Death

Robert Rauschenberg died yesterday.
He was 82.
He was a dang good artist.
He's the kind of artist that makes work that is hard for me to look at. It's hard because it resonates with some place deep in me; it reverberates against my innards.
I believe that the thoughts and mechanisms that motivate and drive a lot of where I move from have been similar to those mechanisms in Rauschenberg. That may be a lofty statement, and I'm not comparing my art making skills to his - which is a conversation about the end product, the artwork. I'm more speaking to the inner artworkings that move an idea to the tangible realm.

Here's a quote from Rauschenberg in the NY Times article. Dang.

"I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

He added: “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”