Handle with Care: Robert Rauschenberg's Ecological Conscience

Organized by the Grey Art Museum, New York University

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, where oil refineries and pelicans are familiar sights. After some 25 years away—spent primarily in New York City, where he established himself as a major American artist—he returned to the Gulf Coast, settling on the remote Floridian island of Captiva in 1970. Rauschenberg’s sense of environmental crisis took on a new urgency as he witnessed oil spills and dwindling bird populations on the island.

Convinced that “art can encourage individual conscience,” Rauschenberg turned to printmaking, an affordable, accessible, and duplicable medium with a longstanding connection to political activism. The artist started collaborating with print workshops in the late 1960s and quickly gained a reputation as a thoughtful, experimental printmaker. Drawn from the NYU Art Collection, the works on view coincide with the rise of the American environmental movement in the 1970s and similarly impart concern for vulnerable people, animals, and habitats, at home and abroad. A concurrent boom in the American print market also allowed Rauschenberg to fundraise for environmental and humanitarian causes by creating special edition prints with a range of sponsors.

Variously reproducing cardboard, newspaper clippings, agricultural feed bags, photographs, and postcards, Rauschenberg’s prints lend the appearance of collage to what are in fact seamless printed images made with screens and presses. Never content to leave the organic and the hand-rendered behind, he carefully added painted and drawn elements and sewn appliqués to otherwise slick reproductions. The artist took inspiration from the detritus he accumulated in his daily life, and traveled the globe to learn centuries-old papermaking techniques rooted in local ecosystems. As Rauschenberg wrote, “I try to use my art to communicate that you, yourself, must take responsibility for life on earth.” In content and execution, the works in Handle with Care encourage viewers to develop their own ecological conscience—to engage, reflect, and act.

Curator

The exhibition was curated by Phoebe Herland, Rauschenberg Curatorial Intern, Grey Art Museum.