| Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg dies in Fla. at 82 |  |
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| May 13 11:33 AM US/Eastern By MITCH STACY Associated Press Writer |
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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him a reputation as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture and dance, has died, his gallery representative said Tuesday. He was 82.Rauschenberg died Monday, said Jennifer Joy, his representative at Pace Wildensteins.
Rauschenberg, who first gained fame in the 1950s, didn’t mine popular culture wholesale as Andy Warhol did with Campbell’s soup cans and Roy Lichtenstein did with comic books.
Instead, his “combines,” incongruous combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint, shared pop’s blurring of art and objects from modern life.
He also responded to his pop colleagues and began incorporating up-to- the-minute photographed images in his works in the 1960s, including, memorably, pictures of John F. Kennedy.
Among Rauschenberg’s most famous works was “Bed,” created after he woke up in the mood to paint but had no money for a canvas. His solution was to take the quilt off his bed and use paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish.
Not to be limited by paint, Rauschenberg was a sculptor and choreographer and even won a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for the Talking Heads album “Speaking in Tongues.”
“I’m curious,” he said in 1997 in one of the few interviews he granted in later years. “It’s very rewarding. I’m still discovering things every day.”
One of Rauschenberg’s first and most famous combines was entitled “Monogram,” a 1959 work consisting of a stuffed angora goat, a tire, a police barrier, the heel of a shoe, a tennis ball, and paint.
He met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist, both destined to become world famous, became lovers and influenced each other’s work. According to the book “Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists,” Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that “Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, `I’ve got a terrific idea for you,’ and then I’d have to find one for him.”
Born Milton Rauschenberg in 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas, and raised a Christian fundamentalist, Rauschenberg wanted to be a minister but gave it up because his church banned dancing.
“I was considered slow,” he once said “While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.”
He was drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II and knew little about art until a chance visit to an art museum where he saw his first painting at age 18. He drew portraits of his fellow sailors for them to send home.
When his time in the service was up, Rauschenberg used the GI bill to pay his tuition at art school. He changed his name to Robert because it sounded more artistic.
“I don’t ever want to go,” he told Harper’s when asked about dying. “I don’t have a sense of great reality about the next world; my feet are too ugly to wear those golden slippers. But I’m working on my fear of it. And my fear is that something interesting will happen, and I’ll miss it.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.