Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts - by José Castañal & Oona Doyle (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Rauschenberg's scrap-metal works break free of the canvas, becoming entirely autonomous in a wholehearted engagement with the poetics of recycling and reclamation

Published to coincide with the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg's (1925-2008) birth, this volume is one of the only publications dedicated to the artist's seminal 1980s series, Gluts. The series was inspired by the artist's 1985 visit to his native Texas, which was weathering a recession due to a "glut" in the oil market, turning its landscape into a wasteland of abandoned vehicles and the rusting signs of failed petrol stations. Rauschenberg salvaged these discarded objects and transformed them into wall reliefs and freestanding assemblages. This bilingual volume includes abundant archival imagery of the artist at work as well as detail shots of the works unseen elsewhere. A new text by philosopher Mark Alizart as well as a French translation of choreographer Trisha Brown's celebrated essay "Improvisation: Neapolitan Gluts for Lateral Pass" (2009) evince the ingenuity of Rauschenberg's assemblages.