Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism: Art, 'Sensibility' and War

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The art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is usually viewed as quite distinct from Surrealism, a movement which the artist himself displayed some hostility towards. However, Rauschenberg had a very positive reception among Surrealists, particularly across the period 1959-69. In the face of Rauschenbergs avowals of his own literalism and insistence on his art as facts, this book gathers generous evidence of the poetic, metaphorical, allusive, associative and connotative dimensions of the artist's oeuvre as identified by Surrealists, and thus extrapolates new readings from Rauschenberg's key works on that basis. By viewing Rauschenbergs art against the expansion of the cultural influence of the United States in Europe in the period after the Second World War and the increasingly politicized activities of the Surrealists in the era of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism shows how poetic inference of the artists work was turned towards political interpretation. By analysing Rauschenbergs art in the context of Surrealism, and drawing from it new interpretations and perspectives, this volume simultaneously situates the Surrealist movement in 1960s American art criticism and history.

Reviews

Parkinsons expansive study opens up poetic, allusive, and sometimes political layers in Rauschenberg s works, unearthing important responses from Parisian critics and writers. This approach unexpectedly establishes Rauschenbergs Surrealist inflected roots, whilst contributing to the recent wave of expanded consideration of post-war, later Surrealism. * Lewis Kachur, author of Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations (2001), and Professor of Art History, Kean University, USA *
With remarkable precision, thoroughness, and generative energy, Parkinsons book offers an authoritative account of the French surrealist reception of Rauschenbergs work in the 1960s. Analysing little-known and untranslated texts, Parkinson shows just how enmeshed the aesthetic and political registers were for these writers and artists. * Edward Krcma, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art History and World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, UK *
This impressive book is more than a study on Rauschenberg and Surrealism, more specifically on the largely unnoticed or forgotten link between them. It is also a reflection on the way we write art history today, as a strange mix of theory, thoroughly documented archival research and, above all, an obsession with linear periodization. -- Jan Baetens * Leonardo Reviews *

Author Bio

Gavin Parkinson is Professor of European Modernism, The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK.