Renaissance Center exhibits Rauschenberg pieces on loan from state museum

Release Date: 3/3/2003. Expired: 4/4/2003

A collection of original works by noted American artist Robert Rauschenberg will be on display in the Visual Arts Gallery of The Renaissance Center in Dickson March 11-April 4.

The pieces are part of the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum and are on loan to The Renaissance Center for the exhibit. A reception celebrating the opening of the exhibit will be 6-9 p.m. March 14.

The Visual Arts Gallery is open 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday and admission is free.

A Texas native whose art has evolved into many mediums in more than 50 years, Rauschenberg was featured in a mammoth career retrospective exhibit in 1998 in which more than 400 pieces filled the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and even overflowed into its secondary SoHo exhibit space.

The pieces owned by the Tennessee State Museum were donated by a private collector and consist of large mixed media works from the 1980s and ’90s reflecting Rauschenberg’s experimentation with ways of transferring photographs to various mediums in a collage style. During part of this period, Rauschenberg worked in Tennessee.

“Robert Rauschenberg’s work has been exhibited all over the globe, including a 1989 world tour that included a stop in Moscow,” said Curtis Southerland, curator of the Visual Arts Gallery. “Retrospective shows of his work have been held in every major American city as well as Berlin, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich and London. His photographs were part of a major exhibit in Paris. We are extremely grateful to the Tennessee State Museum for allowing us the opportunity to bring some of this renowned artist’s work to Dickson.”

Rauschenberg briefly studied pharmacy at the University of Texas in 1942 before leaving and serving in the U.S. Marines. He studied various subjects as the Kansas City Art Institute 1947-48, including art history, sculpture and music. During this time he began doing window displays, executing film sets and designing photographic studios.

In 1948, he attended the Academie Julian in Paris before returning to the US to study under Joseph Albers at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he began collaborations with choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage.

After moving to New York, Rauschenberg studied at the Art Students’ League and had his first one-man exhibitions in 1951. He traveled in Italy, France and Spain, presenting exhibitions in Florence and Rome.

Rauschenberg went through periods of all-white, all-black and then red paintings before his first exhibition at the Leo Castelli gallery in New York in 1958 and began drawings to illustrate Dante’s Inferno.

He experimented with the technique of silkscreen on canvas, mixed with painting, collage and affixed objects in the early 1960s. He was awarded the Grand Prix at Ljubljana for his first lithographic works.

Rauschenberg also got involved with producing dance performances and went on a world tour with Cage and Cunningham’s dance company. In 1968, he was invited by NASA to witness the liftoff of Apollo 11 and to use this theme in his work.

He set up the foundation Change Inc. for destitute artists in 1970 and opened a Florida house with art studios in 1971. He has been active in movements to reform taxation laws on non-profit art institutions.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor called the Guggenheim retrospective on Rauschenberg’s career “overwhelming. The sheer number and diversity of output - painting, sculpture, painted constructions, installations, assemblage, stage sets, prints on every imaginable surface, ceramics, photograph, choreography - speak to a 50-year, unremitting will to create that at its height inspires; at its ebb, sits on laurels past.”

For more information on the Rauschenberg exhibit at The Renaissance Center, call (615)740-5600. The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education center at 855 Highway 46 South, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.

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