Pop Artist Robert Rauschenberg Dies At 82

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Rauschenberg died Monday of heart failure at 82, it was announced Tuesday by Jennifer Joy, his representative at PaceWildenstein gallery in New York. His use of odd and everyday articles earned him regard as a pioneer in pop art, first gaining fame in the 1950s.

“The most famous thing he said was that he worked in the gap between art and life,” said John Elderfield, chief curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “I think what he meant by this is life was his materials as much as art was his

Watch the video of Rauschenberg discussing one of his most controversial works. For more on this the significance of this painting.

Rauschenberg didn’t mine popular culture wholesale as Andy Warhol (Campbell’s Soup cans) and Roy Lichtenstein (comic books) did, but his combines — incongruous combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint — shared pop’s blurring of art and objects from modern life.

He also responded to his pop colleagues and began incorporating up-to-the-minute photographed images in his works in the 1960s, including, memorably, pictures of John F. Kennedy. He even won a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for the Talking Heads album “Speaking in Tongues.”

“I’m curious,” he said in 1997 in one of the few interviews he granted in later years. “It’s very rewarding. I’m still discovering things every day.”

Read the full article at The Associated Press