The Object

How to Break the World


Listen Later

Truth, beauty, transcendence. For millennia, people think they know the rules of great art. Then, in the 1950s, a guy named Bob breaks every one of them, declaring car tires and Coke bottles and entirely blank canvases part of his art--and, in turn, being declared the greatest artist of his time. As war gives way to optimism, is Robert Rauschenberg offering a weary world a new way of seeing, or is he simply, entertainingly, lucratively bamboozling it?
Here, you can see Rauschenberg's 1970 exhibition at Gallery 12, atop Dayton's department store in Minneapolis: https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/currents-daytons-gallery-12
Here's an iconic print, commissioned but ultimately rejected by Time magazine in 1969, acquired the following year by the Minneapolis Institute of Art when the museum held a major retrospective of his prints: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/7519/signs-robert-rauschenberg
And here's a boat hauling Rauschenberg's work across Venice for the 1964 Biennale: https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/32nd-venice-biennale
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The ObjectBy The Object podcast from the Minneapolis Institute of Art

  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7

4.7

180 ratings


More shows like The Object

View all
Radiolab by WNYC Studios

Radiolab

43,969 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,526 Listeners

Hidden Brain by Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain

43,758 Listeners

99% Invisible by Roman Mars

99% Invisible

26,212 Listeners

Outside/In by NHPR

Outside/In

1,480 Listeners

Gastropod by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Gastropod

3,640 Listeners

Science Friday by Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Science Friday

6,352 Listeners

1A by NPR

1A

4,678 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

112,683 Listeners

I Like Your Work: Conversations with Artists by Erika b Hess

I Like Your Work: Conversations with Artists

226 Listeners

Throughline by NPR

Throughline

16,242 Listeners

The Art Angle by Artnet News

The Art Angle

350 Listeners

Curious Minnesota by Star Tribune

Curious Minnesota

236 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,051 Listeners

Unexplainable by Vox

Unexplainable

2,305 Listeners