As we waited for the press conference for the opening of "Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules" at SFMOMA (through March 25), a bebop jazz version of "Over the Rainbow" played softly over the p.a. system. Was this a good sign that the exhibition would finally address the artist's gay side? Turned out, it was!
When the presser got underway, SFMOMA director Neal Benezra extolled Rauschenberg's "extraordinary creativity and boundless spirit," and pointed to the museum's 50-years-long relationship with the artist. There are over 90 of his works in the museum's collection. SFMOMA gave him a solo show in 1971; acquired "Collection" (1954-55), one of the artist's greatest "Combines," in 1972; gave him his first retrospective in 1976; and explored his early work of the 1950s in a 1992 exhibition.
The famous "Erased de Kooning Drawing" (1953) posits the essential Rauschenbergian question: Just how far can you take a work of art? And how do you get around a father figure (as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollack were for RR, vying for the honor of "Best Artist" in NYC at the time)? Also, in a way the erased drawing was a collaboration between artists, an area of inquiry that RR went on to explore throughout his fabulous career.
The Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA Gary Garrels called the artist "an omnivore, a manipulator of images," and in that way, he was quite before his time, as we are now constantly inundated with digital images in the new century. He always intended to bring the "real world" into his art.
Thankfully, the exhibition does take note of the artist's homosexuality, and wall texts refer to the part that a gay sensibility may have played in his work. To wit:
"Although Rauschenberg and [artist Cy] Twombly were not 'out' in the post- Stonewall sense, their romantic relationship was recognized by the Black Mountain community."
"The development of the Combines coincided with the beginning of Rauschenberg's romantic relationship with artist Jasper Johns and the solidification of their friendship with John Cage and his partner, Merce Cunningham. Direct and indirect references to gay culture appear throughout the Combines - a layer of potential meaning woven in among others. This strategy of offering veiled content accessible only to those in the know may itself have been informed by Rauschenberg's experience in the 1950s, when homosexuality was something that could be revealed only obliquely and carefully."
It was at SFMOMA's "Early Works" show in 1992 that Out There got to meet the artist. Quite boldly at a presser, we went up to him and asked him to autograph our catalog - which he most generously did, using a black Sharpie marker to produce a big, looping signature, before museum personnel swooped in and stopped the proceedings. Too late, OT had our prize! And RR had his: in the back pocket of his jeans, at 10 in the morning, he kept a small, opened bottle of Jack Daniels. He was a rule-breaker to the end.