Robert Rauschenb

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Biography • Born 22nd October 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas.• Until 13 he planned to become a minister when he discovered his church called dancing a sin

therefore he was discouraged being a skilled dancer himself.• First studied at the University of Texas doing pharmacology following his parents wishes• He served as a technician in a mental hospital for the Navy from 1943 to 1945.• He went on to study at several more universities, such as the Kansas Art Institute and Black

Mountain College.• Married in 1950 and had a child in 1951. Then divorced in 1953.• He died on the 12th May 2008 on Captiva Island Florida.

Influences • His mother used to make the family's clothes from scraps, something which embarrassed him but

which likely influenced his later work with assemblages and collage.• His painting instructor at Black Mountain was Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus. He was

frequently criticized harshly by Albers. His approach was to not allow for any uninfluenced experimentation. And Rauschenberg described Albers influencing him to do the opposite of what he was being taught.

• Whilst at Black Mountain he also met Composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham who both taught at the college and recommended the use of chance methods, found objects, and common, everyday experiences. All of these provided major influences for Rauschenberg.

• He met Painter Jasper Johns in 1953 and they became close seeing each other everyday exchanging ideas and encouraging exploration of the boundaries of art.

• They also formed a close relationship with Cage and Cunningham.

Key ideas• He was enthusiastic about popular culture and rejected the seriousness of

the abstract expressionists. This led him to search for a new way of painting.• He moved away from traditional methods and wanted to portray his ideas

in different ways through an interaction with popular media and mass produced goods.• Preferring to leave the interpretation of the works to his viewers,

Rauschenberg allowed chance to determine the placement and combination of the different found images and objects in his artwork such that there were no predetermined arrangements or meanings embedded within the works.

Buffalo iiThis is a piece by Robert Rauchenberg. It is a mixed media piece using print and paint. There are lots of different images put together in a collage like way. There are lots of overlapping square shapes in different colours which kind of break the piece up into three: the image of JFK, the top right section of mixed paint, and the bottom third. The images are quite significant to what was going on at the time in the US. JFK was assassinated in 1963 the year before the piece was done. As he is the biggest image I feel like he is the focal point of the piece. I think the image in the bottom right is of some kind of space journey which also would be relevant because in 1961 Freedom 7, the first piloted spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral. Also the images of the military helicopter are relevant because the Vietnam war was going on at the time and JFK was in power therefore under control of Americas involvement with it.

Wassily Kandinsk

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Biography • Born 16th December 1866 in Moscow, Russia• From an early age he attended private drawing classes but he didn’t turn to painting until he

was 30.• In 1886 he studied law, ethnography, and economics at the University of Moscow after finishing

his degree he started lecturing at the University in 1892• Abandoned his career to attend art school in Munich. He studied at the art school of Anton Azbe

and at the Academy of Fine Arts.• In 1914 he returned to Moscow following the outbreak of WW1.• In 1921 he returned to Germany and taught at the Bauhaus until the Nazis closed it in 1933.

• He then moved to France where he lived for the rest of his life producing some of his most prominent art.

• He died in 1944.

Influences • Claude Monet was an inspiration for Kandinsky• He said this about one of his works “I noticed with surprise and

confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory.”• Music synaesthesia

Key ideas• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-

objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.• He believed non objective abstract art was more expressive than

other work

On white 2This is an abstract piece by Kandinsky its made up of lots of geometric shapes layered over each other. The colours indicate different levels of the painting in a transparent way so that some of the shapes have different tonal values within themselves which indicates that they are layered above or bellow other shapes. This creates depth but its then contradicted by other shapes which is quite confusing to look at. There is a mixture of hard straight lines and softer curved lines which to me look quite out of place.