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The term 'Modern Art' refers to art from the period 1860sto 1970s and encompasses the work of such well-known names as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso. Modern Art represents the discarding of the artistic traditions of the past in favour of a spirit of experimentation. It conceptualised the functions of art in new ways and introduced different ideas about the nature of materials. Two artists who had a huge impact on modern art in the twentieth century were Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Arguably, they both had an important influence on art as we know it today, but whereas Warhol became a household name, Rauschenberg is remembered only by those in the artistic community
Milton Ernest Rauschenberg, wholater became known as Robert Rauschenberg, was born in PortArthur, Texas in 1925, while . Both were of European heritage, born to working class families. In Rauschenberg's case, his childhood environment was hardly inspiring -a blue-collar town that has been described as a 'cultural wasteland with no art'. His father had no understanding of art and gave him no encouragement. His mother, on the other hand, supported her son as much as she could. For much of his life, and he did so in 1944, moving to California. Like Rauschenberg, Warhol was close to his mother. A sickly child, he spent a lot of time at home with her. Though he was missing a lot of school, , so it was actually an important period of his life. He eventually enrolled in the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where he took his first steps into the art world. Eventually, both artists gravitated towards New York, *
Artistically, what the two have in common is the willingness to innovate, take chances and be different from everything that had gone before. Both were a new type of artist who embraced and drew inspiration from popular culture. Both rejected the orthodoxical views of 'high' and 'low' art. To their minds, anything could be art. Rauschenberg produced paintings and sculptures and even combined them to produce mixed media, working with a variety of less conventional materials including silk, metal and glass. 'the whole world was his canvas'. He was the ultimate scavenger, prepared to use anything he could find in his artworks, even going so far as to incorporate such disparate objects as socks, bedspreads and car parts into his work. His 1953 piece entitledAutomobile Tire Print was conceptual art as never seen before and would ensure him a place in the art history books.
Warhol's work was equally innovative, drawing from the world around him, but somewhat different in approach. He rose to fame with his iconic Campbell's Soup Con series, which even today is seen as one of the most definitive images of the Pop Art movement. . It's a similar story for his iconic series of movie star portraits -including such popular culture figures as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor. Like Rauschenberg, he didn't limit himself to just one medium. In 1964 he produced his first exhibition of sculpture, which consisted of hundreds of imitation supermarket product boxes, most famously Brillo and Heinz. It was an exhibition which confounded critics and helped cement his credentials as an artist challenging the status quo.
Not content with subverting the conventional art forms of painting and sculpture, both Rauschenberg and Warhol experimented beyond them. Rauschenberg collaborated with musicians, costume designers, dancers and even scientists, never ceasing to expand the possibilities of what art could be. He has been described as 'the wind blowing through the art world, pollinating everything'. Warhol, too, dabbled in other fields, including rock music and film, and engaged in Performance Art, with his multimedia show The Exploding Plastic Inevitable becoming one of the works he is best remembered for. This show pioneered many lighting innovations which rock musicians have been using in their shows since the 1960s.
Both Rauschenberg and Warhol were extremely prolific, the former's career spanning six decades, whilst the latter is a household name whose work has been adopted by several generations. What differentiates them is that Warhol courted publicity. He wrote books and co-founded a magazine, Interview, which reported on film, fashion and popular culture. He socialised with celebrities and had several TV shows, which helped spread his fame. In contrast, Rauschenberg didn't seek the limelight. His name is not widely known outside the art world, but that does not diminish his influence upon it. Given that Warhol's work is immensely reproducible and commercial, brightly coloured and attractive to buyers, it is easy to see why Rauschenberg's productions with salvaged garbage and street signs would lack the same popular appeal. However, this great innovator still deserves to be remembered for his unique contribution to Modern Art.
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