Robert Rauschenberg's Hidden Relationship to Language Reading the Art World podcast

In the latest episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Francine Snyder, Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, about her new book, I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings by Robert Rauschenberg, co-published by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Yale University Press.

The book reveals a side of Rauschenberg that many readers—and even scholars—have not fully encountered: his relationship to language. Although he self-identified as dyslexic, Rauschenberg produced and preserved a substantial body of writing—correspondence, artist statements, political testimony, speeches, fragments, and notes—often labeling them in his own hand “FILE RR WRITING.” These materials were kept separate from studio project files, suggesting that writing was not incidental but central to his thinking.

Francine and Kelley discuss Francine's editorial decision to preserve Rauschenberg’s misspellings, crossings-out, and grammatical idiosyncrasies rather than “correct” them—allowing the handwritten drafts to function visually, almost like collage. They look closely at his 1963 statement declaring, “it is extremely important that art be unjustifiable,” a phrase he arrived at by literally crossing out the word justifiable in earlier drafts.

Their conversation also traces the arc of his activism: the founding of Change, Inc.; his advocacy for artists’ resale royalties; and ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), through which he advanced his belief that artists must support one another and foster dialogue across borders.

This episode offers a rare opportunity to hear Rauschenberg in his own voice—direct, playful, political, and deeply committed to the life of art.