Strange non The effect of surprise is total

An old sock, used rags, a déplumée chicken and painted in white shoes, newspapers and the traces of paint everywhere... yet how that could look like a set of detritus turns into work of art This means the hand and the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg (born 1925), an American artist who, in a short period from 1954 to 1961, will mark the history of the contemporary art world. The Centre Pompidou exposes 50 works to show the absolute interest. Attention, as indicated as early as the first sentence the small record accompanying the exhibition: "the work of Robert Rauschenberg is among the most complex" of the 20th century. In other words, it must scrutinize each piece, take his time to understand the message or simply approach. It is the artist himself who speaks about these works of "shenanigans". Or totally sculptures or completely paintings, he wrote about it: "the painting is connected to the art and life." Neither one nor the other can be manufactured. I try to act in this gap that separates them. "It was in 1953 that Rauschenberg returned from a trip to Europe for sixteen months that will give the keys to his new creation. On his return, he was struck by an exhibition devoted to the dada movement, and therefore to Marcel Duchamp great user objects for the creation of works of art , but also by another dedicated to Picasso drawings frequent practitioner of the collage since his Cubist period and by the presentation in a New York gallery of works by the Italian Alberto Burri composed of collage canvas bag.

Revenge of the son

The American repeats all these influences into a unique creation. What strikes upon first disparate assemblages, in 1954, is the boldness of the compositions of large format. Shades of Red have a puzzle of things of everyday life, assembled, glued and stained. And one surprising to imagine the passion to say the rage that anima artist for creating large rooms marked by these reliefs and these pieces of independent fabrics, these lighthouses and these stuffed animals. All this has been the subject of much research and it turns out that the whole tells the life of the artist and his relations with the outside world. Thus, there are photos of his mother or his son, a newspaper clipping on the wedding of money from his parents or the election of his sister as Queen of beauty in a regional competition. The whole forming, a disparate and curious set that would be like the trace of the life of a man of the time and, by far, abstract composition which arise a few familiar objects.

The most significant work is unfortunately poorly exposed, in a corner at the Beaubourg, while in Stockholm, at the Moderna Museet Museum owner , it literally explodes in space. It is "Monogram", abstract, put paint on the floor, trampled underfoot by a springing angora goat whose body is crowned by a tire. Strange non The effect of surprise is total. One can see the negation of the painting by the artist, associated with a desire to quirk. Rauschenberg told recently that when he was a child he had a goat, mascot of the House, that his father had come to kill.

It is known that his father had little esteem for his work. Has surprised even his son to sell "of such garbage." Here's the revenge of the son as a goat. Then, as well shows the exposure, time passes and Rauschenberg calm. White is more present in the paintings. His works more like paintings. The searing "Combined" is completed.