Art
Now and Zen
John McEwen
The retrospective of paintings, assemblages, prints and drawings by the American Robert Rauschenberg (Tate Gallery till 14 June) does not have the luck to suit the prevailing mood. The taste of the times is for greater realism, for moral commitment, for philosophical answers, exactly, in fact, the kind of spiritual earnestness Rauschenberg himself became notorious, and then famous, for questioning. Now 55, Rauschenberg came into artistic prominence in the Fifties, years of the Bomb and the Cold War, and this too is relevant. With Cage and Cunningham, Creeley and a whole school of poets and writers, he advanced a Zen-oriented attitude to existence that questioned the whole western notion of progress towards perfection — scientific, artistic or in any other form. Tainting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made — I try to act in the gap between the two,' he said, and has maintained that position for 30 years. The Western tradition since the Renaissance has, contrarily, sanctified the artist as the most perfect expression of man's individuality, the human-being above all others who makes beneficial order of threatening chaos. The primary torchbearers of this historical tradition when Rauschenberg was starting out were the so-called abstract expressionists, several of whom took the burden of their artistry so seriously that they were driven to premature deaths from drink and despair. This crude egotism ran counter to the gentler acceptance of Zen.
For Rasuchenberg, the artist, spiritually, had no particular authority, nor, as a kind of metaphorical counterpart, did any material have a greater right to artistic use than any other. One of his most celebrated actions as a young man was to rub out a drawing he had been given by one of the most famous of the abstract expressionists, Willem de Kooning. His choice of de Kooning was itself intended as something of a compliment, but nevertheless the action demonstrates a hostility to the whole notion of glorified self-expression, characteristically tempered though it is with humorous irony. Many of Rauschenberg's works accordingly invite the participation of the spectator — the most obvious example in the present show being some plexiglass discs activated by a switch — and even more of them assert, with some aggression in the early pieces, the right of all materials to artistic equality. Nor has he been any less rigorous in belittling the function and aspiration of himself as the artist, recycling magazine and newspaper images, recycling too and using all sorts of articles and techniques that are clearly not designed to last a particularly long time.
If, therefore, Rauschenberg's paintings and objects today look a bit flip, superficial, two-dimensional, and all those other European euphemisms for American, then he can only be said to have succeeded in his artistic intention. His work is a testament to an American belief in the present, to the American notion that culture is to be lived and enjoyed and not presented as some sort of superior credential. If it was ever truly of the moment then it should end up looking old hat. The zing of action, possibility, optimism in American life is very much due to this cultural effervescence, and Rauschenberg and his Zen-influenced generation of artists, musicians and poets did much to encourage and sustain it. It is a perfect Rauschenberg irony, therefore, that for his art to have been good it must now be a disappointment. And it is. Twenty years ago when he had his last big show in London his free and easy way with materials and ideas, brazen use of everyday imagery, overt hedonism and covert art jokes, mirrored life in a way that was both shocking and fun. Today the esoteric knowledge, once the preserve of Rauschenberg and the sophisticated few,, is staple coloursupplement fare. We recognise, ironically in part due to him, the extent of his debt to Duchamp and Schwitters and the Dadaists 30 and 40 years before. We see that he was a populariser, not an original, even note with some patriotic satisfaction that he has poached an idea or two in his later work off an English artist, Barry Flanagan. And, with the benefit of historical hindsight, we register his appropriately fashionable but undeniable approval of the space race and disapproval of Vietnam, his support of ecology, his silence on Cambodia. As if to match this apparent uncertainty his imagery in the later work becomes more and more evasive and indirect, literally printed in some cases on veils that are themselves veiled. Maybe he will finish as he begins in the present show, with a blank canvas whose imagery consists of no more than the passing shadows of its observers; a visual equivalent of John Cage's 'Silence' punctuated by the noises of its audience. Rauschenberg's art-historical place is no less intangible, a matter of example and influence far more than relics.
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