A Guide to Robert Rauschenberg: Rauschenberg’s Top Artworks

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist active in the art world from the 1950s until 2008. His work, sometimes called Neo-Dadaist, aimed to bridge the gap between art and life, incorporating everyday objects and a wide variety of materials to create playful, tactile works. Rauschenberg worked in several mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance.

Some of his key works include the White paintings, the Night Blooming series, Automobile Tire Print, and Erased de Kooning Drawing, a drawing he commissioned from artist Willem de Kooning for the purpose of erasing it (with de Kooning’s permission). The work features a mat with an inscription by Jasper Johns.

Here’s a brief sketch of Robert Rauschenberg’s life and career:

• Early life and studies: Milton Ernest Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925. He briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin studying pharmacology but dropped out because he refused to dissect a frog for biology class. After a year in the Navy, he studied at several art schools, including the Kansas City Art Institute, the Académie Julian in Paris, the Art Students League in New York, and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied under artists such as the Bauhaus artist Josef Albers and avant-garde composer John Cage.
• Early career: In the early 1950s, Rauschenberg traveled and exchanged ideas with many contemporary artists, including painters Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns and choreographers Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. These artists would become collaborators in his artistic ventures. His first major exhibition came in 1953, where he displayed his White series at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.
• Artistic success: By the 1960s, Rauschenberg’s work was extremely popular throughout the United States and abroad. He won the Venice Biennale’s Grand Prize for painting, the Commandant de l’Ordre des Lettres, and the National Medal of the Arts. Several major retrospectives were held to celebrate his work, including at the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum.
• Death and legacy: Robert Rauschenberg died in 2008 in Captiva Island, Florida, from heart failure. His intense artistic experimentation became a benchmark for several artistic movements that followed him, most notably the pop art movement. His work can be seen worldwide, including at the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He had also spent much of his life creating foundations and organizations that advocated for and supported artists, including the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (RRF), and Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT).

Robert Rauschenberg’s work is known for its experimentation. Throughout his 60-year career, his work was constantly evolving and changing. However, two main principles were constant: The combination of materials and techniques and the use of everyday objects.

Rauschenberg coined the term “combine” to describe much of his work—a word meant to encompass the wide variety of materials and techniques that he combined to create a piece of art. For example, in his 1959 combine Canyon, he used paper, oil paint, pencil, fabric, metal, cardboard, photography, wood, mirror, string, a paint tube, a pillow, and a taxidermied eagle.

Rauschenberg was especially interested in bringing everyday objects into fine art, bridging the gap between art and life, and creating playful, interesting works out of everyday items. He would often walk the streets of New York City to find discarded objects that he could incorporate into his art, using everything from clothing items and gravel to newspaper and nails.

Robert Rauschenberg had a considerable effect on modern art:

• Rejected “coded meaning:” Rauschenberg’s predecessors were followers of abstract expressionism, rejecting representational work in favor of abstract art that often contained carefully coded meaning—for instance, aiming to conjure a particular feeling. Rauschenberg instead wanted to separate his art from meaning, creating work that could be beautiful and enjoyed in various ways, similar to the Dada movement. This idea paved the way for the rising generation of artists to release their stress about meaning and simply produce art.
• Appropriated media images: Rauschenberg was a pioneer of appropriating media images, such as magazines or print cutouts, in his work. This technique was incredibly inspirational to artists like Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine, who solidified the presence of media images in art.
• Experimented with silkscreen printing: Rauschenberg was one of the forerunners to experiment with silkscreen printing, which became a technique closely associated with the pop artists of the next generation, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
  

A few of the most well-known artworks by Robert Rauschenberg include:

1. 1. Night Blooming series (1951): Rauschenberg made this series of black paintings while studying in art school, painting black canvases and incorporating dark dirt and gravel for a dark, monochromatic effect.
2. 2. White series (1951): These white paintings were some of Rauschenberg’s most well-known early works—a series of five large canvases that he painted entirely white. His goal was to create pieces that looked as if human hands hadn’t touched them.
3. 3. Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953): In the early 1950s, Rauschenberg reached out to established abstract expressionist artist Willem de Kooning asking for a drawing that Rauschenberg could erase, creating a new work of art simply out of context. De Kooning agreed, and in 1953 Rauschenberg unveiled Erased de Kooning Drawing, a primarily white canvas in a small gilded frame.
4. 4. Red series (1953–1954): Rauschenberg’s Red paintings are his first “combines,” He used different paint applications and materials like newsprint to create a textured, varied surface on the canvases.
5. 5. Rhyme (1956): Rhyme is considered one of Rauschenberg’s best combines, using a combination of paint, found paper, and even a necktie to create a cohesive composition.
6. 6. Canyon (1959): Canyon, one of Rauschenberg’s most famous combines, incorporates the most eclectic combination of objects—from a pillow to a taxidermied eagle—to suggest a canyon.
7. 7. Monogram (1959): Monogram, one of Rauschenberg’s major combines, features a taxidermied Angora goat passing through a car tire. It is often considered Rauschenberg’s most famous work of art.
8. 8. A Modern Inferno (1965): In the early 1960s, Life magazine commissioned Robert Rauschenberg for a work to commemorate Inferno writer Dante’s 700th birthday. The resulting 34 illustrations incorporate media images, art reproductions, pencil sketches, paint, and even *feature Dante as an astronaut.
9. 9. Stoned Moon series (1969–1970): In 1969, NASA invited Robert Rauschenberg to watch the Apollo 11 launch. Afterward, he produced a series of lithographs that combined text, sketches, and images from NASA archives to commemorate the experience.

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