Robert Rauschenberg and the Jewish Museum
As explored in the exhibition “New York: 1962–1964,” on view through January 8, 2023.
Now on view at the Jewish Museum, New York: 1962–1964 explores a pivotal three-year period in the history of art and culture in New York City. It examines how artists living and working in New York responded to their rapidly changing world, through more than 180 works of art — all made or seen in New York between 1962–1964. Many of the artists exhibited in this exhibition share a historic institutional tie to the Museum, including Robert Rauschenberg. The artist received his first solo museum exhibition at the Jewish Museum in 1963. Learn more about that exhibition in this excerpt from the catalogue that accompanies New York: 1962–1964.
Robert Rauschenberg rose to art-world prominence during the 1950s and early 1960s, making a series of bold gestures that demonstrated a protean approach to art making. When his self-titled retrospective opened at the Jewish Museum in 1963, it confirmed the thirty-eight-year-old’s status as one of the most important artists in the United States. It also marked the beginning of the Jewish Museum’s contemporary-art program, initiated by its visionary new director, the critic, art historian, and curator Alan Solomon.
Most of the fifty-five works in the exhibition were dense and unruly assemblages of found materials overlaid with expressive strokes of paint that Rauschenberg called Combines, which juxtaposed all manner of items, from torn scraps of newspaper to abandoned automobile tires to chipped Coca-Cola bottles. In his catalogue essay, Solomon notes that, unlike many European artists, especially those associated with Dada, who had cultivated a “negative attitude” toward society, Rauschenberg and his American cohort were “wholly engaged in life and art, in a direct and optimistic way.” (1) The Combines exemplify this verve. Instead of resisting their environment, they collaborate with it, producing new meaning from common objects. Rauschenberg encouraged a kind of urban literacy, inviting viewers to uncover unexpected connections and understandings in the anomalous assortments of trash attached to each canvas. Although familiar, the fragments Rauschenberg used could not always be easily identified under layers of grime. These markings confirmed that the works’ components belonged to the real world while suppressing their original connotations, promoting what Solomon called “ambiguities of reading,” a semiotic irresolution that allowed the process of creating meaning to go on indefinitely. (2)
A photograph taken at the exhibition’s opening [in front of Barge] gives a sense of its impact, showing Rauschenberg dressed in a tuxedo surrounded by many of the decade’s most enduring artists, including Arman, Peter Agostini, Lee Bontecou, Merce Cunningham, John Chamberlain, Sherman Drexler, Friedel Dzubas, Perle Fine, Edward Higgins, Alfred Jensen, Allan Kaprow, Friedrich Kiesler, Alfred Leslie, Ernst van Leyden, Richard Lippold, Marisol, Robert Murray, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, Ray Parker, James Rosenquist, Salvatore Scarpitta, Jon Schueler, George Segal, David Slivka, Tania, and Andy Warhol. The success cemented a relationship between Rauschenberg and Solomon that would reach further heights the next year, when Solomon featured Rauschenberg in the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, catapulting him to the attention of the festival’s jury, who awarded Rauschenberg the International Grand Prize in Painting. But the retrospective’s influence also extended to its many visitors who, when they stepped back onto the street, might be newly attentive to the urban miscellany they passed while walking down Madison Avenue or cutting through Central Park.
A selection of works that were included in the 1963 Rauschenberg exhibition returned to the Jewish Museum after 59 years in New York: 1962–1964, plan your visit.
Edited excerpt of the essay “Rauschenberg Retrospective Opens” by Sam Sackeroff from the catalogue New York: 1962–1964. The catalogue was edited by Germano Celant, designed by 2x4, and co-published by the Jewish Museum and Skira Editore. Available for purchase here.
Footnotes:
1. Alan Solomon, “Robert Rauschenberg,” in Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Jewish Museum, 1963), n.p.
2. Ibid
