Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Death of an Artist



The famous american artist, and my distant cousin (actually, the 1st cousin of my Grandfather, I'm told), Robert Rauschenberg, died on Monday at the age of 82.

I never met him, but have seen his works in art museums before. They even have a few of his works at the Portland Art Musuem. And like much modern art, it is rather ... different.

This is one of his breakout works, "Monogram", a "composite" work done in oil, canvas, tire, traffic barriacde, and stuffed goat.



Supposedly he was groundbreaking in coming up with ways of transferring photos and images to the surfaces of odd objects. For example, I'd like to see a Kong print on a BMW 635 Csi.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-05-2004/0002225658&EDATE=

Very interesting ... But is it art? Discuss. Preferrably over lots of beer.

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