Texas Originals

Robert Rauschenberg

October 22, 1925—May 12, 2008

Port Arthur native Robert Rauschenberg was in his twenties before he saw paintings in a museum. The experience impressed him deeply. Within two decades, he would become one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

Rauschenberg studied pharmacology at The University of Texas before being drafted during World War II. He later studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and in Paris and attended the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

In 1949, Rauschenberg moved to New York. Looking beyond the Abstract Expressionism of that time, he realized that, as he put it, "painting relates to both art and life."

Curious, open-minded, and unafraid of failure, Rauschenberg experimented with diverse materials. On the streets of lower Manhattan, he scavenged found objects—used boxes, tires, clocks—creating multilayered assemblages he called Combines that, in the words of critic Robert Hughes, "connect[ed] the language of his images to that of the wider world." In the 1960s, he and Andy Warhol simultaneously incorporated the commercial technique of silkscreen printing into their artwork.

Rauschenberg was also a pioneer in printmaking, photography, choreography, and set design, collaborating with a diverse array of choreographers, composers, engineers, and artists.

Rauschenberg died in 2008. He has been the subject of multiple retrospective exhibitions and has work in the collections of major museums throughout the world.

For More about Robert Rauschenberg

The Rauschenberg Archives Collection is held by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, in New York City. The collection includes documentary photographs, personal records, writings by the artist, sketches and source materials, theater and performance materials, and audiovisual materials.

The Archives of American Art contains materials related to Robert Rauschenberg, including oral history interviews, biographies, images of artworks, and letters and other writings by and about the artist.

Artworks by Robert Rauschenberg can be found in the permanent collections of many museums throughout the world, including these Texas museums: The Menil Collection (Houston), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Museum of the Gulf Coast (Port Arthur), the McNay Art Museum (San Antonio), the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas), the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Fort Worth), and the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin).

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Rauschenberg Research Project provides online access to a wealth of research relating to Rauschenberg’s works in the museum’s permanent collection. Other works of Rauschenberg’s can be viewed in the Guggenheim Museums and Foundation’s Collection Online, a searchable art database.

The Art Story offers an online exhibit showcasing Rauschenberg’s life and works alongside a chronological timeline of his artistic career.

Selected Bibliography

de Antonio, Emile, and Mitch Tuchman.  Painters Painting: A Candid History of the Modern Art Scene, 1940–1970. New York: Abbeville Press, 1984.

Dickerman, Leah and Achim Borchardt-Hume, eds. Robert Rauschenberg. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2016.

Fineberg, Jonathan. "Robert Rauschenberg." In Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, pp. 176–86. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Ennis, Michael. "The Return of the Native." Texas Monthly, March 1998.

Hughes, Robert. "Enfant Terrible at 50." Time, January 27, 1975.

"The Most Living Artist." Time, November 29, 1976.

Kostelanetz, Richard. "Robert Rauschenberg." In The Theatre of Mixed Means: An Introduction to Happenings, Kinetic Environments, and Other Mixed-Means Performances, 78–99. New York: Dial Press, 1968.

Kotz, Mary Lynn. Rauschenberg: Art and Life. New York: Abrams, 1990.

Lanchner, Carolyn. Robert Rauschenberg. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009.

Mamiya, Christin J. "We the People: The Art of Robert Rauschenberg and the Construction of American National Identity." American Art 7, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 41–63.

McNay, Michael. "Robert Rauschenberg." Guardian, May 13, 2008.

Rauschenberg, Robert. Interview with Robert Rauschenberg. By Joachim Pissarro. Museum of Modern Art Oral History Program, April 20, 2006.

Steinberg, Leo. Encounters with Rauschenberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Tomkins, Calvin. Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time. Garden City: Doubleday, 1980. Revised and reprinted as Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg. New York: Picador, 2005.