Robert Rauschenberg

"The radiance of Rauschenberg's tormented pieces of metal or his abandoned objects, his pieces of reality where constraint has mismanaged them into victims of their lives, that's a part of the emotional radiance, the way they radiate life. The way that they have been conceived, used, destroyed, and then recuperated tells us a life story of the object, of the fragment which is a part of something humanistic. There's a humanistic element-it's never too late. There is great optimism.
When Rauschenberg's works were first shown in Europe, it was a great shock for many people. I saw the first show in Paris in 1961. It was something that we had waited for. It was like a revelation in one way, and a confirmation in another. Finally, something was shown that was so strong and powerful. For me, I can't say it was a surprise, it was more like, ah, finally somebody did it right."
Pontus Hulten, excerpted from Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, published by Steidl/The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Robert Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925. After studying in Paris on the G.I. Bill in his twenties, he returned to the U.S., pausing only to investigate the Black Mountain College art scene before taking on--and swiftly conquering--New York. He had his first solo show at Leo Castelli Gallery in his early thirties, and quickly went on to become one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Rauschenberg is represented in every major museum collection, and many retrospective exhibitions of his work have toured the globe--including a thematic one at the Guggenheim Museum in 1997. In 1970, he moved to Captiva Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida, where he lived and continued to make work until his death in 2008.

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED

RAUSCHENBERG: CANYON
Text by Leah Dickerman.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870708947 | US $14.95
Pub Date: 11/30/2013
Forthcoming

ACTIVE BACKLIST

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: PHOTOGRAPHS
Edited by David White, Susan Davidson. Text by Nicholas Cullinan.
D.A.P./SCHIRMER/MOSEL
ISBN: 9781935202523 | US $75.00
Pub Date: 9/30/2011
Active | In stock

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: GLUTS
Edited by Susan Davidson. Text by Trisha Brown, Mimi Thompson. Preface by Philip Rylands.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
ISBN: 9780892073887 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 7/31/2009
Active | In stock

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
Text by Carolyn Lanchner.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870707674 | US $9.95
Pub Date: 1/31/2010
Active | In stock

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: TRANSFER DRAWINGS OF THE 1960S
Text by Lewis Kachur. Foreword by Jonathan O'Hara.
JONATHAN O'HARA GALLERY
ISBN: 9780974075143 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2007
Active | Awaiting stock

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: WORKS, WRITING, INTERVIEWS
Text by Sam Hunter.
POLIGRAFA
ISBN: 9788434311237 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Active | In stock

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: COMBINES
Edited and introduction by Paul Schimmel.
THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES
ISBN: 9783865211453 | US $75.00
Pub Date: 11/15/2005
Active | In stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

BLACK PAINTINGS: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, AD REINHARDT, MARK ROTHKO, FRANK STELLA
Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal.
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775718608 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 1/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg: Canyon

Text by Leah Dickerman.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

In the mid-1950s, declaring “there is no reason not to consider the world as a gigantic painting,” Robert Rauschenberg began a series of radical experiments with what he called “Combines,” a term he coined to describe works that fused cast-off items like quilts or rubber tires with traditional supports. “Canyon” (1959), one of the artist’s best-known Combines, is a large canvas affixed with paper, fabric, metal, personal photographs, wood, mirrors and one very striking object: a large stuffed bald eagle, wings outstretched, carrying a drooping pillow, and balanced upon a wooden plank jutting out from the canvas. “Canyon” is one of six Combines in MoMA’s collection, and a landmark work that helped to revolutionize art in the postwar period. An essay by curator Leah Dickerman explores the legacy of this extraordinary piece, and places it within a key period in Rauschenberg’s career.

Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs

1949-1962

Edited by David White, Susan Davidson. Text by Nicholas Cullinan.
Published by D.A.P./Schirmer/Mosel

Robert Rauschenberg's engagement with photography began in the late 1940s under the tutelage of Hazel Larsen Archer at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. This exposure (or experience) was so great that for a time Rauschenberg was unsure whether to pursue painting or photography as a career. Instead, he chose both, and found ways to fold photography into his Combines, maintained a practice of photographing friends and family, documented the evolution of artworks and occasionally dramatized them by inserting himself into the picture frame. As Walter Hopps wrote, "The use of photography has long been an essential device for Rauschenberg's melding of imagery... [and] a vital means for Rauschenberg's aesthetic investigations of how humans perceive, select and combine visual information. Without photography, much of Rauschenberg's oeuvre would scarcely exist." The artist himself affirmed, "I've never stopped being a photographer." This volume gathers and surveys for the first time Rauschenberg's numerous uses of photography. This publication includes portraits of friends such as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, studio shots, photographs used in the Combines and Silkscreen paintings, photographs of lost artworks and works in process. This allows us to re-imagine almost the entirety of the artist's output in light of his always inventive uses of photography, while also supplying previously unseen glimpses into his social milieu of the 1950s and early 60s.
Painter, sculptor, printmaker and photographer Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) provided a crucial bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. After studying at Black Mountain College under Josef Albers, Rauschenberg moved to New York where he formed close allegiances with Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, began his groundbreaking Combines, collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and co-launched the non-profit Experiments in Art and Technology. Considered one of the most innovative artists of his era, he died in 2008.

Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts

Edited by Susan Davidson. Text by Trisha Brown, Mimi Thompson. Preface by Philip Rylands.
Published by Guggenheim Museum

In the mid-1980s, Robert Rauschenberg's creative attentions turned toward the visual and plastic properties of junk metal when he began to assemble found metal objects and screenprint his photographic images onto aluminum, bronze, brass and copper. His first body of work in this vein was Gluts, a series begun in 1986 and continued intermittently until 1995, in which ornate metalwork seemingly derived from a bedpost might attach to a slice of mesh wire, or twisted petals of yellow metal might sprout from the remains of an eviscerated toaster. Asked to comment on his novel use of the word "gluts," Rauschenberg said, "It's a time of glut. Greed is rampant... I simply want to present people with their ruins... I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia." Published to accompany the Peggy Guggenheim Collection's exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts (the first show to focus on Rauschenberg's sculpture since 1995), this fully illustrated catalogue features a selection of approximately 40 sculptures drawn from the holdings of institutions and private collections in the United States and abroad. It includes a reassessment of Rauschenberg's work as a sculptor by author and painter Mimi Thompson, an essay by Trisha Brown, an illustrated exhibition history, a preface by Philip Rylands and introduction by Susan Davidson that focuses on Rauschenberg's relationship to the Guggenheim and the artist's engagement with Venice in particular.

Robert Rauschenberg

Text by Carolyn Lanchner.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Rauschenberg made a tremendous impact on Modern art in the twentieth century. As a pioneer of Pop art, he was a key figure in the postwar tradition that brought American art to the forefront of the international scene. This new volume in the MoMA Artist Series, which explores important artists and favorite works in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, guides readers through a dozen of the artist's most memorable achievements. A short and lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum, accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of Modern art and the artist's own life. This volume provides a unique overview of someone who shaped the development of American art since mid-century and is an excellent resource for readers interested in the stories behind the masterpieces of the Modern canon.

Robert Rauschenberg: Transfer Drawings of the 1960s

Text by Lewis Kachur. Foreword by Jonathan O'Hara.
Published by Jonathan O'Hara Gallery

Featuring 42 of Robert Rauschenberg's pioneering Transfer Drawings of the 1960s, this book reproduces almost half of the works that were made in that tumultuous decade. The historical watershed of 1968 is especially well represented by 23 drawings, at least 15 of which were shown in the influential Ileana Sonnabend Gallery, Paris, in October of that year. They have never been seen before now in the U.S. The imagery in these drawings suggests a growing political consciousness, first engaging the civil rights movement, followed by the Vietnam War and other events of the stormy era. This small but exquisite volume is an absorbing sequel to the 2005-06 international touring exhibition of Rauschenberg's Combines, taking up where those multi-media constructions left off. Among the featured works are "Mainspring" (1965), the largest of the transfer drawings, and selections from the artist's own collection.

Robert Rauschenberg: Works, Writing, Interviews

Text by Sam Hunter.
Published by Poligrafa

Throughout his career, the American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg has consistently challenged the prevailing ideologies and techniques of the art world, and can even be said to have changed the course of art history. In the 1950s, Rauschenberg redefined the very materials that art could be made of, rebelling against the predominant Abstract Expressionism of the time with the impeccable logic that, "I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out of the real world." His boldness in pushing technical and aesthetic frontiers as well as his influential dissemination of photography, film, and television in his own work altered both painting and art at large. Rauschenberg's seminal works--from his Combines (urban trash on painted surfaces) to his silk screens--are reproduced here in full color; and more recent projects--including ROCI, Rauschenberg's own exhibition organization, which showcases artists from all over the world--are also highlighted by author Sam Hunter of Princeton University. This essential volume includes important interviews with the artist by Alain Sayag and Richard Kostelanetz, as well as a key selection of Rauschenberg's own writings.

Black Paintings: Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella

Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal.
Published by Hatje Cantz

In the late 1940s, several prominent artists of the New York School--among them Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella--were intently studying the color black. That work, interrelated but not collaborative, resulted in an astonishing number of almost monochromatic black paintings, which today are considered treasures of many major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art's. For the first time, Black Paintings gathers all of the best of the title artist's black works together: textured black, striped black, blue-black, brown-black, black-black. In thorough illustration and thoughtful analysis, it sheds light on the differences between these postwar works as well as their commonalities. For Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg, black was a way to disappear into something new, a way to a new artistic vocabulary. For Mark Rothko, it stood for emptiness and nothingness; it asked the spectator to reflect back on it. For Ad Reinhardt, it offered denial and invisibility. Each artist's black portfolio reflects a breakthrough or transition in his own work, and, combined, they represent a larger moment of transition. The Black Paintings marked both a beginning and an end: the end of painting as illusion, as a window onto the world, and the beginning of painting as the mode for the creation of self-sufficient perceptual objects--a change that granted new roles to both artist and viewer.

Robert Rauschenberg: Combines

Edited and introduction by Paul Schimmel.
Published by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Poetic and lush, Robert Rauschenberg's Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This approach, first explored by Rauschenberg in the early 1950s, proved prescient and has become increasingly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most ground-breaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials and the complexity of forms that are characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism and iconographical, subject-driven early Pop art. This book focuses on the works created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the artist's 50-year career, and constitutes the most complete survey of the Combines ever presented, as well as the most rigorous analysis of their political, social, autobiographical and aesthetic significance. An introductory essay by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel titled “Reading Rauschenberg” offers an iconographic analysis of the earlier Combines, based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Other texts help to contextualize the Combines, such as Thomas Crow's essay that calls them the major artistic statement of their time, and the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own from de Kooning to Pop art.