Jesters do oft prove prophets. -- William Shakespeare: King Lear In almost half a century of serious writing on the works of prolific Port Arthur-born artist Robert Rauschenberg, the notion of its populist appeal is a common tenet: an understanding that his works -- voluminous paintings, sculpture, performance and every combination thereof -- use the flotsam and jetsam of civilization as their media, junk that didn't have a place in fine art before he came along. There's a philosophy there, to be sure, one that can be pointedly argued or tossed-off, criticized or analyzed until God is found among the magazine cut-outs, Coke bottles and cardboard boxes, and common man has been granted immortality. And perhaps this next observation is merely an extension of its accessibility, but have you ever noticed how funny Rauschenberg's art is? Visual jokes and wordplay abound. Maybe this is because the artist didn't see a real painting until he was 19 years old and chooses to recall this humility in humor, or the fact that he's so dyslexic that words can easily swap letters and become gibberish, communicating to everyone but him. No matter where it originates though, the hidden witticism and surface slapstick found across the board in Rauschenberg's art does its own part to relate to everyone's sensibility. Like a poem one finally "gets," or an inside joke we've been let in on, the feeling of communication through art is as powerful as any profound truth.
Begin the tour upstairs at MFAH Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective is on loan from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and runs through May 17. From there it travels to Germany and then to the new Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. |
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