The Rauschenberg Research Project

July 9, 2013 1:11 PM

The SFMOMA has launched the Rauschenberg Research Project, an online database of the Rauschenbergs in their permanent collection. Each piece of art is available in high resolution (click 'download' for the high-res image), along with commentary, interviews, essays, maps, contact prints, or other pertinent information, including its ownership history, any markings on the piece, and its exhibition history. All the files related to a particular piece can be downloaded in one go (bottom link of every page).
posted by flibbertigibbet (10 comments total)

Oh my.
Fantastic!
posted by Thorzdad at 1:20 PM on July 9, 2013

I see dicks....er vaginas...just um, nevermind....
posted by shockingbluamp at 1:48 PM on July 9, 2013

My boss would like to say fuck you for ruining my ability to get things done today.
posted by klangklangston at 2:19 PM on July 9, 2013

LOL back in the 80s, my girlfriend was a printer at Gemini GEL. One day, she told me that Rauschenberg came in to work, so her boss sent her on an errand that he described as essential for a successful work session. She was sent to the corner store to buy a fifth of Chivas Regal.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:34 PM on July 9, 2013

Huh. One of my best friends was a printer at Gemini for a couple years, a couple years ago, and worked on a bunch of Rauschenberg's last prints. Through her, I got to go to his memorial. She's still a little annoyed that she got Serra overages instead of Rauschenberg ones as her going away present.
posted by klangklangston at 5:59 PM on July 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Beautiful. Amazing. Glorious. This is what the Internet was made for. One of the wife's favorites, and now I can "hmmm" and nod knowingly without being a total fraud.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:10 PM on July 9, 2013

Robert Rauschenberg - Erased De Kooning. "See how ridiculously you have to think in order to make this work? And so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and I went up and knocked on his door and praying the whole time that he wouldn't be home and then that would be the work. But he was home. And after a few awkward moments I told him what I had in mind and he said that he understood me but that he wasn't for it. And I was hoping then that he would refuse and that would be the work."
posted by unliteral at 10:09 PM on July 9, 2013

Rasuchenberg's works from the 70s, including Cardboards, and the Hoarfrost sieres, haunt me. I must have written about them a dozen times, and i look at the book weekly. I just can't figure them out--sure they combines are great, and the late prints have a gorgeous energy, but the exhausted, burnt ends, of reinvention--i am glad about this site because it adds to that.
posted by PinkMoose at 10:30 PM on July 9, 2013

sorry--here is the hoarfrost work that the sfmoma has,http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/2955 and though they have no cardboards, the chow seires is something i have not scene, and is funny, and generous as ever (and new to me)
posted by PinkMoose at 10:35 PM on July 9, 2013

the best thing about the hoarfrost work, and you can see it in the fantastic photos on this site--is that it smooths the idea of collage--instead of adding layers or textures, building up--he does that, and then photographs, or transfers them, to flatten--then when he has it flattened (and the work has much more room to breathe than his earlier or later work), but then, to add visual complexity, he adds this visual scrim, that is semi-transparent. some of this seires, has work printed on this semi transparent scrims, and they float in and out, literally float. But the one here, the blankness just adds to it.
posted by PinkMoose at 10:45 PM on July 9, 2013