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Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg Quotes

Painter

Robert Rauschenberg was an American painter known for his innovative and interdisciplinary works that combined painting, sculpture, photography, and performance art. His style spanned across Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual Art, and Pop Art, profoundly influencing 20th-century art.

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Famous Robert Rauschenberg Quotes

“I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.”

Thinking Way Want Art Found Painting Best Way Contentment

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters have been very proud of paint and have let it behave openly.”

Thinking Years Kind Has Beens Lasts Honesty Painting Proud Twenties Paint Painter Behave

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement.”

Facts Strength Color Painting Spite Etc Strongest Composition Arrangements Inevitability Souvenirs

Book:Robert Rauschenberg

Source: Robert Rauschenberg

“This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.”

Firsts Art Made Artist Boys Saws Painting First Time Blue I Realized Encounters

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“I want my paintings to look like what's going on outside my window rather than what's inside my studio.”

Want Looks Painting Window Studios

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.”

Ifs Thinking World Made Real Painting Real World

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.”

Way Would Be Air Painting Paint Variety Excitement Abstract

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.”

Art Painting Adventure Holes Undefined

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone.”

Ifs Believe Humans Might Order Passion Left Human Beings Painting Commitment Passionate Oneself Commit Obsessed Carrie

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.”

Want Mean Reason Painting

Book:Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

Source: Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

“Basically painting is total idiocy.”

Painting Idiocy

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.”

Whole Pain Language Attitude Struggle Painting Function

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.”

Painting Woods Oil Pairs Fabric Nails Sock Suitable

Book:Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

Source: Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

“Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.”

Trying Art Made Painting Relate Gaps Art And Life

Book:Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

Source: Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-garde

“Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.”

Painting Familiar Aerospace

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting.”

World Reason Painting Huge Painter No Reason Considering

Book:Robert Rauschenberg: combines

Source: Robert Rauschenberg: combines

“I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.”

Knows Way Want I Can Two Enough Possibility Painting Accomplish Just One

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable”

Mean Fear New York Painting Painter Awe Unbelievable

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway”

Thinking Painting

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended”

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

“And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission”

Giving Mean Black White Painting Aspect Excited Black And White Permission

Author:Robert Rauschenberg

About the Author

Born: October 22, 1925
Died: May 12, 2008
Known for: Painter
Quotes: 92

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Books & Sources

Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-avant-gardeRelated source material

Robert RauschenbergRelated source material

Robert Rauschenberg, a retrospectiveRelated source material

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