RAUSCHENBERG, A HUGE INFLUENCE ON THE ART WORLD AND ME TOO!

Robert Rauschenberg 

The University of South Florida drew some of the finest art professors from across the United States and we also attracted many wonderful guest speakers.  I had the opportunity to personally meet Josef Albers and Carl Sandberg.  The art department was all about what was happening in New York in the art scene, trying to stay as current and up to date as possible.  AND RAUSCHENBERG WAS HAPPENING! Also Jasper Johns, Roy Litchenstein and many, many others. New York was the center of the art world and an exciting creative place. The end of the 60's and the beginning of the 70's were formative years in the art world in the New York. And our professor's were trying their best to keep us abreast of the latest in NYC art world.

Robert Rauschenberg first pursued being a minister, then a pharmacist, but it wasn't until 1947 when in the Marines he found he had a skill for drawing and an artistic representation of the everyday.  He studied in Paris on the G.I. bill, but later left Europe for Black Mountain, North Carolina where there was an beginning art movement just in its embryonic stages.  The country's most visionary thinkers were teaching at Black Mountain College.  There Merce Cunningham(Dance), and John Cage( Music) and Rauschenberg(Art) began what would be an artistic revolution.  But, North Carolina life was soon to small for Rauschenberg who left for NYC.  And it was there he would find amid the excitement of city life, the full extent of what he would bring to the art world through his paintings.

Popular culture became an emphasis for him, as he moved away form the angst of the abstract expressionist world.  He found a new way of painting, by using materials traditionally outside of the artists reach.  He would use house paint, use a car wheel to make a print, or used found objects in his work. He created what he called his COMBINES which were meant to show the finding and forming of combinations in three dimensional collage.  These works cemented his place in art history.

Popular culture became an emphasis for him, as he moved away form the angst of the abstract expressionist world.  He found a new way of painting, by using materials traditionally outside of the artists reach.  He would use house paint, use a car wheel to make a print, or used found objects in his work. He created what he called his COMBINES which were meant to show the finding and forming of combinations in three dimensional collage.  These works cemented his place in art history.