Robert Rauschenberg R.I.P.

I'm with the Abstract Expressionist who, upon seeing one of Rauschenberg's atrocities, was heard to exclaim: "If this is Modern Art, then I quit!" That being said, I have to honor the man for having lived life "with no time out," and with having made his vision of what art means visible and commercially viable. I can't stand his stuff, and the fact that he's died doesn't make me like his stuff any more than I did before he died, but all artists in all media are ultimately kindred spirits, so I say "Well done, and well lived."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080513/en_afp/usartrauschenberg

NEW YORK (AFP) - Robert Rauschenberg, 82, one of the towering figures of 20th century art, died at his home in Florida overnight, a spokeswoman for the Pace Wildenstein gallery in New York told AFP Tuesday.

I wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises," he said in a 2005 interview with Art Info magazine, in which he discussed the iconic series.

"If it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was," he explained. "The object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."

Rauschenberg worked across genres, and was known for assemblage, conceptualist methods, printmaking, painting, sculpture and was even active in the field of choreography.