Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco, 1950-1965 Page: 41
175 p. : ill. ; 22 x 25 cm.View a full description of this book.
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A. CURFEW
1958
Collection: Mr. & Mrs. Peter BrantRauschenberg, equally enthusiastically, upends the wastebasket, and embellishes his
compositions with shreds of old posters and newspapers, paper doilies, empty Coke
bottles, and all the other odds and ends one might find there..."3 The artist himself
speaks of this phenomenon: "I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap
dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that
all day long, and it must make them miserable."4
Andrew Forge cites Rauschenberg's "debt" to the Abstract Expressionists; Willem de
Kooning, in particular. Rauschenberg has said that even though he attended the Abstract
Expressionists' gatherings at the Artist's Club on 9th Street, their "language" was not in
attunement with his temperament, and he did not relate to their searchings of the
subconscious; he had no interest either in trying to improve the world through painting.5
He did, however, relate to their emphasis of risk, openness, and awareness of the artist's
position.6 Feeling that the Abstract Expressionist movement of freedom had closed in
upon itself, he began focusing his efforts in the direction of "freeing himself from a unity
of meaning and suffocating gesture."7
Kaprow made an analogy to the now well-known incident, in which Rauschenberg
erased a de Kooning drawing; "... the deed [which] had the same function as say, a
hermit-saint's renunciation of worldly life, but now exercised within the profession of
painting and drawing."8 After finally consenting to Rauschenberg's request to do this, de
Kooning decided to make it difficult and chose something which he would miss.
Rauschenberg had wanted to create a work through the process of erasure. Upon
completion he commented thusly: "But in the end it really worked. I liked the result. I felt it
was a legitimate work of art, created by the technique of erasing. So the problem was
solved, and I didn't have to do it again.''9 In reference to experimentation and the testing
of a principle, Kaprow feels that "what mattered was that an artist did something
unambiguous, under a burden of what I recall to have been great doubt about everything
esthetic and, perhaps, personal." "Rauschenberg's erasures were total and decisive and
left no room for further action in that arena."10
CATEGORIZATION OF ARTISTS
Using one reason or another, art critics have tried to encase Rauschenberg's "style"
within the continuum of art history. "Rauschenberg's works cannot be forced to fit
theories; his art is not didactic; it presents, simply and gracefully, a point of view."''
These attempted categorizations, ranging from "Neo-Dada" to "Neo-Surrealist," from
"Post-Abstract Expressionist" to "Nouveau Realist," and lastly from "pure Pop" to a
"peripheral precursor to Pop," somehow do not fulfill the fundamental essences of his
wide range of work. "Ready-made palpable-designing attitudes will not fit him for most
theories of art, like most theories of life, are liable to find their ultimate rationale in
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Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco , 1950-65 [Brochure] (Text)
Brochure from the exhibition, "Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco 1950–65," November 20–December 29, 1974, held at the Dallas Museum of Art.
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Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco, 1950-1965, book, 1974; [New York]. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth176526/m1/45/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art.