Art & Design

Robert Rauschenberg’s Centennary

Robert Rauschenberg’s (1925 - 2008) Centennary is being celebrated this year, and into 2026. 

A string of programming at institutions around the world in commemoration of Rauschenberg’s birth, including the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; Fundación Juan March in Madrid, Spain; and the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan. 

As well, there will be publications, including exhibition catalogues, and research projects. The Rauschenberg Foundation states that "Major publications and scholarly projects will be released in the Centennial year, further extending Rauschenberg’s reach and accessibility.  The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has embarked on an ongoing project to create a digital catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings and sculpture." 

Have a look at the Foundation's website for information on where to see exhibitions, information on their digital catalogue, and details about Rauschenberg himself. The Foundation website also includes links to a large variety of recent press articles that may be of interest to a researcher. 

Of course, if you are unable to visit any of the galleries in person, TU Dublin Library has resources for TU Dublin students to research Rauschenberg's works. Have a look at our catalogue for relevant books. 

Here are just a few examples: 

Robert Rauschenberg by Sara Sinclair (Editor); Peter Bearman (Editor); Mary Marshall Clark (Editor)

Call Number: 709.2 RAU

ISBN: 9780231192767

Publication Date: 2019-08-06

Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) was a breaker of boundaries and a consummate collaborator. He used silk-screen prints to reflect on American promise and failure, melded sculpture and painting in works called combines, and collaborated with engineers and scientists to challenge our thinking about art. Through collaborations with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and others, Rauschenberg bridged the music, dance, and visual-art worlds, inventing a new art for the last half of the twentieth century. Robert Rauschenberg is a work of collaborative oral biography that tells the story of one of the twentieth century's great artists through a series of interviews with key figures in his life--family, friends, former lovers, professional associates, studio assistants, and collaborators. The oral historian Sara Sinclair artfully puts the narrators' reminiscences in conversation, with a focus on the relationship between Rauschenberg's intense social life and his art. The book opens with a prologue by Rauschenberg's sister and then shifts to New York City's 1950s and '60s art scene, populated by the luminaries of abstract expressionism. It follows Rauschenberg's eventual move to Florida's Captiva Island and his trips across the globe, illuminating his inner life and its effect on his and others' art. The narrators share their views on Rauschenberg's work, explore the curatorial thinking behind exhibitions of his art, and reflect on the impact of the influx of money into the contemporary art market. Included are artists famous in their own right, such as Laurie Anderson and Brice Marden, as well as art-world insiders and lesser-known figures who were part of Rauschenberg's inner circle. Beyond considering Rauschenberg as an artist, this book reveals him as a man embedded in a series of art worlds over the course of a long and rich life, demonstrating the complex interaction of business and personal, public and private in the creation of great art.

Rauschenberg (Third Edition) by Mary Lynn Kotz

Call Number: 759.13 RAU

ISBN: 9781419729652

Publication Date: 2018-04-17

Iconoclastic, generous, inventive, impulsive, sensitive, gregarious, prodigious: these are just some of the words to describe Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and the art he made over his career. From the age of 38, when he received the grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, Rauschenberg was a pivotal figure in the creative explosion of art following WWII. This revised edition of the classic biography of the artist adds a new chapter covering the significant moments in the final years of his life, and offers an in-depth look at his legacy and continued influence on the postmodern art world. It includes new photography and interviews with friends, colleagues, critics, and art historians. Rauschenberg is a richly impressive and highly readable portrait of the artist. The book shows 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, the establishment of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, and his final collaborative work: the Lotus Series with Universal Limited Art Editions.

Robert Rauschenberg: photographs, 1949-1962 by Robert Rauschenberg (Artist); Nicholas Cullinan (Text by); Susan Davidson (Editor); David White (Editor)

Call Number: 779.092 RAU

ISBN: 9781935202523

Publication Date: 2011-09-30

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.