ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG  - Tate Modern

Female figure (1959) -
R. Rauschenberg & S. Weil

1 December 2016 – 2 April 2017

I was excited to see this exhibition. Rauschenberg’s eclectic range of work on display here was stimulating but left me wanting more. I hoped to find a link to my own portrait work with Rauschenberg’s use of common or recognisable images. 

  

Rauschenberg’s signs and assemblages particularly appeared to create a more ‘sophisticated’ aesthetic due to his use of nostalgic or ‘timely’ ephemera.

However, this sophistication could have been due to the fact that we as ‘viewers’ are appreciating this work in the 21^st century; his ‘ephemera’ (ephemera: interestingly defined as collectable items that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity), with their faded colours and subject matter, hark back to a simpler, more wholesome, bygone era. Therefore, it may be that we are unable to fully appreciate Rauschenberg’s work in the manner that it was made as we are five or six decades removed from that time.

Retroactive (1964) Oil paint & Silkscreen - R. Rauschenberg

I think the value of the work on display was that strong association to consumerism. The idea of Mass Customerisation (see Arthur Buxton blog entry) was revisited in the application and considered production of each of his pieces; in particular Rauschenberg’s silkscreen prints using photographic repetition is manufacturing in multiples, he allowed disparate works to become connected with each other with his abstract imagery giving way to the recognisable.  The example, Retroactive (1964), a mixed media hybrid, incorporating oil paint with silkscreen and pigment transfer, used instantly recognisable iconic imagery relating to the space race and military action. This piece was created only three weeks before Kennedy was shot and ‘embodies the optimism and tragedy of the 1960s’. The work was an opportune piece of creativity ‘manufactured’ by the artist.

Mirthday Man (an anagram (a pun)) 1998 - R. Rauschenberg

My favourite example of Rauschenberg’s work was the huge cacophony of texture, colour and repeat pattern that was ‘Mirthday Man (1997) – an inkjet dye and pigment transfer piece on poly-laminate. This large print, sometimes abstract sometimes realistic, conjured up a life and energy which had been dampened and diluted in some other pieces of his work. It reflected art and life and has directly inspired my multi-layered digital print "Milfi'.

'Milfi' - multi layered digital print inspired by Rauschenberg

‘Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made (I try to act in the gap between the two)’. 

Quarry (1968) - R. Rauschenberg

While this exhibition pulled Rauschenberg’s work together in a chronological sequence and reflected the diversity and multiplicity of his obvious talent, it gave little insight into the true proliferation of his work. What moved me most of all were the series of descriptive quotes by the artist of work on show – these words were more evocative, perceptive and human.

‘A picture is more like the real world when it is made out of the real world’.

‘I want my paintings to look like what’s going on outside my window, rather than what’s inside’.

‘We move from movement to movement, mood to mood making decisions that control our acts, in-sighting and recognising that facts are changing like the light we are seeing them in and in our motivation to look’.

Caryatid Cavalcade (1985) - R. Rauschenberg