All language subtitles for BBC.Robert.Rauschenberg.Pop.Art.Pioneer.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

In 1944, a young man called
Milton Ernest Rauschenberg

embarked on a journey that
would take him a million miles away

from the sprawling oil refinery town
where he'd been born

to working-class parents in 1925.

His escape from Port Arthur,

a cultural desert
on the steamy gulf coast of Texas,

would eventually lead him
to paradise.

By the time Rauschenberg
came here in 1970

and settled on this beautiful and
remote island of Captiva in Florida,

he'd completely
transformed his life.

He'd even changed his own name.

Robert Rauschenberg,
as he now called himself,

was by then a world-famous artist,

with a retinue of assistants
helping him create some of

the most inventive and celebrated
works of the 20th century.

Today, Rauschenberg isn't really
a household name like, say,

Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol,

but he really should be
because no-one else

came close in working with
such a bewildering array

of different styles,

constantly experimenting
with new and surprising materials

during the course of a career
that spanned six decades.

Bob always was looking for the new.

As soon as he mastered one thing,

he would look for something else
that would inspire him.

I'm not interested
in doing what I know I can do

or what I think I can do.

Rauschenberg was
a new type of artist,

one who embraced popular culture
in all its trashy glory,

and expanded the possibilities
of what an artwork could be,

from paintings and sculptures...

to paintings and sculptures
combined.

He was able to break all these rules
and dissolve all of these boundaries

because he wasn't afraid
of the consequences.

From silk-screens and blueprints

to works on metal and glass.

Bob is the wind blowing through the
art world for almost a century now,

pollinating everything.

From set and costume design
to collaborations with musicians,

dancers and even scientists,

Rauschenberg's endless curiosity saw
him rewrite the artistic rule book

and anticipate every major
art movement from the '50s onwards.

Rauschenberg once said that
the whole world was his canvas.

He was always a scavenger,
collecting life's flotsam and jetsam

to create his wildly raucously
inventive works of art.

And anything and everything
could be a material for him -

socks, old bedspreads,

light bulbs, fans,

mangled car parts, metal signs,

even a common car tyre...

..made of rubber, made of petroleum,

made from crude oil.

However far he travelled
from his home town of Port Arthur,

it was the product of those
dirty Texan oil refineries

that would fuel the best of his art
and keep him grounded.

He could make art from anything,
you know, whether it's dirt or gold.

There was no such thing
as low or high,

there was no hierarchy of art

or material or people.

By talking to those
who knew Rauschenberg best,

I'm hoping to find out
what drove this man

in his restless quest
for reinvention,

which saw him come
from small-town America

to become one of the first
truly global artists.

Now, there is one person who
I've been really, really desperate

to talk to, and that's Rauschenberg
younger sister, Janet,

his only sibling.

Now, the only trouble is that
she lives in Louisiana

and unfortunately she hasn't been
able to fly out to meet me.

However - and I'm hoping
that Rauschenberg

would've approved of this -

my solution to the problem
is to try and harness

21st-century technology
to talk to her via a video call.

So that's what I'm going
to attempt to do now.

There we go.

Janet! Hey.

There's so much that I want
to ask you, Janet,

but the thing that I've been really
trying to find out about is

a little bit about Port Arthur

and what life was like in Texas.

Port Arthur is
a blue-collar city, for sure.

Not that there's anything wrong
with blue-collar,

except that there was
no art stuff going on.

Let me ask you about that
because I wonder how easy was it

for a young man who wants
to be an artist

to pursue his dreams
in a place like that?

It was impossible.

And, of course, my daddy did not
understand art at all, not ever.

People did that for a hobby.

He had no encouragement ever.

But Mother was always
totally behind Bob.

She was a delightful little lady -

pretty and silly
and just a lot of fun.

And, you know, Bob was silly.

I mean, he was silly-silly.
We used to have the best time,

cos I'm silly.

If you couldn't have a good time
then you couldn't go with him.

You had to just go by yourself,
go do something else.

But I do think that Mother had
a tremendous influence on Bob.

For all he'd learnt from his mother
about making light of life,

Rauschenberg was determined from the
very start to forge a career in art.

After a stint in the Navy,
he used his GI Bill to get himself

to art school in Paris in 1948.

But by the early '50s,
there was only one place to head to

if you wanted to be taken seriously
as an artist...

New York,

which, by then, had taken
over from Paris

as the centre
of the world's avant-garde.

And the fact that he eventually
managed to gain a foothold there

and make a name for himself
was largely down to this woman.

Susan. Hi, Alastair. Hello.

Come in. It's great to meet you.

Thank you very much. You too.

I'm in the right place. You are.

So this is your studio, right?

This is my studio.

'Susan Weil, who, at the age of 86,

'continues to paint
in her New York studio,

'met Rauschenberg in the late '40s.

'And it was she who led him to
a place that would stimulate

'the unique way
he went about making art.'

Hi, Alastair. Hello.

This is nice and natural now,
isn't it?

Let's start at the very beginning.

I mean, how did you meet
Rauschenberg?

Well, when I graduated
from high school,

I was young, 18, very juvenile,

and I was enrolled
in the Academie Julian in Paris

and in the pension
where I was living,

there was a very huge laugh
that boomed out now and then,

and it was Bob.

He had the biggest booming laugh
you could imagine.

Do you remember what you found so
attractive about Bob to begin with?

Well, he was so easy and friendly
and wonderful

and I loved his enthusiasm
about art and his wonder at it

because he grew up with people
who were horrified about art

and we kind of explored about
art together in Paris.

In late 1948, when Susan returned to
America to continue her studies

at Black Mountain College,
Rauschenberg followed her.

Nestling in the remote hills
of North Carolina,

Black Mountain
was a haven for progressive minds,

offering interdisciplinary classes
to those who wished to experiment

and expand the boundaries of art.

It had that feeling
at Black Mountain

that you could do
anything you wanted to do -

you just tried to do it
in your own way.

So I'm so glad he found
Black Mountain

because Bob grew up
so fast about art, he really did.

I think that was the first place
he had ever been where

his nonconformism was echoed
in almost everybody else.

He was in a nest of nonconformers,

and I think he loved the place,

he absolutely felt
supremely happy there.

But while Rauschenberg took
to Black Mountain immediately,

his stern art teacher, Josef Albers,

a former member of the Bauhaus,

didn't think much
of his new student.

Bob always said that Albers
was the most important teacher

he ever had and he was sure
that Albers felt

he was the worst student
that he'd ever had.

He started every class with saying,

"I don't want to know who did that."

And everybody would turn
and look at me.

Josef Albers recognised ego
when he saw it.

And he didn't think
we had any right to an ego,

as we were young students,
and so he had to wrestle with Bob

in the best way he could, which was
to put down his work and so on.

But he was also
a very powerful teacher.

Albers was incredibly expansive
in what he thought

could be included in a work of art,
so his students at Black Mountain

would run out
and gather natural materials,

they would gather cigarette butts,
they would gather trash from

the dump heap and all of these
things would become a work of art.

In fact, in Albers' classes,
the word "combination" was a mantra,

so it was a kind of tutoring
in collage procedures.

Along with Albers, Rauschenberg met
two men at Black Mountain,

choreographer Merce Cunningham
and composer John Cage,

who'd become instrumental
in helping him forge

a collaborative approach to art.

With the help of Cage and his Model
A Ford, his wheels were inked black

before being driven over 20 sheets
of paper laid on the road.

Rauschenberg created
a piece of conceptual art

that marked him out as a pioneer.

And together, the three friends
would go on to produce

some of the most ground-breaking
performances of the '50s and '60s.

With Rauschenberg providing the sets
and costumes,

Cage the music...

..and Cunningham the choreography.

But it was an earlier collaboration
with Susan,

who Rauschenberg
had married in the summer of 1950,

that first got him press attention.

This is Life magazine with
an article about our blueprints.

So this is the collaboration
that you did together? Yes.

And it got featured in Life?

I mean, that's quite a big deal
to begin with.

I know, we were still students.

I mean, it was crazy
to get that attention.

Well, maybe you could
just describe how it worked.

So, this is one of
the big blueprints and the thing,

whether it's a person or a flower,
is covering the sensitive paper

and when she gets up, you put it
under the shower and it turns blue.

And what about these photographs.
This is you - and him! Yeah.

And this is your bathroom,
basically? Yeah.

And we had to share the bath and
share the kitchen. It wasn't easy.

So when we did blueprints,
our neighbour was fuming around,

because he couldn't
go to the bathroom.

And of course, 60-odd plus years on,
these are major masterpieces.

Do you feel proud?

Well, I mean, what I feel is the
wonder of finding a new way to work.

It was exciting, you know?

And when you were making them,
you were just so anxious

to see how they came out.
It was just very exciting.

The editors of Life magazine
weren't the only ones

to spot the originality
of these works.

One was bought
by the Museum of Modern Art

and included in their Abstraction
In Photography exhibition in 1951,

providing both the money
and recognition

the young Rauschenberg craved.

But just as his career seemed
to be taking off,

his relationship with Susan,

who'd by then given birth
to their son, Christopher,

was coming to an end.

After Christopher was born,

Bob went back to Black Mountain
to do some teaching and so on,

and I went there that summer
with Chris, he was a new-born baby,

and then I left Black Mountain
and I was on my own after that.

While teaching at Black Mountain,
Rauschenberg had fallen in love

with a young painter
called Cy Twombly.

Bob and Cy were gorgeous-looking.

They were just drop-dead beautiful,
both of them.

Was Black Mountain the kind of place

where, if you were two
young, gay men in a relationship,

you could be fairly open about it?

Well, you know,
homosexuality during the '50s

was different than it is now.

It was so hidden.

And I think it was hidden
by homosexuals to themselves.

Bob evidently didn't realise
the degree

to which he was a homosexual
until then.

Where you aware,
when you got married,

of Rauschenberg's openness
in terms of sexuality?

I didn't really understand it,
because I was a dopey teenager.

The most he ever said about it was,
"I find men attractive."

So the marriage fell apart, but
forever, we were very dear friends.

We cared about each other a great
deal and he adored Christopher,

so that was all very positive.

By the mid '50s, Rauschenberg's
relationship with Twombly had ended

and he returned to New York,
intent on making a name for himself.

But he wouldn't find it easy
to fit in.

The contemporary art scene
was then dominated

by the Abstract Expressionists.

And compared to
their non-figurative paintings,

full of brooding introspection,
Rauschenberg's exuberant works,

brimming with references
to real life,

seemed totally left-field.

In a pioneering film by
Emile de Antonio, Rauschenberg

explained his approach to art
that marked him out as a renegade.

You have to have time
to feel sorry for yourself,

if you're going to be
a good Abstract Expressionist.

And, er...

..I think I always considered
that a waste.

It wasn't that he rejected them,

he didn't reject
what they were doing,

he just wanted to open it up.

And most of them
were very contemptuous of him,

because they felt he wasn't serious.

They felt he was doing things that
were just silly, childish antics.

No wonder, perhaps, when
he was creating works like this.

In his Erased de Kooning Drawing,
made -

or rather unmade - in '53...

..Rauschenberg acquired a drawing
from the high priest

of Abstract Expressionism,
Willem de Kooning

and then proceeded to rub it out.

But de Kooning, captured here
on film by Robert Snyder,

didn't make it easy for him.

He said, "I'm going to give you

"something really difficult
to erase."

HE LAUGHS

And he gave me something that had
charcoal, oil paint, pencil,

crayon and I spent a month erasing
that little drawing that's this big.

I think that that's one of
the greatest conceptual documents

in the history of art.

It was the first time
that somebody created

a work of art by subtraction.

That's an amazing thing
to have done.

In his rebellion
against the old guard,

Rauschenberg soon found
a willing accomplice, Jasper Johns,

another young hopeful hailing
from the South

who'd become the most important
person in his life.

I think at the beginning it was
primarily love at first sight.

There was a poetic quality to Johns
that was very appealing to him.

It's amazing to me that
they ever had a relationship,

because Bob is so opposite
to Jasper.

Bob is so flamboyant
and Jasper is more contained.

Despite their different
temperaments, Rauschenberg and Johns

united in rejecting
Abstract Expressionist angst.

Their playful works, which instead
celebrated popular culture,

paved the way for pop art

and eventually turned them
into top-selling artists.

But when a Rauschenberg and Johns
got together in the mid '50s,

they were still penniless
and hungry.

Rauschenberg was surviving
on this minuscule food budget

of just 15 cents a day.

He said that he couldn't
even afford the ticket

of a ride on the subway.

And they were living together
in this condemned building

in downtown Manhattan
without even hot water.

So Rauschenberg began to scour
the streets for discarded junk

that he felt certain could be
the raw - and crucially, free -

materials for his art.

During the '50s, some American
artists realised what the Dadaists

in Europe had known
about 30 years before.

Mainly that societies reveal
themselves in what they threw away.

Street junk was, to these men,

what the flea market
had been to the Surrealists.

And among them,
there was one at budding master,

a man in his 20s from Texas,
named Robert Rauschenberg.

I actually had kind of a house rule.

If I walked completely around
the block

and I didn't find enough
to work with,

I could pick one other block
in any direction

to walk around, but that was it.

He once described it, he said,
"I have a peculiar kind of focus.

"I tend to see everything in sight."

He could look at the world
around him uncritically.

He could see that, as
subject matter, a torn comic strip

lying on the street could be
as usable as a Renaissance painting.

All of these things
could be a source of imagery.

Rauschenberg came up with a new term

for these pioneering strange hybrid
works of art

he started creating in the '50s
out of things he'd scavenged.

And that term was "the combines".

And that's because they're
part painting, part sculpture

and this is one of
the very first combines of all.

It's called Bed and there's
a brilliant story attached to it

about its creation.

Here he is, spring 1955 -
a destitute, penniless artist

and he runs out of canvas, yet he
still feels compelled to paint.

So what does he do?

He looks around him and he finds
this old quilt and thinks,

"Aha, I can use that.
I can paint on it."

But the thing
he kept coming up against

was that it always
looked like a quilt.

So his light bulb moment,
if you like, was to say,

"Well, why don't I just create
a painting of a bed?"

So he added the pillow,
he added the sheet.

And he was very happy
with the results,

but when it was first exhibited
in the late '50s,

people were utterly shocked.

Some of the reviews thought
it looked violent, disgusting.

One critic compared it to
a police photo of a murder scene.

But that's not how Rauschenberg
saw this work at all.

He later said that this is
one of the friendliest works of art

that he ever created.

He said his biggest fear was that
people might actually crawl in

and want to have a little sleep.
And I think that's key.

It tells us exactly what
Rauschenberg was all about

as an artist.

He was about inclusiveness,
welcoming in the world.

Welcoming in reality to bridge
that gap between art and life

and make this something that we,
ordinary people,

can understand and relate to.

It's part of our world, rather than
some elite zone of high art.

At a very young age, he was clear
in what he didn't want to be,

which was a, you know, wishy-washy,

second-generation
Abstract Expressionist painter.

He just dispensed
with this whole idea

that paint served as a marker
for someone's psychic state.

I mean, he always insisted
that things were just things

and that was a key distinction
between him and an older generation.

I'll tell you something
that I find slightly puzzling

about the '50s work.

You know, you've characterised
the way Rauschenberg

went about trying to dismantle
Abstract Expressionism.

At the same time, these combines
are intensely personal,

autobiographical works.
Here's his son.

There's the reading
of the homoerotic content

of one of the most famous combines,
Monogram.

You know, there's that famous
Robert Hughes line that

this is almost one of the most
witty and compelling images

of homosexual love,
of the goat penetrating the tyre.

Oh, I guess I haven't thought
about that, I'm sorry, Alistair!

SHE LAUGHS
Really? Yes. Amazing!

Do you think it's got
some credibility? I'm sure it does.

I mean, Rauschenberg is an artist
creating works of art

and his interests and the things
in his life come in,

and therefore sexuality
is part of it.

He is a young, gay man
in a pre-Stonewall world

and he's signalling
his relationships

in various ways through his work.

By the early '60s, Rauschenberg's
combines had earnt him a reputation

as the bad boy
of the New York art world.

But, by then, his relationship
with Jasper Johns was over.

It ended because of
a very trite lovers' quarrel.

To be specific, one day,
Jasper came back and found Bob

in a compromising position with a
dancer from the Cunningham Company.

I think it was very painful for them
and for their close friends

for quite a long time afterwards.
Because it had been

an extraordinarily
electrifying relationship.

Some consolation for the mess
in his personal life

came in the form of the most
prestigious professional recognition

that any artist could hope for.

In 1964, Rauschenberg
became the first American to win

the grand prize for painting
at the Venice Biennale.

And in that same year, he was given
his first British retrospective

at London's Whitechapel Gallery.

An event important enough
to be covered by the BBC.

Brian. Yes? Did you check the bulbs?

Well, the bulbs are all right
and I know it'll work at the moment.

The fantastically inventive scope
of his work

was quickly picked up
by the British press.

This is a piece from the Observer
and it's headlined,

"Rauschenberg:
new pace-setter in art."

Here's another piece,
"Not Just A Joker."

"An artist who solemnly presents us
with a stuffed and grubby chicken

"perched on a box is a sitting
target for mockery."

"Yet," he says, "I'd warn
against dismissing him

"as a pretentious joker.

"In my view, this 38-year-old Texan
is the most important artist

"America has produced since
Jackson Pollock in the 1940s."

'Rauschenberg has lived and worked
in New York since 1951

'and even now he's painting more,
he still likes mixed techniques.

'On Barge, he's used silkscreen
quite a lot,

'his latest idea. A printed transfer
process which imposes

'a real photographic image
on the canvas,

'but has unreal printed texture
to offset the oil paint around it.'

It was for his early
silkscreen paintings,

started around the same time that
Andy Warhol seized on the technique,

that Rauschenberg
had won the prize in Venice.

But rather than cash in
on his success,

he did something most people
would find incomprehensible.

His response to winning
was to make a call to home

to tell a friend to destroy
all of his silk screens.

So he was determined that
once he was celebrated

with a certain kind of work, that he
wasn't going to repeat it any more

and he pushed himself
to reinvent himself wholly again.

Perhaps not surprising, then,

that just does Rauschenberg
was attracting international praise

as a painter, he decided to head off
in a completely different direction.

There's a biographical fact
about Rauschenberg

that I find
particularly fascinating,

and that is he was a superb dancer,

despite the fact that,
growing up as a boy,

his parents were
fundamentalist Christians.

They'd been part of a very austere
sect that banned drinking

and gambling and dancing as well.

But, in the '50s, he started
collaborating regularly

with Merce Cunningham, who had
an experimental dance company.

But it wasn't until the '60s
that his passion for dancing,

for performing, really took flight.

MUSIC: Boogie Nights
by Heatwave

He's always worked
at lots of different things,

likes to get away from painting for
periods, mostly into the theatre.

In Pelican,
his own roller-skate ballet,

Rauschenberg reassured
the other dancers

by trying out the movements himself.

Even the music
is his own sound combine.

Some of the performances
he did were stunning.

The dance on roller skates -

every time, it just had you,
your heart was in your throat.

You were scared that something bad
was going to happen,

because it looked so dangerous -
and it was.

Um... Oh, my God!

He would move around
this roller-skating rink

and pick up a ballerina
and the contrast

between her delicacy and grace and
these two guys on roller skates

with their parachute wings
galumphing around,

it was hilarious.

It was always a lot of fun
to be in Bob's pieces.

They were playful, imagistic...

What was he doing
in terms of designing costumes

and designing sets?

In one piece of his, I had a harness
that had a screen over my head.

Preposterous!
You know, in terms of a costume.

Bob was shooting images
of the Empire State

building onto the screen
and I was holding a watermelon

covered with a small cloth

and I pulled the cloth back and it
exposed the head of the watermelon

to the audience
and then drop it over again,

so it had kind of
a pornographic quality to it.

Sounds utterly outrageous!

It seems very natural to me,
when I think about the way he saw.

Everything would be included
as part of his art-making.

You know, from Bob,
everything was acceptable, always.

It never felt too radical,

because it was him
and he just kept opening doors.

Wow, Julie. It's so big.
I know, it's amazing, isn't it?

I mean, you could really imagine
this... 150 feet.

In 1966, the 69th Regiment Armoury
in New York became the venue

for one of Rauschenberg's
most ambitious ventures.

A multimedia event held
over the course of nine evenings

that would blow the minds

of the 10,000 curious visitors
assembled there.

PSYCHEDELIC ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

'In January 1966,
ten artists from New York

'and 30 engineers
from Bell Telephone Laboratories

'began a collaboration that resulted

'in a series of dance, music
and theatre works.'

The events began with a piece
choreographed by Rauschenberg

called Open Score.

It started with a tennis game.

Frank Stella and his tennis partner
came out and she measured the net,

totally serious,
and then they started playing.

RINGING CHIME

The racquets were fixed
in such a way

that in the handle of the racquet
was a FM transmitter,

so every time the racquet
hit a ball,

the sound was transmitted to an FM
radio and then to the sound system,

so every time the ball was hit,
you heard this very loud bong.

One of the things about the armoury
which we discovered very quickly

was that there
was a five-second echo.

SHE CLAPS

CLAP ECHOES

It's very... It is acoustic mayhem,
isn't it?

We knew about how this sound
was going to reverberate.

This natural, beautiful sound.

And so he took full advantage of it.

CHIMES ECHO

Each time the ball was hit,

one of the lights
around the armoury went out.

What happened towards the end? They
kept playing. Did they? They did.

And once it was dark, completely,
the second part started.

500 people came onto the floor
in the darkness and as they came in,

they each said,
"My name is, my name is..."

I am Walter Segal.

I am Barbara Wold.

And then as the crowd's part
finished, the spotlight went on to

a figure in a sack and you began
to hear this voice singing.

CHORAL SINGING

And Bob would pick her up
and put her down at a certain point,

let her sing a bit longer, pick her
up and put her down somewhere else.

It's pure performance art.

It's very, very simple,
very human gestures.

Helping Rauschenberg
bring his performance to life was

a visionary scientist from Bell
Laboratories called Billy Kluver.

Through the organisation
they formed -

Experiments in Art and Technology -

the pair would go on to produce
inventive, interactive work

that married art
with cutting-edge technology.

You know, looking back - EAT
and the collaborations with Bob -

it really was part of the utopian
enterprises of the '60s,

certainly with the election of JFK
and then with the moon travel,

it was incredible optimism
for America.

So the promise of technology
was quite strong and the promise

that the individual working with the
technology could make a difference.

And I think Bob was supremely
committed to that idea.

# OK, friends, it's time
for the Fatback Band

# Yeah

# Wicky-wacky... #

By the mid '60s, Rauschenberg
had enough money to buy himself

a large studio in
a converted Catholic orphanage

on Lafayette Street
in downtown Manhattan.

And it quickly became a favourite
hang-out for all the people

Rauschenberg was
collaborating with at the time.

It was like every day was a party.

It was always, you know, hilarious.

I mean, I just remember that
we just laughed a lot. You know?

You felt you were part of a family,
when you're sitting round the table,

Lafayette Street,
you're part of Bob's family.

I think a lot of people felt that.

Another regular visitor
to Rauschenberg's Lafayette studio

was his teenage son, Christopher.

So this is the kitchen.

This is the part of the house
where, really, everything happened.

I mean, yes, work was made in the
studio, but basically, everything...

This was the conviviality in here?

So, you... I mean, as a boy,
you must remember this really well.

Yeah. You'd come in here,
this is where you'd see your dad.

And this is within walking distance
of my mum's house in Chinatown,

so I would just get off the subway
at Astor Place

and come in and hang out.

He always had Haagen Dazs ice cream
in there, so that was OK.

Was this the original range
that was...?

Yeah, from the orphanage.

BAGPIPE-LIKE DRONE
What a noise! There you go.

John Cage wouldn't want me
to turn that sound off.

But maybe we will need some
hot holder here.

And who would you...?

I mean, if you walked up the stairs
and came into the kitchen

as we have just done... Yes?
..who typically might you run into?

Pretty much anybody.

So, you must have felt very
glamorous to be coming over here,

because here was this space, centre
of parties, this charismatic man

who was always at the centre of
attention, also dating other men.

Sure, yeah. He had great boyfriends.

You would meet them,
interact with them?

Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah.

They were terrific friends and
wonderful grown-ups for me to be

around when I was a young adult
or teenager, so it was all good.

So, I get the impression
that your memories of your dad

sound remarkably positive. Yeah.

But there is another element
about him that is very well-known,

which I imagine could have been
quite disruptive in a dad,

which is that he was an alcoholic.

What are your memories of that?

It depended.

I mean, there were periods
of his life

where he drank a lot and it was OK.

There was a period later in his life
where it was really a problem

and he was really struggling
and not, you know...

You witnessed this?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.

As in, he couldn't work?

Well, he always could work, but he
was really, sort of, tortured by it.

I don't think he made
much of his art while he was drunk.

I mean, I think if he was drunk,
he was drunk.

He was not
in a position to make art.

I mean, Bob had
an enormous ability to drink.

I've never seen anybody drink
like that in my life.

I think he became dependent on it.

Did you see a change
in his personality as well,

the way he interacted
with other people?

He became less considerate of others
when he was drunk.

He was never nasty to me.

He could be cutting to people
when he was drunk.

But what was it that was
driving him to drink that much?

I don't...I don't know.

I only know that Bob
was a perceptual machine.

Everything that was happening
in the world

was being loaded through
every pore of his skin.

That's a very heavy burden to carry.

In 1970,
with his drinking out of hand

and his creativity at a low ebb,

Rauschenberg decided it
was time to clean himself up,

get out of New York
and make a fresh start elsewhere.

# Sunday morning

# Brings the dawn in... #

The beautiful island of Captiva,
off the coast of Florida,

where Rauschenberg lived
for the next 40 years,

would provide the haven he'd need
to start working again.

Not a bad place in the world,
is it?

Can we just stay here?
Yeah, I think we're done, right?

Exactly. Where's the towels and...?

The cocktails. Yeah.

So, I mean, this is the place
where there are all of these...

I can see them already.
Oh, absolutely.

This is famous
for people collecting shells.

Yeah, one of the best
shelling places in the world.

And the fishing's amazing.
Bob, you know, every day.

So, he'd be like this man?
Absolutely.

There's pictures of him.
That pose is perfect.

When did he first come here?

Well, someone had told him
about this island and so he said,

"I'm going down there to check
it out," and what he told me was,

he got on the island,
he had to stop the car for a turtle

to cross the road
and he just loved that. That was it.

So then he bought this house.

Come on in to the beach house.
This place is great.

If these walls could talk...

I'll tell you what I love about it,
it's not grand.

It's not massive, yeah.
It's not huge. Simple, yeah.

It's humble living. Absolutely.

And that's clearly part of the
thing - just keep it relaxed. Right.

He had no furniture,
cos he wanted it very minimal

and he actually added this wall,

because everything was
about hanging art, right?

So he needed more wall space.
So that was built and added.

If I was staying here, Matt,
I'd get nothing done. Exactly.

I'd sleep, I'd swim,
I'd snooze, I'd read.

Yeah. What was he doing?

His routine was, you know,
he worked late.

So he wasn't exactly
an early riser,

but he would always get up,
take care of any of the business

that was going on - correspondence,
those kinds of things.

Kind of lunchtime this is going on?
Yeah, around ten.

Young And The Restless,
had to see the soap opera,

that was a definite. Well, it's just
wonderful. You know, there he is.

That's one of my favourite photos
of him.

And that smile, if you look at all
the pictures throughout his life,

that's what you see, is that smile.

So this was like the centre of
his universe for a long time, right?

Yeah. From 1970,
he made 99% of his art,

if not a little bit higher,
here on this island.

So this, I think,
might have saved his life.

I think that coming here,
just giving him that licence

to just stop worrying about business
and things and make art.

I went to an astrologer once.

I was having some kind of
serious psychological dilemmas

and he said, "I'll tell you one
thing, don't go to the mountains.

"Hit the sun and the water."

I was worried about
how I would adjust to it.

I thought, "I'm going to miss
New York so much,"

and it turned out that I love it.

Today, thanks to a scheme run by
the foundation set up in his name,

Rauschenberg's multifaceted approach
to art is kept alive

by a new generation of artists.

Bob had envisioned a residency
in Captiva being used for artists.

He was really about creative
exploration and I think that

the foundation has this natural
tendency to try different things,

to keep it very creative
and test some of those boundaries.

The fact that we are able
to have his studio full of these

really interesting artists,
in all fields from all over,

we are able to continue
doing the things he would do.

Yeah, he's gone, but he is still in
conversation with millions of people

and they all come away deeply moved
by his spirit

and the generosity
and, "Let's all work together."

I already knew that Captiva
was a really special place,

but coming here to the fish house,
it's so surprising,

because Rauschenberg made art
that was frenetic, it was urban.

He had this restless spirit
and this place,

its magic is all about stillness
and tranquillity.

And I find it really moving,

thinking of this mercurial man
whose soul was in perpetual motion,

if you like, who needed to come
here, seeking peace, craving peace.

And it was this place that provided
him with that solace

that he clearly always craved.

I think that Captiva
really was a parting of the seas,

of the noise of urban life and
allowing him to be a part of nature.

It was a place where he could
find his own ideas

and look at the natural environment
in a new way.

With his drinking now under control,

Rauschenberg started
creating new works

that, even on the tropical
island of Captiva,

were inspired by the everyday
materials he'd always been drawn to.

"A desire built up in me to work
in a material of waste and softness.

"Something yielding with its only
message a collection of lines

"imprinted like a friendly joke.

"A silent discussion of their
history exposed by the new shapes.

"Laboured, commonly
with happiness - boxes."

So any kind of imagery

on the cardboard series is what was
on the boxes when he found them -

"This side up,"
or "Handle with care," whatever.

It's not like he commissioned them.

These are boxes
that have genuinely been used.

So, when you see
the writing on them...

What does this say?
"Phillips plated."

It's just totally commercial things,
which he's turned into art.

Right. What are these
at the far end of the room?

This is a series that is called
Early Egyptians,

and those are cardboard boxes

that he then took out to the beach
in front of the studio

and covered them with an adhesive
and put sand on them

and then he painted the backs
with Day-Glo paint,

which then reflects in colour
against the wall.

You can see little hints of red
or other colours on them.

That's really hiding
the light under a bushel.

I mean, this is bright orange here.

I would never have known that
if you hadn't told me.

Can we look at
some of the other work?

This is an incredible sculpture.
What's this?

The specific work
is called Global Chute

and obviously
with the globe in the top

and what looks like a chute
from a rooftop or whatever.

This must be...
I mean, it genuinely looks like

a piece of architecture
that he salvaged. Right.

It's fallen off
the top of the building.

It's almost as though the Earth
is heading this direction,

towards the garbage.

How much was he thinking about,
from the '70s on,

real ecological,
environmental issues?

He was very concerned
with environmental issues.

There was a Captiva
conservation organisation,

so he was both concerned locally
with what was just around his house

and his studio and then globally -

if he could support a major cause
worldwide, he would that as well.

In the early '80s,

the social and environmental
concerns underpinning all of his art

saw a Rauschenberg shift his focus
beyond Captiva's calm shores.

He now embarked on an ambitious
humanitarian project,

crisscrossing the globe to promote
world peace through his art.

ROCI - the Rauschenberg Overseas
Culture Interchange -

would take him to 11 countries
and consume all his energies

for the best part of a decade.

Bob said, "I know what I want to do.

"I want to go to various countries,

"countries that are challenged
and look at the art of that country,

"meet with the indigenous people,
speak to students,

"sense the political situation
and gather information and objects

"to produce work as an offering
to the people of the country."

OK, important distinction.

Yes, "to the people of the country."

So, was this more
about art or perhaps

more about a kind of activism?

Well, I think it's both.

Many of the countries
were oppressive

and he wanted to offer
to tradition-bound people

an alternative way of seeing,
of feeling, of thinking.

It's a peace mission
without a missionary.

Through information
about each other, around the world,

we might be able to stop
some of the stupidity

that are controlling us,
because I'm being controlled

by probably an equal amount
of stupidity as you are.

These paintings were all
from his exhibition in Cuba.

Oh, you can see, for instance, there
are some of the stars of there,

but this is
this old Cuban classic car. Right.

And this looks like a skull.

Bob felt that a work wasn't finished
until the viewer finishes the work

by coming to it
and bringing his reaction.

To show that in a physical way,
he put a mirror in it

and then there's the viewer
in the picture.

And particularly
disconcerting that here,

my head is almost directly
parallel with the skull.

If you stand in the right place.

That seems to be Rauschenberg's
funny joke.

They're always incredibly serious,
but very light-hearted

and humorous often and just pretty
much everything caught his eye.

These are some negatives
from when Bob was in Moscow.

So this is an example
of what he did in ROCI?

He'd go to a country and...

Walk around, take pictures,
pick up debris.

Pick up whatever seemed to him
to speak of the place.

So what's caught his eye here?

There's architecture of the city,
is that an old woman on a bus?

Yes, I think that's the driver.
That's the driver, maybe.

Oh, yeah, so it is. And this is just
broken fencing or something,

but there's a great sense,
just looking at this,

it gives you that idea
of he's there presumably

with a camera the whole time -
click, click, click.

Now, I may be biased, because
I'm a photographer, but to me,

his whole way of looking at
the world is the way a photographer

looks at the world. They look
at things that other people

would just walk by and say,
"Oh, that's nothing."

I think photography really
was very, very central.

I mean, I guess
you've pulled this out,

because is this him
writing about it?

Yes, yes. What does he say about it?

"My preoccupation with photography
in the beginning, 1949, was first

"supported by a personal conflict
between shyness and curiosity.

"The camera functioned
as a social shield.

"In 1981, I think of the camera
as my permission

"to walk into every shadow
or watch while any light changes.

"My concern is to move at a speed
within which to act.

"Photography is the most
direct communication

"in non-violent contacts."

Bob was not naive.

He certainly didn't think
that he was going to produce peace

in our time through
the ROCI exhibition.

But I listened and watched
the dialogue between Rauschenberg

and people on the street.

He made a difference.

If you were on the street with him
and you realised how he

physically and literally
touched people with his humanity.

I mean, he exuded humanity.

He exuded caring.

Is Rauschenberg almost
this one-man United Nations?

Absolutely. He wanted a purity
to this and, in the end,

there was a decision on Bob's behalf
that he could not be seen

as taking funding from any
organisation or government.

And so he funded himself.

He sold his Twomblys and his
Jasper Johns, all to fund ROCI.

It's a testament to the integrity
of ROCI. Absolutely.

For Rauschenberg,
ROCI was a labour of love

and one cost him a personal fortune
of up to $10 million.

But to others, it seemed
a naively idealistic project.

I lost most of my dealers.

They thought this was a...

Sort of an extravagant waste of time
and talent.

But that was its function.

How best I could world-widely
waste my time and talent and money.

We did all three very well,
didn't we, Don?

That's a really good one.

With his professional fortunes
at an all-time low,

Rauschenberg retreated
to his vast studio in Captiva

and, regardless,
made new work based on imagery

from his travels for ROCI.

This is, essentially,
the fabrication studio downstairs

and the upstairs was where
he would create the works. Mm-hm.

Imagine, if you will,

it was a wall of racks
of silk-screens and there was

probably 500 silk-screens and they
were all lined up vertically.

But it was unique,
because Bob would be upstairs

and he would have this large book,

and he would say,
"Bring me Chile 203,"

or, "Japan 506," or whatever
and we would bring the screens up.

Then he would work on them.

But though Rauschenberg continued to
be inspired by his global adventure,

by the early '90s, New York's
art world felt he'd lost his way.

There was a pretty general wave
of turning against Bob

and the same thing
happened to Picasso

in the later stages of his career.

Critics began saying he hadn't done
anything good since 1938,

but with Bob, I think what happened
was that he's such a producer

and in Captiva, with a team around
him, and a lot of resistance,

the production
got larger and larger.

And in that situation,
you can't possibly expect everything

to be at the highest level.

But there was always
three or four or five

that were absolutely dead on
top flight Rauschenberg.

In the last decade of his life,

the rest of the art world seemed
to catch up with this thinking.

And the man who had become something
of an unsung prophet in his own land

was awarded
with a major retrospective

at New York's Guggenheim Museum -

recognition for an artist
who'd consistently

broken new ground over six decades.

But in 2002, aged 76,
America's arguably most prolific

and original artist
suffered a stroke

that left his right arm paralysed.

It was the beginning of the end
for a man who'd lived for his art.

I remember being in the studio one
day with him and we were looking at,

I think, the last set of paintings
that he made.

And it became kind of still

and sweet...

..and he began to cry.

And he said to me,
"Ernie, I have lost so much."

What did you say to him?

I told him that he had given us
so much

and that it would
always be with us

and that,
for a man who had lost so much,

it was a pretty fabulous
set of paintings.

What can you say to someone
you love, but be realistic?

Bob knew that his life
was soon to be over,

that he couldn't continue
to live like that.

By 2008, Rauschenberg's health
had dramatically declined.

And following heart disease, he was
put on a life-support machine.

Bob had been really almost sick
to death three other times,

in the intensive unit and whatever,

and he got well.

So I always felt that
he could make it through this one,

but then, he was so sick

and he wanted to go back to Captiva.

He did not want to die
in a hospital.

What happened at the very end,
Janet?

Because, as I understand it,

he took a conscious decision
to end things, didn't he?

He had a trachea thing
and they would not be able

to ever get him back
breathing on his own.

And so he didn't want to...

That was not the way
he wanted to live.

And I was just mortified by it and I
told him, I said, "Let's just wait.

"Maybe you'll get better."

And so he just kind of squeezed
my hand and he said,

"Let me go, please."

So, we had to do that.

I still miss him so much.

I think the best job in the whole
world was being Bob's little sister.

It was so much fun.

It was entertaining,
but it was meaningful, too.

I learned a lot from him. A lot.

He was such an amazing person -

his sense of humour,
he was such a giver.

And everybody would say that,
you know, there was just something.

One of a kind, broke the mould.

All those cliches, if you will,
that was Bob.

I would think from time to time,
as an art student,

that I wish I could have been around
the likes of Leonardo or Cezanne

or Picasso and then I realised,
especially towards the end,

that I had been in the presence
of that kind of genius.

He was profound, simply profound.

And we were all the beneficiaries
because of it.

So much of the work we see today
has its roots in things

that Rauschenberg did.

Every corner of his work can be
mined and used by younger artists,

as a starting point
or as an opening point.

He opened everything up.

He opened the world up.

And it's still going on.

If you'd like to see more
of Robert Rauschenberg's arts,

a major retrospective featuring many
of his greatest works

is currently showing
at London's Tate Modern,

before transferring to the Museum of
Modern Art in New York next spring.

# Hey, hey, hey, hey

# This is a perfect work

# Your photograph. #