Robert Rauschenberg
Painter and graphic artist
United States
© Ed Chappell
In 2026, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels presents Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown & Cunningham Onstage by the Trisha Brown Dance Company with the Merce Cunningham Trust, as part of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival in New York.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008) attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina and the Art Students League in New York.
His nearly sixty-years career was characterized by an irreverent and innovative approach to images, mediums, and disciplines woven with a love for artistic partnerships.
Encounters with composer John Cage and dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham spurred Rauschenberg to engage in performance. Minutiae (1954)—a Combine hybridizing painting and sculpture—occupied the stage as the set for its namesake Cunningham choreography, initiating over two dozen collaborations in an over five-decade period. Rauschenberg also developed a lifelong friendship with dancer/choreographer Trisha Brown and, as an avid admirer of her choreography, designed costumes, sets, lighting, and, on occasion, music for her works.
His set design for Brown’s Glacial Decoy (1979) led him back to photography and silkscreening costumes for Brown’s Set and Reset (1983) reintroduced a vital technique that Rauschenberg would employ in numerous series. During the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI, 1984–91), Brown previewed Astral Convertible (1989), precursor to Astral Converted (1991), for which he designed set and costumes, at the Cultural Palace in Moscow. In 1990, Rauschenberg designed set and costumes for Foray Forêt, which premiered at Biennale de la Danse in Lyon.
