Robert Rauschenberg

Eager Not to Miss the Rauschenberg Retrospective at the Tate Modern, Graham Hooper Guides us Through This Extraordinary Show.

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The last image in the 412-page catalogue for Tate Modern’s current high profile retrospective, “Robert Rauschenberg”, shows one on the artists most iconic ‘combines’ in x-ray. Called Monogram, it combines sculpture (a stuffed goat and a car tyre) with painting and general mixed media collage to create, as the name suggests, a very personal motif. The alchemy of hugely diverse materials (newspaper cuttings, metal, wood and plaster, with a shoe and tennis ball all set on casters) and in such a playful and daring mix is probably just as provocative and exciting now as it was back in late 50’s America. The fact that it is no ordinary photograph, but an x-ray no less, highlights the inventive use of technology and the desire to see the world differently that was so characteristic of this all-rounder artist.

Born in the small oil-town of Port Arthur, Texas, where being an artist wasn’t ever a career option, Rauschenberg only discovered the possibility after a chance encounter with art in a gallery whilst on leave from the Navy. He recognised a Gainsborough as the design from a reproduction on the back of a set of playing cards. Such experiences, plus his formative years in Post-War Texas, were to influence the rest of his prolific and diverse creative output over the next six decades. Port Arthur, now the site of a significant oil refinery, always had the petro-chemical industry in its soul, and Rauschenberg’s work is no different. Throughout his long and productive career oil, cars, tyres all reappear to remind us of his roots.