Rauschenberg: Art and Life A Caveat – blah blah blah – Los Angeles, Calif
This book is unquestionably worth buying — the biographical essay is tremendous in insight and provides excellent context for RR’s work, and the color reproductions are beautiful — but please be advised that the man’s later works (70s – mid 80s) are somewhat over-represented. In fact, I would say that only about 60% of the book is devoted to what’s considered the man’s most productive and ingenious period, the 50s -60s. As a result, I’ll likely be purchasing the Combines book as a supplement to this one.
Another quibble is that quite a few of the pictures (although marvelously rendered) are in black and white — and for no good reason!
This book is incredible for what it is, and should be an especially strong purchase for those who own catalogues of the man’s early work or need a biographical overview of his life and times. It is not, however, the comprehensive pictorial overview of RR’s early work that I had expected when purchasing.
‘Notes to accompany an exhibition’ would be a fitting title for this book for those who are unaware of Mary Lynn Kotz’ revised/updated biography of Robert Rauschenberg as they currently enjoy the spectacular traveling exhibition of his works, COMBINES, currently filling the generous spaces of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Though the accompanying exhibition catalogue/book COMBINES, also available through Amazon.com, touches on many aspects of Rauschenberg’s life, Kotz is a bit more conversational and adds to the art history aspect of the painter’s life by a broader survey of his output.
Rauschenberg is about as American as they come, being born in Texas to a conservative family, destined for a career in the ministry but instead electing to flee the home and settle in New York where his more bohemian aspects blossomed into the important art figure he has become. His life has been enriched by alliances with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, by struggle with some addictions, a bumpy personal life, but he has always been a warm, friendly, rather selfless artist who was unafraid to create art that reflects his life and times.
Some of the more helpful information Kotz delivers concerns Rauschenberg’s idiosyncratic art techniques, creative modes in painting, photography, collage, construction, print making, and contributions to the theater (not only with sets designed for ballets, but incorporating poetry and media in a poignant manner into his sculptural works). Rauschenberg the Humanitarian also emerges as an icon for other artists to emulate in his serious work with global communication within the arts as a manner of inviting meaningful international conversation.
The book contains a generous number of full color plates of his art and his conceptual stages. The broad aspect of the works Kotz elects to include is very much in her favor as a biographer. For those who wish to understand the man behind the extraordinary art that is traveling the country, add this fine volume to the library. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 06 : Iconoclastic, generous, inventive, impulsive, sensitive, gregarious, prodigious: these are just some of the words to describe Robert Rauschenberg and the art he has been making now for 50 years. From the age of 38, when he received the grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Rauschenberg has been a pivotal figure in the art of our time. This revised edition of the classic biography of the artist, first published in 1994, adds 36 new pages to cover the significant moments in the last ten years of his career, including his monumental career retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1997.
With 230 illustrations, 112 in full color, Rauschenberg: Art and Life is a richly impressive and highly readable portrait of the artist. Showing the astonishing dexterity and range of Rauschenberg’s art even as an emerging artist; the creation of his now famous combines; his eagerness to bridge art and technology; and the establishment of ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), this is a book, as one reviewer put it, “to grab from a burning house.” AUTHOR BIO: Mary Lynn Kotz is the author of the best-selling Upstairs at the White House, Marvella, and A Passion for Equality (with Nick Kotz). She is a contributing editor to ARTnews and has written for many major magazines in her 20-year career as a journalist. She lives in Washington, D.C. Rauschenberg: Art and Life
- Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (October Books)
- Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg
- Robert Rauschenberg: Combines
- Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons
- Robert Rauschenberg: Transfer Drawings of the 1960s
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