People News
Artist Robert Rauschenberg, dead at 82
By M&C People
May 13, 2008, 15:41 GMT

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, who made his mark in pop art and various styles of painting, sculpture and dance, has died in Florida.  He was 82.

Rauschenberg died Monday, said Jennifer Joy, his representative at Pace Wildensteins to the Asociated Press.

A son of Port Arthur, Texas, Rauschenberg, who first gained fame for his "combines," unusual combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint, were a blending of art and objects from modern life in the 1950's.

Along with some notable portraits, Rauschenberg's most famous works was "Bed," created when he had no money for a canvas.

His medium was an old quilt, paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish.

Later days saw Rauschenberg as a sculptor and choreographer - winning a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for avante garde rock group Talking Heads album "Speaking in Tongues."

Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, in his book "American Visions," called Rauschenberg "a protean genius who showed America that all of life could be open to art, writes the Associated Press.

The AP reports that Rauschenberg studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1947, then at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied under master Josef Albers.  He also studied at the Art Students League in New York City.

Rauschenberg met Jasper Johns in 1954. They became lovers and influenced each other's work. The AP quotes "Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists," where 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."

"I don't ever want to go," The AP reports that Rauschenberg revealed in a previous Harper's interview about the subject of 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."