I am not exactly reading this book. I am just sort of staring at it and meditating. This book focuses on Rauschenberg's combines, which are like paintings that have other stuff combined
in them, like newsprint stuff collaged in, or some are more sculptural and some are like puzzles that open up. The combines are so beyond language to me, funny, kind of stoner and, tauntingly "too much". His work brings the notion of time into focus, in a much quieter way than someone like DeKooning did. This is slower moving, more about the tiny performances inherent in everyday life than big bold drunken gestures. What I mean to say is that I can picture the apartment they were created in and feel the decision being made that it is okay to err on the side of beauty. To give in to total pleasure. Sex. Food. Moments. It is hard for me to sit still and enjoy them because it is just so overwhelming. I guess that is part of my interest in them. They function like miracles.
Rauschenberg died 3 monthes ago, but not before dropping the following gem on us, "Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
2 comments:
hi kathleen, thanks for posting. here's a link to some more pictures:
Robert Rauschenberg: Combines
under overcast or cloudless summer skies the plodding processes of daily existence take on a magnified significance...and the days, like on a calendar, each have an identity that if held on to, yield a poetic insight like a magic eight ball. Rauschenburg for me taps this vein, unchecked by the "master's" distaste for the power of the everyday, the grotesque, the raw, the real, he spoke in a voice that gave courage, depth and expansion to the our days' small and large travails and triumphs and so is totally punk and therefore inspiring...so, thanks for reminding me of this power source!
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