Robert Rauschenberg: Doing

Robert Rauschenberg was American artist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Robert Rauschenberg: 94   quotes 1   like

“You could waste years arguing. All I had to do was make one [image] and ask: 'Do I like that?' 'Is there anything to say there?' 'Does that thing have any presence' 'Does it really matter that it looks bluer now, because it is late afternoon? Earlier this morning it looked quite white.' 'Is that an interesting experience to have?' To me, the answer was yes.”

Robert Rauschenberg

on his 'White Paintings'
1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Painting

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Quoted in: Wendy Richmond (2009), Art Without Compromise, p. 136
21st Century

Understanding , Time

“Albers [on Black Mountain College ] was a beautiful teacher and an impossible person. He wasn't easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it. Years later, though, I'm still learning what he taught me, because what he taught me had to do with the entire visual world. He didn't teach you how to 'do art'. The focus was always on your personal sense of looking… I consider Albers the most important teacher I've ever had, and I'm sure that he considers me one of his poorest students.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), p. 198

World , Beauty , Art , Mountain

“I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.”

Robert Rauschenberg

around 1965
Quote from Robert Rauschenberg, The early 1950s, Walter Hopps, Houston Fine Art Press, 1991
1960's

“I am always afraid of explaining what I am doing, because my mind works so perversely. If I know why I am doing something it immediately goes to another channel and I try not to do that anymore. So in any interview there is a possibility that I have to leave the interview and change my entire life. I think I'll stop now and let the works answer the questions. To much information is an obstacle to seeing. My works are created to be seen.”

Robert Rauschenberg

1980's, I don't necessarily desire a perfect photography,' 1981

Life , Question , Thinking , Change

“I think the ideas [as starting point for his paintings] are based upon very obvious physical facts – notions that are also simple-minded, such as, in the 'White Paintings', wanting to know if that was a thing to do or not, or in 'Factum', wondering about what the role of accident is. Those aren't really very involved ideas.”

Robert Rauschenberg

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Idea , Thinking , Painting

“Outside the big idea that there is art I don't think of other's paintings. But I defend the idea of art and know that it is made up of all these paintings. Classic pictures are objects that may or may not influence what you're doing, just like anything else. Like the radio... But it hasn't anything to do with your own art or the artist's intention.”

Robert Rauschenberg

1950's, Is today's artist with or against the past, (1958)

Art , Idea , Thinking , Painting

“Josef Albers's [a former art teacher of Rauschenberg, on Black Mountain College ] rule is to make order. As for me, I consider myself successful when I do something that resembles the lack of order I sense. (around 1949 during Black Mountain College, fh).”

Robert Rauschenberg

In Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, Sam Hunter; as quoted in Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, Spain, 2006, p. 37
1950's

Art , Mountain , Sense , Teachers

“My whole area of art activity has always been addressed to working with other people... You see, I personally like the sensual contact of collaborating. Ideas are not real estate. In collaboration one can accept the fact that someone else can be so sympathetic and in tune with what you’re doing, that through this they move into depths that might not be obvious if that person had been working alone in a studio with the door shut.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Quote from Breaking Bounderies.., Robert S. Mattison, exhibition catalogue Whitney Museum, 1994, p. 3
1990's

People , Art , Idea , Personality

“I don't feel any direct relationship between what I do and existing art. Though there is unavoidable progression: the things all paintings have in common are paint, and color, and some means of application. With the standard you can make any two pictures appear either alike of different. I don't think whether they're alike or different is really very interesting.”

Robert Rauschenberg

1950's, Is today's artist with or against the past, (1958)

Art , Color , Feeling , Thinking

“I feel a conscious attempt to be more and more related to society. That's what's important to me as a person. I'm not going to let other people make all the changes; and if you do that, you can't curt yourself of... I'm only against the most obvious things, like wars and stuff like that. I don't have any particular concept about an utopian way things should be. I have a prejudice or a bias, it is that there shouldn't be any particular way. Being a complex human organ, we are capable of a variety; we can do so much. The big fear is that we don't do enough with our senses, with our activities, with our areas of consideration; and these have got to get bigger year after year.”

Robert Rauschenberg

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

War , People , Fear , Way

“I already see things backwards! You see, in printmaking everything comes out backwards so printing is an absolute natural for me. It is difficult for a lot of artists to do prints because they draw one way and can’t imagine it the other way. I always had trouble reading as a child. Every few minutes my mind would shift and I would pick out all the o's, than all the letter a's on a page.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 28

Way , Imagination , Nature , Reading

“Every minute everything is different everywhere. It is all flowing... The duty or beauty of a painting is that there is no reason to do it nor any reason not to. It can be done as a direct act or contact with the moment and that is the moment you are awake and moving. It all passes and is never true literally as the present again leaving more work to be done.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Quote of Rauschenberg (1961), as cited in Introduction, Roberta Bernstein, from catalog 'The White and Black Paintings'
from a recording of a symposium in 1961, Larry Gagosian Gallery, New York, 1986
1960's

Beauty , Painting

“[we gave] permission to do what we wanted... It would be hard to imagine my work at that time [c. 1956 – 1960] without his [ Jasper John's] encouragement.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 71

Imagination , Time

“Work is my joy... Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.”

Robert Rauschenberg

265
1990's, Rauschenberg, Art and Live, 1990

Love , Joy

“The character of the artist has to be responsive and lucky. Personally I have never been interested in a defensible reason post card for working achievement functionally is a delusion. To do a needed work short changes art. It seems to me that a great part Indian moccasins of urgency in working lies in the fact that one acts freely friends and associates may become more closely allied with you real soon.”

Robert Rauschenberg

Quote from 'Note on Painting', Robert Rauschenberg, in Pop Art Redefined, October/November 1963, J. Rusell and Suzi Gablik, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1969
1960's

Art , Change , Parting , Personality