Robert Rauschenberg quotes

Robert Rauschenberg was an American painter and graphic artist, renowned for his innovative work in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. His groundbreaking "Combines" merged painting and sculpture with found objects, challenging conventional artistic boundaries. He influenced generations of artists with his experimental approach and creative vision. Here are 79 of his quotes:

Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.

Robert Rauschenberg

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

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time that I am bored or understand - I use those words interchangeably - another appetite has formed.

Robert Rauschenberg

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two)

Robert Rauschenberg

An empty canvas is full.

Robert Rauschenberg

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

Robert Rauschenberg

If you don't have trouble paying the rent, you have trouble doing something else; one needs just a certain amount of trouble.

Robert Rauschenberg

There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism – as though the man and the work were the same – that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.

Robert Rauschenberg

[Art is] a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.

Robert Rauschenberg

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

Robert Rauschenberg

I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.

Robert Rauschenberg

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 used to think of that line in Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl', about the 'sad cup of coffee'... I have had cold coffee and hot coffee and lousy coffee, But I've never had a sad cup of coffee.

Robert Rauschenberg

Work is my joy... Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.

Robert Rauschenberg

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway.

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

[I] could not design forms and colors that would achieve some preconceived result... I wasn't going to hire them. I was more interested in working WITH them than in their working for me.

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

[we gave] permission to do what we wanted... It would be hard to imagine my work at that time [c. 1956 – 1960] without his [ Jasper John's] encouragement.

Robert Rauschenberg