Robert Rauschenberg

Robert was born in 1925 in Texas in a small town called Milton Ernest Rauschenberg ( United states ) on October 22nd.
He died in 2008 in Florida on may 12th on a Monday night. The cause of his death was heart failure.
 His fathers name was Ernest, he was a very strong willed and strict man , he worked for Gulf State Utilities which is a power company . His mothers name was Dora and she was a very strong Christian . She earned money by making items of clothing for families out of unwanted scraps , Robert was truly ashamed of this , and many people say this could have influenced some of his most recent collages.
Robert did marry a women called Susan Weil in 1950, she was a painter, however they quickly divorced three years later in 1953.Also in the 1950s at the same time as he married he started this journey as an Abstract Expressionist.

Robert Rauschenberg
‘Almanac’ 1962
To create this piece he used oil paint , screen prints on a canvas and acrylic paints.



The main focus I feel for this image is near the top left which looks like an old power station . He has used lots of bold shading which makes that part stand out a lot more also because it’s the only part of the collage which hasn’t got lightly painted brushstrokes in a white / grey mix of colours like a wash so then you can see it a lot more clearly. Robert has used lots of smudge effective paint strokes on the other images which makes the effect of him trying to fade the images underneath away. Another thing Robert uses a lot, is straight and slightly angled lines which gives off the affect they have been cut out of either a photo album or a magazine or newspaper, and placed in that certain way to give off a message or infact to tell a story. The linear marks on the collage are 2-D.Roberts tone on this collage is dark, he uses a lot of black to create a bold shading, for example on the right bottom hand corner although the tree is black,  he has used a black lightly smudge brush stroke then which looks like a dark charcoal gone over half of the tree creating the feel in which half of the tree is  shadowing the other half . He uses  primary colours such  black and white mainly for the images. This is so you can see them better and makes them stand out more, however he does infact used secondary colours as you can see in the collage grey and light blue. He tends to use the grey and light blue to fade the images underneath out, this is so you can still see the image just not in full detail where as if you used the black you would not be able to see anything at all . All the colours are dull and gloomy which I feel associates with low key lighting as it gives off the feeling its been created to look older than it actually is.