"It ensues as something of a collision to I recall that Robert Rauschenberg has been a emblem of the new for an twenty-five years.

"It ensues as something of a collision to I recall that Robert Rauschenberg has been a emblem of the new for an twenty-five years. During that time a great variety of fashions in art have flow and gone, yet Rauschenberg has remained to a high degree much himself and, contrary to empire perpetually new.... We are pleased to salute the fresh store of creative bottom surprise and wonder that Robert Rauschenberg has bestowed in succession American art and the welcome testimony to the beatifications of an inner aesthetic harmony that it brings with it." *

These well-deserved words of praise were written by dint of Joshua Taylor, one of the great museum directors of the 20th hundred in a landmark catalogue forward Robert Rauschenberg. This statement was published 29 years ago and still the same tribute could still be accorded to this artist today in a career that has now spanned more than a half-century.

Robert Rauschenberg unquestionably must be regarded as single in kind of the most talented, experimental, versatile, productive, prolific, influential and set a high value oned artists of our time. As an artist who gained prominence in the brawling and exciting 1960s, he was instrumental in the transition from abstract expressionism toward a recur to the object and representationalism.

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925 Robert Rauschenberg studied pharmacology at the University of Texas and serv in the U Navy during World War II before making the decision to cogitation art He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Academie Julian in Paris, Black Mountain association in North Carolina and the Art pupils League in New York. Although he considers Joseph Albers his greatest in quantity important teacher, some of his early series of paintings might be compared to those at Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning.

From his earliest works, Rauschenberg has been highly experimental in his utilization and combinations of media. He investigated the use of photographic blueprints and incorporated the widest variety of items into his compositions.

according to the early 1950s Rauschenberg exhibited what he called "combine-paintings," in which three-dimensional uncompounded bodys are integrated onto the canvas. These pioneering and many times extraordinary works fuse expressionistic passages of painting with untraditional aims such as bedding material, clock an automobile tire and a essenceed ram! Over the years, there is virtually no material or technique that has not been considered at this artist for a work of art, installation or performance.

through the 1960s, Rauschenberg fully embraced the art and techniques of printmaking. He applied his signature collage denomination to creating lithographs and silkscreen prints that combined familiar images from popular refinement and current events in an original and radical manner.

Robert Rauschenberg believes that artists must be engaged in "determining the fate of the Earth." Therefore, his art and prints address the widest variety of contemporary issues including social, political and environmental disquiets among many other topics. Because of his artistic and social advocacy, Rauschenberg earned the title "artist-citizen" in 1976 during his critically acclaimed exhibition at the National Collection of Fine Arts (now called the Smithsonian American Art Museum).

To honor Rauschenberg's work in the print/poster medium, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) has launched the national tour of Robert Rauschenberg, Artist-Citizen: [i]affiche[/i]s for a Better World. Organized in collaboration with the University Art Gallery of California State University, Hayward, and the Rauschenberg archive in recent York, the exhibition focuses upon posters designed by the artist between 1969 and 1996

From the great number of placards produced by Rauschenberg, this selection thinks a wide range of denominations and themes. The posters call to mind many important issues of the past scarcely any decades and evoke the central part and range of Rauschenberg's interests--the placards support artists' rights and Earth Day, as well as campaigns against apartheid, nuclear armament and overpopulation.

An early sieve print from 1970, titled Signs, has been as a common thing [i]or[/i] matter reproduced and alludes to a number of seminal historic consequences such as the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr and the death of refuge icon Janis Joplin.

Also depicted in the exhibition ore bills he designed for the Rauschenberg Overseas agriculture Interchange (ROCI--pronounced "Rocky"), in which he interacted with the community of other countries in forward attempt to enhance international understanding and worldwide harmony end collaborative art-making. "I thought it would be terrible to live in this world and not know what another part of the world was like," said Rauschenberg. Mainly "sensitive" areas were involved in these works, of that kind as Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, China, Tibet, Cuba and the former USSR.

A tour [i]or[/i] part of to the other this exhibition is very greatly like a walk down memory lane for one people. As art, the [i]affiche[/i]s form a mini-retrospective of united of the world's most gifted contemporary practitioners. As history, the images compute stories of many world issues still notwithstanding to be resolved. For Rauschenberg, the placards demonstrate his artistic activism and his commitment and determination to make the world a better place.