Rauschenberg

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I pulled Calvin Tomkins' book "Ahead of The Game - Four Versions of The Avant-garde" out of the run today, as it sort of winked at me from the shelves. Written in 1962, it outlines the then current state of the avant-garde in the arts and music. It also was one of the touchstone volumes of my time as an art student in the 'seventies: one of those books we returned to time and again. The last of the four in this quartet of avant-gardistas is the American painter, Robert Rauschenberg, often erroneously lumped in with the Abstract Expressionists in much the same way that Van Gogh was lazily characterised as an Impressionist [he wasn't].

Robert Rauschenberg has always held a special place in my personal view of art history, and when I was vying for a place in art college - at Stourbridge School - I produced as, as part of my portfolio of work, at the interview, a miniaturised 'pastiche', a personal homage in portable form, of a Rauschenberg-styled painting. When tasked by the interviewing panel as to why I had chosen to present it, I simply said that, at that point, I liked the painterly solutions he [Rauschenberg] presented, although I didn't yet know why: in retrospect, I could have said that the painter offered answers to questions as yet un-asked, which was true. After fifty years, I still hold that view of the man and his work: enigmatic just about sums him up. I got the college place, by the way...     

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