Author Description

"In addition to his philanthropic spirit and his championing of positive change, Rauschenberg was also acknowledged to be one of the most generous and inquisitive artists of his time, passionately engaged in, and supportive of, the art of others. Over a lifetime, he acquired through exchanges, gifts, and purchases, an astonishingly rich collection of artworks by seminal forbears (Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Edweard Muybridge); a wide circle of friends, including choreographers and composers (Trisha Brown, John Cage, John Chamberlain, Merce Cunningham, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Jean Tinguely, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Susan Weil); and younger colleagues (David Byrne, Robert Mapplethorpe, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha). Some of these artworks: such as Duchamp's Bottlerack (1960), Cage's original scores, Marden's Choice (1967), and Ruscha's Romeo, With Contraceptive Ghost (1980), represent milestones in recent contemporary art history; others, such as Warhol's Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1967), John Chamberlain's jewel-like sculpture Homer (1960) and Trisha Brown's vigorous notations are of a different order, intimate and highly personal, though no less potent." --Publisher description.