Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) is regarded as one of the most important artists of the post-war era and has influenced practitioners in a range of directions and practices, such as Pop, Neo-Dada, assemblage, Fluxus, Nouveau réalisme and performance art.

“I don’t mess around with my subconscious,” Robert Rauschenberg himself said. “I try to stay wide awake.”* Despite the statement made in a 1965 interview with the Archives of American Art, Rauschenberg’s art is closely rooted in Surrealism and its influences. Although the artist distanced his work from Surrealism and emphasized its literal qualities, critics of the time identified poetic, metaphorical, and associative dimensions in his work, particularly in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Robert Rauschenberg and Moderna Museet

The relationship between Robert Rauschenberg and Moderna Museet began with the landmark exhibitions Movement in Art (1961) and 4 Americans (1962). The museum’s first director Pontus Hultén had encountered Rauschenberg’s work in Paris, where his work was met with enthusiastic acclaim. During this period, Rauschenberg exhibited several times alongside the Surrealist group, notably participating with the early combine “Bed” (1955) in the international E.R.O.S. exhibition at Galerie Daniel Cordier in 1959, which celebrated eroticism. In New York his work was included in the 1968 survey exhibition Dada, Surrealism and Their Heritage at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

This often-overlooked connection to Surrealist legacies can be traced further in Rauschenberg’s later work — for example, in the playful, high-tech experiment Mud Muse (1968–1971), with its allusions to formlessness, chance, and the subconscious. The sculpture also reflects the prominence in his work of dance, sound, and performance, not least in his long running collaboration with John Cage and Merce Cunningham.