Robert Rauschenberg quotes
I don't think he [ Josef Albers ] ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended... I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing – I didn't want color to serve me, in other words.
Robert Rauschenberg
There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'... I could never see these qualities in paint – I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.
Robert Rauschenberg
![For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that [before his trip to India, c. 1975] I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful. (Robert Rauschenberg)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/32/robert-rauschenberg-able-beautiful-183232.webp)
I still have a struggle reading [dyslexia] and so I don't read much... Probably the only reason I'm painter is because I couldn't read yet I love to write, but when I write I know what I'm writing, but when I'm reading I can't see it, because it goes from all sides of the page at once. But that's very good for printmaking.
Robert Rauschenberg
[I have] various tricks to actually reach that solitary point of creativity. One of them is pretending I have an idea. But that trick doesn't survive very long because I don't really trust ideas – especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown. It is then that I begin to work.... when I don't have the comfort of sureness and certainty. Sometimes Jack Daniels helps too. Another good trick is fatigue. I like to start working when it's almost too late.... when my sense of efficiency is exhausted.
Robert Rauschenberg
I don't feel any direct relationship between what I do and existing art. Though there is unavoidable progression: the things all paintings have in common are paint, and color, and some means of application. With the standard you can make any two pictures appear either alike of different. I don't think whether they're alike or different is really very interesting.
Robert Rauschenberg
I have another feeling that in working with a canvas, and with something you picked up off the street and you work on it for three or four days or maybe a couple of weeks and then, all of a sudden, it is in another situation. Much later, you go to see somebody in California, and there it is. You know that you know everything about that painting, so much more than anybody else in that room. You know where you ran out of nails... At the time I did that early piece, I didn't know it was the lower right-hand corner that had the new element – that that part would grow and that other parts would relate more to the past.
Robert Rauschenberg
Every minute everything is different everywhere. It is all flowing... The duty or beauty of a painting is that there is no reason to do it nor any reason not to. It can be done as a direct act or contact with the moment and that is the moment you are awake and moving. It all passes and is never true literally as the present again leaving more work to be done.
Robert Rauschenberg
