Brief contextual research of two artists from the past for my new project: Connections

1. Robert
Rauschenberg

2. Biography
• Born 22nd October 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas.
• Until 13 he planned to become a minister when he discovered his church called dancing a sin
therefore he was discouraged being a skilled dancer himself.
• First studied at the University of Texas doing pharmacology following his parents wishes
• He served as a technician in a mental hospital for the Navy from 1943 to 1945.
• He went on to study at several more universities, such as the Kansas Art Institute and Black
Mountain College.
• Married in 1950 and had a child in 1951. Then divorced in 1953.
• He died on the 12th May 2008 on Captiva Island Florida.

3. Influences
• His mother used to make the family's clothes from scraps, something which embarrassed him but
which likely influenced his later work with assemblages and collage.
• His painting instructor at Black Mountain was Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus. He was
frequently criticized harshly by Albers. His approach was to not allow for any uninfluenced
experimentation. And Rauschenberg described Albers influencing him to do the opposite of what
he was being taught.
• Whilst at Black Mountain he also met Composer John Cage and choreographer Merce
Cunningham who both taught at the college and recommended the use of chance methods,
found objects, and common, everyday experiences. All of these provided major influences for
Rauschenberg.
• He met Painter Jasper Johns in 1953 and they became close seeing each other everyday
exchanging ideas and encouraging exploration of the boundaries of art.
• They also formed a close relationship with Cage and Cunningham.

4. Key ideas
• He was enthusiastic about popular culture and rejected the
seriousness of the abstract expressionists. This led him to search for a
new way of painting.
• He moved away from traditional methods and wanted to portray his
ideas in different ways through an interaction with popular media and
mass produced goods.
• Preferring to leave the interpretation of the works to his viewers,
Rauschenberg allowed chance to determine the placement and
combination of the different found images and objects in his artwork
such that there were no predetermined arrangements or meanings
embedded within the works.

5. Buffalo ii
This is a piece by Robert Rauchenberg. It is a
mixed media piece using print and paint. There
are lots of different images put together in a
collage like way. There are lots of overlapping
square shapes in different colours which kind of
break the piece up into three: the image of JFK,
the top right section of mixed paint, and the
bottom third. The images are quite significant to
what was going on at the time in the US. JFK was
assassinated in 1963 the year before the piece
was done. As he is the biggest image I feel like he
is the focal point of the piece. I think the image in
the bottom right is of some kind of space journey
which also would be relevant because in 1961
Freedom 7, the first piloted spacecraft was
launched from Cape Canaveral. Also the images of
the military helicopter are relevant because the
Vietnam war was going on at the time and JFK was
in power therefore under control of Americas
involvement with it.

6. Wassily
Kandinsky

7. Biography
• Born 16th December 1866 in Moscow, Russia
• From an early age he attended private drawing classes but he didn’t turn to painting until he was
30.
• In 1886 he studied law, ethnography, and economics at the University of Moscow after finishing
his degree he started lecturing at the University in 1892
• Abandoned his career to attend art school in Munich. He studied at the art school of Anton Azbe
and at the Academy of Fine Arts.
• In 1914 he returned to Moscow following the outbreak of WW1.
• In 1921 he returned to Germany and taught at the Bauhaus until the Nazis closed it in 1933.
• He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life producing some of his most
prominent art.
• He died in 1944.

8. Influences
• Claude Monet was an inspiration for Kandinsky
• He said this about one of his works “I noticed with surprise and
confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself
ineradicably on my memory.”
• Music synaesthesia

9. Key ideas
• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-
objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds
merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free,
spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through
a unity of sensation.
• He believed non objective abstract art was more expressive than
other work

10. On white 2
This is an abstract piece by Kandinsky its
made up of lots of geometric shapes layered
over each other. The colours indicate
different levels of the painting in a
transparent way so that some of the shapes
have different tonal values within
themselves which indicates that they are
layered above or bellow other shapes. This
creates depth but its then contradicted by
other shapes which is quite confusing to
look at. There is a mixture of hard straight
lines and softer curved lines which to me
look quite out of place.