"Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically"
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Restlessness, for Rauschenberg, isn’t a personality quirk; it’s a method. “Every time I’ve moved” frames geography as an engine of style, not just a backdrop. The bluntness of “changed radically” rejects the comforting art-world fantasy of the consistent “signature” look. He’s telling you that coherence is overrated, maybe even dishonest, when the world keeps reconfiguring itself around you.
The subtext is half confession, half provocation: if the work shifts whenever the address changes, then “identity” in art is porous, assembled from whatever you’re bumping into daily. That aligns with his larger project of collapsing the distance between studio and street. Rauschenberg’s career was built on letting materials, images, and noise from the outside world trespass into the artwork: combines that swallowed newspapers and fabric; silkscreens that treated mass media like paint; collaborations that treated performance, technology, and choreography as legitimate inputs. Moving isn’t just relocation; it’s a forced recalibration of what’s available, what’s urgent, what’s visible.
Context matters because mid-century American art was obsessed with purity and heroic continuity, especially under Abstract Expressionism’s long shadow. Rauschenberg’s line quietly undermines that moral seriousness. It suggests that the artist’s job isn’t to perfect a single inner voice, but to stay permeable to new conditions. The “radical” part reads like a dare: if your work doesn’t transform when your life does, are you making art or branding?
The subtext is half confession, half provocation: if the work shifts whenever the address changes, then “identity” in art is porous, assembled from whatever you’re bumping into daily. That aligns with his larger project of collapsing the distance between studio and street. Rauschenberg’s career was built on letting materials, images, and noise from the outside world trespass into the artwork: combines that swallowed newspapers and fabric; silkscreens that treated mass media like paint; collaborations that treated performance, technology, and choreography as legitimate inputs. Moving isn’t just relocation; it’s a forced recalibration of what’s available, what’s urgent, what’s visible.
Context matters because mid-century American art was obsessed with purity and heroic continuity, especially under Abstract Expressionism’s long shadow. Rauschenberg’s line quietly undermines that moral seriousness. It suggests that the artist’s job isn’t to perfect a single inner voice, but to stay permeable to new conditions. The “radical” part reads like a dare: if your work doesn’t transform when your life does, are you making art or branding?
Quote Details
| Topic | Reinvention |
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