Robert Rauschenberg's Almanac

Born on October 22nd 1925 in the oil-refining city of Port Arthur, Texas neè Milton Ernest





Rauschenberg, he later renamed himself Robert after his Grandfather. Rauschenbergs father was





one of the many blue coloured workers in the oil refineries whilst his mother worked as a telephone





operator. He first studied art during his final years at high school but this was quickly cut short





when in 1943 he entered the local University of Texas to study Physics only to be expelled in his





first year due to learning difficulties, dyslexia, which was then not recognised and so from there he





entered into military service with the navy for one year working in the hospitals as he “did not want





to kill anyone” and here his antiwar feelings only became stronger.





He did not enrol into art education again until 1947 when he joined Kansas’s art school, which took





him on a short and unmemorable study period to Paris, because he felt no use there for it’s time had





already been and gone. It was moving back to America and onto the Black Mountain College in





North Carolina where Rauschenberg began to come into his own. Studying alongside key Abstract





Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline he began to reject





the way that the purely emotional movement worked believing that colours didn’t represent





emotions but colour.





In 1951 Rauschenberg broke away on his own with his first solo show, although that same year he





did exhibit alongside 60 other New York Abstract Expressionist artists including Pollock and





Kooning and became part of the ‘New York School’ that was founded. But during the fifties he and





his...