Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism

The art of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) is usually viewed as quite distinct from Surrealism, a movement which the artist himself displayed some hostility towards. However, Rauschenberg had a very positive reception among Surrealists, particularly across the period 1959-69. In the face of Rauschenbergs avowals of his own literalism and insistence on his art as facts, this book gathers generous evidence of the poetic, metaphorical, allusive, associative and connotative dimensions of the artist's oeuvre as identified by Surrealists, and thus extrapolates new readings from Rauschenberg's key works on that basis. By viewing Rauschenbergs art against the expansion of the cultural influence of the United States in Europe in the period after the Second World War and the increasingly politicized activities of the Surrealists in the era of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), Robert Rauschenberg and Surrealism shows how poetic inference of the artists work was turned towards political interpretation. By analysing Rauschenbergs art in the context of Surrealism, and drawing from it new interpretations and perspectives, this volume simultaneously situates the Surrealist movement in 1960s American art criticism and history.