One more on Rauschenberg

Tyler Green's blog Modern Art Notes is a great and sometimes contentious journey through the modern art scene.

A recent post discussed the many articles and remembrances of Robert Rauschenberg following his death. Tyler notes the unwillingness of the vast majority of these odes to address RR's homosexuality.


Photo source Modern Art Notes

He leads with:

As I read through the news coverage of Robert Rauschenberg's death last week, I noticed a disturbing sameness: Most writers and critics refused to say that Rauschenberg was gay, and all but two critics were unwilling to say why that is important. This is a problem for two reasons: Rauschenberg's frequently referenced his homosexuality in groundbreaking ways in his own work (much of which was autobiographical and even more of which was intensely about the then-immediate present), and because history tends to hetero-wash whenever possible, to ignore or deny homosexuality when it's convenient.

We are much to willing to sweep under the rug race, class, sexual preference and other things that we let divide us.

Ode To Robert Rauschenberg

I was first discovering art back in 2006 and one of those artists I discovered was Robert Rauschenberg. I had some interesting found pieces, a Taiwanese Buddhist text, pottery shards from Steven's yard, and an old decaying Persian rug. I had great fun making this and nearly two years later, it may not be finished. The title? "The International Flag of Depression". Go figure.

Mixed media on plywood. Old Oriental rug, acrylics, ink, pieces of china, leaf prints, and cutouts from a Tawainese book on Buddhism.

My new painting site

My new website on my painting and art in general is finally online at ChrisBeachamPaints.

As a teaser I have posted some more NYT links on Rauschenberg at its Art World blog page.

Robert Rauschenberg: Death of an Open Eye

Rauschenberg est morte.

Readers of this space know that my first artistic influence was Dada. So it is not surprising that I felt a kinship to Rauschenberg's "assemblages." I love the way he took the found and random and found composition and beauty (and irreverence).

Here's a quote from the NYT obit:

Mr. Rauschenberg, who knew that not everybody found it easy to grasp the open-endedness of his work, once described to the writer Calvin Tomkins an encounter with a woman who had reacted skeptically to “Monogram” (1955-59) and “Bed” in his 1963 retrospective at the Jewish Museum, one of the events that secured Mr. Rauschenberg’s reputation: “To her, all my decisions seemed absolutely arbitrary — as though I could just as well have selected anything at all — and therefore there was no meaning, and that made it ugly.

“So I told her that if I were to describe the way she was dressed, it might sound very much like what she’d been saying. For instance, she had feathers on her head. And she had this enamel brooch with a picture of ‘The Blue Boy’ on it pinned to her breast. And around her neck she had on what she would call mink but what could also be described as the skin of a dead animal. Well, at first she was a little offended by this, I think, but then later she came back and said she was beginning to understand.”

I'll toast his memory tonight.

Two more...

Two pieces related to my depression.

The first of these is from a very bad night, August 8th I think. I sat in my backyard crying and began writing using black ink and a nib. I wrote quickly and sloppily and tore out the pages as I finished. I'm not sure how much you can read but it represents the worst night of my depression. Before you try to have me committed understand that my therapist thought the writings were fairly normal and nothing to worry about. He was concerned that the words reflect a good deal of self loathing. Duh!

Mixed media on canvas. Pen, ink and paper, acrylics, collage.

The second takes me back to Robert Rauschenberg. I had great fun making this and it may not be finished yet. I kept looking at it hoping it would tell me what it was. Finally it said "The International Flag of Depression". Go figure.

Mixed media on plywood. Old Oriental rug, acrylics, ink, pieces of china, leaf prints, and cutouts from a Tawainese book on Buddhism.