Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Robert Rauschenberg, one of the most prolific and influential artists of the postwar period, has created an astonishing variety of works during a career spanning more than fifty years. To illuminate the meaning of Rauschenberg's art and the reasons behind his artistic choices, Robert Mattison in this book focuses closely on a small selection of the artist's projects. Mattison offers an interpretation of Rauschenberg's output that is both original and uniquely insightful, based on extensive research and first-hand observation of the artist at work in his studio.
Like Rauschenberg's own work, the book ranges across a variety of disciplines. Mattison relates the artist's output to the visual arts, politics, technology, dance, urban theory, and other intriguing contemporary issues. The book examines Rauschenberg's working process, the effect of his dyslexia on his art, his seminal Combine paintings of the 1950s, fascination with the "space race," and collaboration with well-known choreographer Trisha Brown. A final chapter explores the art Rauschenberg exhibited in Chile during the dangerous and repressive rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

One of the leading artists of the avant-garde, Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) has had an active career since World War II, yielding a widely diverse assortment of paintings, assemblage, and performance art projects. Although past observers of the art scene have found it difficult to describe and assess his prolific, eclectic output, these two volumes succeed in providing, from different perspectives, a clearer understanding of this often enigmatic man and his achievements. Joseph (art history, Univ. of California) closely examines Rauschenberg's work in a detailed and scholarly view of the artist's career from 1951 to 1971, as seen through the context of such works as the White Paintings, Rebus, and Canyon-"Combine" paintings created from varied materials-as well as through his close professional association with composer John Cage. Joseph considers Rauschenberg in relation to the neo-avant-garde movement itself, as well as in respect to the sociological, philosophical, and artistic frames of reference that helped to define it. Those interested in the interrelationship of various modern arts genres will find this book especially illuminating. With 103 illustrations. Breaking Boundaries views Rauschenberg's life and creative output with special emphasis on the influences derived from the urban environment, the artist's creative methods and studio surroundings, collaborations with choreographer Trisha Brown, and the massive and long-term Overseas Culture Interchange project. Mattison (art history, Lafayette Coll.) presents a select group of works for in-depth analysis as the key to the art and the artist. The content and style of this lavish, oversized work, with its many photographs and illustrations (72 black-and-white, 32 color), will appeal to academic audiences yet at the same time is accessible to the general reader with an interest in the subject. Libraries owning Mary Lynne Kotz's Rauschenberg: Art and Life (1990) may want to update their collections with these new volumes and with Leo Steinberg's more recent Encounters with Rauschenberg. Recommended for large collections specializing in the arts.-Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Rauschenberg is among the best known and most studied US artists of the second half of the 20th century. Mary Lynn Kotz's Rauschenberg, Art and Life (CH, Mar'91) was the first comprehensive view of the artist's achievement and remains a standard source. The catalog for the 1997 exhibition, Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, by Walter Hopps and Susan Davison, is a tour de force and the definitive publication on the artist. Rauschenberg's work has been so widely and so consistently exhibited, analyzed, and celebrated that a new publication on him must be held to high standards. Mattison (Lafayette College) meets this challenge, providing a mature and well-focused exploration of selected projects, with in-depth appreciation of Rauschenberg's working processes and a deeper understanding of his purposes and content. Mattison was offered substantial in-studio observation of Rauschenberg; the resulting text is intelligent, insightful, and eloquently written. Five chapters explore the artist's studio practices, urban experience, space exploration works, his work with dance and the performing arts, and his seven-year, eleven-country collaborative project "The Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange." Generously illustrated with 61 figures, 31 in full color. An important addition to the literature on a major American artist. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. J. A. Day University of South Dakota

Booklist Review

Rauschenberg has been so prolific that few critics have a handle on his vast output or the sensibility and ideas behind it. Enter intrepid art historian Mattison, who observes Rauschenberg hard at work in his enormous, immaculate, high-tech Florida studio, where this master of intuition and spontaneity, who is actually as organized and efficient as an emergency room physician, works with a crew of energetic assistants at a breathless pace. Collaborations and an atmosphere conducive to the unexpected are crucial to Rauschenberg's unfettered creativity, Mattison realizes, and the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images that characterize Rauschenberg's work reflects his keen interest in the flux and multifariousness of life. Mattison also analyzes Rauschenberg's 20-year collaboration with choreographer Trisha Brown, parses Rauschenberg's attunement to urban life and fascination with space exploration, ponders the aesthetic implications of the artist's dyslexia, and chronicles Rauschenberg's wildly ambitious and highly controversial project entailing travel to and the making and exhibiting of art in 11 countries. Mattison's unique approach greatly enhances our appreciation for this taken-for-granted artist and his phenomenally complex art. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2003 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Robert S. Mattison is Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He received his BA in art history from Middlebury College, his MA from Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, and his PhD in art history from Princeton University. His dissertation, ¿The Art of Robert Motherwell during the 1940s,¿ was later published as Robert Motherwell: The Formative Years (1986). He frequently writes on the topic of modern art and has published four books and more than sixty articles. He has also curated more than thirty exhibitions. His publications include Masterworks in the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella (1995) and Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries (2003).