Rauschenberg: Patchwork of dreams shapes his life and art

                                As published in the Beaumont Enterprise, May, 13, 2008

LAFAYETTE, La. - Robert Rauschenberg, a 15-year-old kid growing up in Port Arthur in 1940, wanted to be a minister.

Today, at 79, he's known as the Pope of Pop. Some say the day he won the Venice Biennale painting prize in 1964 was the day the earth stood still. At 39, he had become an icon within the church of art, and elsewhere.

He never became a minister. Nor did he become a pharmacist, another of his youthful dreams.

Instead, he merely shifted the course of art.

In the last three years, Rauschenberg produced 14 large-scale collages entitled "Scenarios and Short Stories," mounted last month at the new Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in Lafayette. His "Scenarios and Short Stories" will be on display through Sept. 3, along with work by Rauschenberg's photographer son, Christopher, and his longtime friend and collaborator Darryl Pottorf. Rauschenberg attended the opening, which kicked off Rauschenberg Festival Week in Lafayette. The show is dedicated to his mother, whom he watched expertly piecing together fabric in Depression-era Port Arthur, one of the influences in his collage- and collaboration-based style.

And last week, the New York Post reported that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is close to purchasing Rauschenberg's 1955 masterpiece, "Rebus," for about $30 million from French billionaire Francois Pinault.

And when Time magazine needed an artist's rendering of American emotion on the first anniversary of Sept. 11, it turned to Rauschenberg. "Only Rauschenberg could sum up the vast amount of information we have received since that day in one piece of artwork," said Dr. Lynne Lokensgard, professor of art history at Lamar University.

How did a shy, religious young boy from Depression-era Port Arthur, from a time and place where the talent to draw or dance were not especially valued, become a driving force in the world of art and ideas of the 21st century?

Rauschenberg would say it was the resistance he faced when he had a new idea. And, face it, his idea that art could be made from anything and could be interpreted wildly was radical.

"Rauschenberg is a relentless and courageous innovator. He didn't play it safe. Many of us, when we find success in a niche, we cling to that success as a lifeboat. People like him don't look at the world as limiting, they look toward the future. His approach influenced everybody in my generation," said Keith Carter, a celebrated photographer at Lamar.

Port Arthur days

Being one of the art world's icons is a long way from gritty Port Arthur.

"We didn't have any museums when Milton was here. That's what we called him then," said Dovie (Horton) Logsdon, a classmate from Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur. "But we all had to make the best of what we had. Everyone here was either farming or working with the railroad. We had to create our own culture."

Art was foreign to Rauschenberg when he was growing up in the working-class town.

"The first art I saw that was hung on the wall as art was in California during the Navy," said Rauschenberg.

What he saw at the Los Angeles County Museum was Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" and Lawrence's "Pinkie."

"They looked like the backs of playing cards I had seen. I remember being surprised that a human being actually made them. I thought, well, that's what I do. I doodle and draw and copy the funnies," Rauschenberg said.

Believing education was the key to a better life, his father and mother - a lineman for Gulf States Utilities and a telephone operator/seamstress - sent him to Austin to study pharmacy at the University of Texas. He was expelled within a semester because he had trouble reading. He now knows he is dyslexic.

World War II was raging. A letter from the draft board saved him from coming home in shame. His first job in the Navy was to bathe and wrap corpses, and he was trained as a neuropsychiatric technician.

"No, I was not forced to fight. What I saw was much worse," Rauschenberg said. "I got to see, every day, what war did to the young men who barely survived it. I was in the repair business."

After the war, he hitchhiked back to Port Arthur. To his surprise, his family had moved away, leaving no address.

"Someone told me they thought they might have moved to Lafayette," he said.

He hitched another 120 miles to a coffee shop there. There sat his father, Ernest, who explained simply, over a cup of coffee: He'd been promoted to Lafayette.

The Transformation

Not long after a friend urged him to look into the Kansas City Art Institute, he decided to apply. In a bus terminal on his way to art school, he literally was transformed: Milton Ernest Rauschenberg changed his name to Bob Rauschenberg.

"When people got to know me better and just assumed that I had some dignity, it became Robert then," he said. "So now I'm known as either Robert or Bob."

Reinventing himself and his surroundings has been a hallmark of his career.

In 1948, he went to Paris, attending the famous Academie Julian on the G.I. Bill at 22. But after a year, he discovered the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he gained confidence and a personal style. He adored collaboration. It made him tick.

He was taught by art world giants Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline and Josef Albers and began life-long collaborations with fellow students, dancer Merce Cunningham and musician John Cage. He collaborated with artists of every medium; theater, dance, and even engineering. He created set designs, lighting costumes, while creating art, too.

In 1953, he moved to New York City where he met aspiring artist Jasper Johns. Together, Rauschenberg and Johns designed window displays for Tiffany's to make ends meet and explored the New York art scene. Their work in the 1950's would become the link between abstract expressionism, which dominated the art world in the '50s, and pop art of the 1960s and influences artists today.

In Manhattan, he farmed the streets for old bicycle wheels, rusted metal signs, exhaust pipes, rocks, rope and an endless array of discarded items into his studio. He transformed them into what he called "combines," a mixture of sculpture and paint. His first, entitled "Monogram," in 1955, stirred controversy. A stuffed goat wrapped in a used tire did not endear him to the hardcore New York arts community of the time.

No matter.

He thrived on criticism.

Rauschenberg was a pioneer in many ways. He opened art to entry by engineers, socialites, politicians, dancers, scientists, and even art groupies. He traveled the world with a desire to collaborate with other artists. He met with world leaders - Fidel Castro, among them - in places thought to have unstable government or unfriendly notions about Americans.

Thriving legacy

Fame and fortune came quickly for Rauschenberg, but began to take their toll in 1970.

"At the time, in New York, everyone around me was divorcing or seemed angry," he recalls. "I went to an astrologer and asked if I was the cause of it. I was told that I wasn't, and to move near the sun. I grew up on the coast and liked the ocean, so I went to Florida."

On Captiva Island, he built a home, a state-of-the-art studio and a lift for his aging mother, Dora, who died in 1999. His father died in 1963 of a heart attack on the job, but lived longenough to see his son's career start to rise.

"Our fathers worked together at Gulf States Utilities," said local sculptor David Cargill. "I remember his dad, Ernest, came to see my family in 1962, when my dad died. He was very proud to see an article about him in Time."

In 2001, Rauschenberg awoke in the middle of the night, tripped on a rug and broke his hip. He responded well to therapy after a hip replacement, but a year later suffered a stroke that immobilized the right side of his body.

Rauschenberg still is farming discarded items. Like the junk from the streets of New York, Rauschenberg now assembles images of things visually discarded in everyday life: a telephone pole, fire hydrant, a used tire, a rusted tricycle, a chair.

"He sends friends and assistants out into the world to take pictures for him, using any kind of digital camera. He'll tell them to make sure they're not very good pictures either," said Janine Boardman, his nurse and assistant.

"The images mean something to him, but he will never tell you that," said Mary Lynn Kotz, author of "Rauschenberg/Art and Life."

Last month, Rauschenberg was wheeled onto the stage at the University of Louisiana Theatre in Lafayette to kick off the latest exhibit of his work.

"A reporter asked me once, 'what is your greatest fear?' and I said it would be to run out of world," he told the crowd of reporters and VIPs. "When I die, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to work in my studio."

Longtime Rauschenberg collaborator and friend Trisha Brown was at his side on stage and throughout the week. Brown is a widely acclaimed choreographer who pushed dance's limits and helped change modern dance forever.

"Bob is 'the' most living artist," she said. "Collaborating requires a sensibility of connecting to another artist. Upon arrival at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, I realized our sets and costumes for 'Carmen' were lost. With only two days to opening night, I called Bob. He was taken to a junkyard in Naples where he dragged in these huge, twisted, rusted metal pieces.

"He painted and drilled day and night, no one in the opera house bothered him. They knew something magic was happening. He bought soccer flags at the airport and used them as backdrops. We wore plain black leotards that Bob cut and fringed. He was still on a ladder when the curtain opened. The audience was restless and started rumbling, then yelling. They'd never seen anything like it. It was pure perfection," Brown said.

Still coming home

The Port Arthur native who thought he'd be a preacher or a pharmacist no longer has family in Port Arthur, but he's returned several times for openings and honors bestowed on him by Port Arthur and the State of Texas.

The Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur maintains a gallery featuring a number of pieces of original artwork, posters, and pieces loaned by the artist. The museum also has a copy of the Talking Heads' "Speaking in Tongues" album cover, which Rauschenberg designed and won him the Grammy for best album packaging in 1983. In August, a Smithsonian show of Rauschenberg's work will visit the Museum of the Gulf Coast.