Robert Rauschenberg and the velocity of art Dr Courtney J. Martin and Russell Storer in conversation at Art Basel Hong Kong
Dr. Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Russell Storer, Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, M+
Moderated by Prof. Dr. Thomas Girst, Global head of Cultural Engagement, BMW Group, Munich
In 1953, while living in downtown Manhattan, 27-year-old Robert Rauschenberg asked his friend John Cage – one of the few people he knew who owned a car – to drive his Model A Ford over 20 sheets of paper laid along the road. The result was the 22-foot Automobile Tire Print, a work that brings many defining aspects of Rauschenberg’s art into play: movement, collaboration, trailblazing ideas, thinking across disciplines, and a fascination with machines. That outward-looking impulse is the focus of this conversation, presented in dialogue with the major Rauschenberg exhibition currently on view at M+ that marks the centenary of the artist’s birth. It also resonates with the presentation of Rauschenberg’s 1986 BMW Art Car, which will be shown at Art Basel Hong Kong as part of the BMW Art Car World Tour.
Panelists will examine how mobility – physical, intellectual, and geographic – shaped Rauschenberg’s practice, and why it continues to resonate across generations and regions today.
