There’s an entire 300 page book devoted to bobrauschenbergamerica, that’s how damn cool it is.
Scott T. Cummings’ Remaking American Theater is one of the best theatre books of the last 20 years, and is the one that most successful describes the kind of work that Available Light aspires to do.
Right there on page 3, playwright Charles L. Mee discusses his interest in Rauschenberg and his work.
What I think is so great about Rauschenberg is that he is a great American artist. He makes work that creates a world that we all wish America would be, which is to say, without being a Pollyanna, without turning a blind eye to the violence and tragedy and nastiness, his work is very open and very small-d democratic. He brings into his work not just what has been ignored or unseen or neglected or not previously visible, but stuff that has been positively rejected, garbage that has been thrown away. He brings it in off the street and says this, too, is worthy of attention. Before there was a word inclusiveness, he was inclusive. Before anybody did sampling, he was sampling. Before the French literary theorists knew what appropriation was, Rauschenberg was doing it. When he brings stuff together the way he does — a stuffed goat with an automobile tire around its stomach standing on a platform with wheels on it — if that is a sculpture, then anything is possible. I think that is the feeling that he creates; that anything is possible. And what more do you want out of life than anything being possible?
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