Robert Rauschenberg at 100: the artist who tried collecting the world The Museum of the City of New York has opened Rauschenberg's ‘New York: Pictures from the Real World’
By Matthew Holman
Robert Rauschenberg would have turned 100 at the end of October. To celebrate his centenary, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) has opened Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘New York: Pictures from the Real World’, which centres on the works the cheeky-chappy Texan artist made of, and in response to, his adopted hometown. The exhibition brings together his New York photographs from In + Out City Limits, a three-year (1979–81) survey conducted across the United States in which, according to the show’s curatorial statement, he “reveal[s] his fascination with the signs and symbols of human culture… even in the most humble or discarded remnants of the city.” First conceived during his student days at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Rauschenberg set out to photograph the United States “inch by inch”. It’s an admirable but impossible ambition, especially in the days before Google Street View. But Rauschenberg was never shy to take on gargantuan and idealistic projects that celebrated “the signs and symbols of human culture” in all its eclectic forms. In the 1980s, he went one better than merely photographing every corner of the United States; he cooked up a plan to conquer the entire world with his art. In a characteristic move, equal parts internationalist, generous and messianically egotistical, Rauschenberg declared: “My idea was to gather up a bit of the world, to collect the world.”
Rauschenberg’s unfeasibly ambitious idea for a global cultural exchange project was called the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange (or ROCI, pronounced “Rocky”, after his pet turtle), which he launched – where else? – at the United Nations. The idea came from a working trip to China and Japan in 1982, on which the artist happily returned with 500 collages and a 100-foot photograph. ROCI became fully formed in 1984 when, while bored in Los Angeles, Rauschenberg “came to the realisation that so few people have any idea what the rest of the world does or what they look like, or how they dress.” The ambition of ROCI was simple: to promote “world peace and understanding.” Its means was equally straightforward: “Since this is an odyssey to encourage peace, the most direct way to engage all the armies is to haul art around.” (When ROCI travelled to Latin America, the Venezuelan Air Force transported its exhibition from Santiago to Caracas while the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas picked up the fuel bill). The artist avoided places that he called “historical safety zones” and “the normal European art centers”, like London and Paris, and favoured instead “sensitive spots” where art could bridge political enemies and alien cultures, and to do genuinely good work, “as opposed to an elitist, ego-maniacal trip.”
