconic structure such as that of The Statue of Liberty is immortalized in gold and is surrounded by many as it is an unusual and rare object (like gold itself) unlike water, which can be found in a lot of places in New York.

A few words which stand out upon this artwork are 'STOP', 'One Way' 'One' and 'Public Shelter', all of which are street signs combined onto one single pole, although three of them appear to be commissioned by the government unlike 'Public Shelter' which appears to me as if it were made by a separate individual as it does not follow the same stylistic guidelines as the rest. The fact that three of these could be viewed as powerful commands to conform and are all created by the public authority could portray Rauschenberg's concerns over certain regulations of the government which only tell people what to do to avoid difficulties, instead of how to actually deal with them if they do occur (like helpful directions to a Public Shelter).