Rauschenberg's Bed Artwork And Mud Muse

According to Robert Rauschenberg, painting is associated with both art and life, but neither can be created. Rauschenberg’s commitment, worldwide curiosity, and collaboration with family, friends, colleagues, and other associates have led him to discover and invent new methods of artistic practices. From now till September 15, the Museum of Modern Arts has opened Rauschenberg: Among Friends to exhibit more than 250 artworks created over sixty decades by the modern retrospective artist, Robert Rauschenberg. In this show, Rauschenberg mainly focuses on the ideas of art and life into all his pieces with help from his friends. This essay will explore Rauschenberg’s famous Bed artwork and Mud Muse, and how they intertwine with his concept of art

The Combines series merges the aspects of painting and sculpture into a new form of artwork with found objects. Rauschenberg does this in order to provide new connotation to ordinary objects by placing them in the context of art. It is comprised of oil, pencil, toothpaste and red nail polish on a pillow, a quilt that was previously owned by Dorothea Rockburne, and a bed sheet that is supported on wood supports. According to MoMA’s website, it is believed that the Bed has “Rauschenberg’s own pillow and blanket, which he used when he could not afford to buy a new canvas.” This allows for Rauschenberg to have a deep and personal connection with the artwork and thus it is consistent with his theme of life and art in one painting. Morgan Meis thinks Rauschenberg “wanted to bring the objects of the world closer to art in order to make them weird and fascinating, and… bring art closer to the things of the world in order to make it more real.” And hopefully, this idea would help fill the “gap” between life and art. The bed is something universal and is used by everyone. It is something people sleep on and attend to for various positive reasons like comfort, joy, and relaxation, but it could also attend to a negative connotation like violence and rape. And all these ideas are a part of life, and so Rauschenberg used it and innovated it into a work of

This 8,000-pound of mud has a sound activated compressed air system and control console with bentonite mixed with water encased in an aluminum-and-glass vat. The artwork was produced from 1968–71 and has made its first debut in New York after twenty years. Before the opening of the show, curators mixed all the mud inside the museum. Julia Helprin of Artnet News explains how the Mud Muse works: “The bottom of the vat contains a complex network of air pumps equipped with sound sensors. Based on the frequency of whatever music is playing, the pumps release varying amounts of compressed air, which in turn causes the mud to bubble up. Before long, the bubbles are gurgling in time to the music.” Rauschenberg created this advancement of art and technology with engineers from the aerospace and manufacturing corporation. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art and Technology Program invited artists and scientist to work together and produce avant-garde projects. Although the piece took a long time to make and then a while to assemble, Rauschenberg embodies the many characteristics of a well defined and innovate artist using experimentation, unorthodox materials, collaboration, and the use of technological inventions. The Mud Muse has revolutionized his gap between life and art by filling it with