Autobiography, Robert Rauschenberg

Exhibition Label: "Conversation VIII: Serious Play," Jun-2010, Kate Meyer and Susan Earle When we play we have fun.The works on view in this installation have been selected to respond to the video by Pipilotti Rist, I Want to See How You See. Many of these objects draw upon memories of childhood or references to childhood and the body to produce biographic narratives. In many instances, these memories are subversions of the ideal innocence of youth portrayed by fiction. Childhood can be a time of anxiety or repression that informs our experiences as adults. Another theme suggested by the video relates to multiple and distorted perspectives of vision. For his photographs, James Alinder employs a fisheye lens to deliver surrealistic perspectives. For his triptych, Robert Rauschenberg incorporates a distortion-lens camera to produce the central panel, which includes an oval-shaped text that lists the key events and influences in the artist’s life. In Rist’s video, these explorations of perspective appear to link the idea of vision (seeing) with perception (understanding). Archive Label 2003 (version 1): Printed on the same type of press that is used to produce billboards, this large work can be installed horizontally, vertically, or as a folding screen. Acknowledging the artist’s long involvement with adapting commercial art techniques to fine-art purposes, this print was created expressly for photomechanical reproduction by modern industrial printing presses. The first panel contains a near life-size X-ray of Rauschenberg’s body, superimposed on his horoscope. The middle panel lists the major events and influences of the artist’s life, forming an oval that has been photographed through a distortion-lens camera. In the center is a picture from his Texas childhood of his family in a boat. The third panel includes a photograph of Rauschenberg during one of his dance works and a view of New York City from his studio. Exhibition Label: "Sum of the Parts: Recent Works on Paper," Jun-2001, Stephen Goddard Rauschenberg is one of several artists in this exhibition to use a print series as a means of self-analysis (see also the works by Kiki Smith and Margo Kren). In one of the three large lithographs Rauschenberg shows us a nearly life-size x-ray of his body superimposed on his horoscope. On a second there is a written record of major events and influences of the artist’s life and a picture from his Texas childhood of his family on a boat. A third lithograph includes a photograph taken during one of Rauschenberg’s dance works, in which he skates with a circular parachute-like object on his back, and a view of New York City from his studio combined with a map of his native Texas. Archive Label 2003 (version 3): Printed on the same type of press that is used to produce billboards, this large work can be installed horizontally, vertically, or as a folding screen. Acknowledging the artist’s long involvement with adapting commercial art techniques to fine-art purposes, this print was created expressly for photomechanical reproduction by modern industrial printing presses. The first panel contains a near life-size X-ray of Rauschenberg’s body, superimposed on his horoscope. The middle panel lists the major events and influences of the artist’s life, forming an oval that has been photographed through a distortion-lens camera. In the center is a picture from his Texas childhood of his family in a boat. The third panel includes a photograph of Rauschenberg during one of his dance works and a view of New York City from his studio.