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ARTFORUM
MARCH 1984

RR84

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, Hought-
on Gallery, Cooper Union:
This documentary exhibition of Robert
Rauschenberg's contributions to per-
formance works of various types in-
cluded sets, costumes, audiotapes,
photoocumentation, and written de-
scription of works from the period 1954-
83. The material fell into three parts. The
period during which Rauschenberg
worked with Merce Cunningham (1954-
65) was covered comewhat cursorily
through photographs hung outside
the gallery itself, in the hallway. His time with Hudson Dance Theater (1963-67)-
when he created nine performance
pieces of his own-was the central focus
of the show. Rauschenberg's recent
attempts to revert to his original position
of set and costume designer pure and
simple, starting with a revived collabora-
tion with Cunningham in 1977 and con-
tinuing through his recent design for the Trisha Brown Company (of which he is
chairman of the board of trustees),
formed an addendum.
The decision to focus on Rauschen-
berg's own pieces from the mid '60s was
unquestionably the right one. As a sub-
ordinate collaborator Rauschenberg os
just not impressive, hardly even credi-
ble, but for a while he was an important
later carrier of the venerable perform-
ance tradition-Futurist, Constructivist,
Dadaist, Surrealist-that more or less
did it all before 1920, then fell into de-
seutude for 30 years or more. Rauschen-
berg's major pieces of this type were
represented richly, both by photographers
and by objects redolent with the reality of
their use and still in their presence.
In Spring Training, 1965, 30 turtles
moved about the stage with flashlights
attached to their backs, while women
dressed in bridal veils and short white
dresses passed out saltines among the
audience. Rauschenberg wheeled a
shopping cart of ticking clocks through
the aisles while his son tore out the
pages of a New York phone book rigged
for sound to amplify the tearing noise
enormously. Steve Paxton moved
around with a large tin can attached to
his knee and finally Rauschenberg, mas-
ter of ceremonies in white dinner jacket,
dropped dry ice into a bucket of water
slung round his waist on a window-
washer's harness till all disappeared
into a sorcerer's mist while hula music
played. Comments on the forced audi-
ence participation, introduction of ran-
dom elements antiesthetic gesture, and
other classical themes of the '20s avant-
garde are unnecessary. The visitors to
Cooper Union saw the can from Paxton's
knee, tore pages from a similarly ampli-
fied phone book, and fingered the bridal
veils, while wondering where the sal-
tines had gone-and where, for that mat-
ter, the turtles. The shopping cart filed
with ticking clocks could be wheeled
around as much one liked.
And so it went. Once saw the anklets
with Coke cans that were filled with
steaming dry ice while Rauschenberg,
flashlights attached to his knees, walked
about mysteriously in Map Room I, 1965;;
the word cards held up by four blind-
folded men in tuxedos in Map Room II,
1965, forming sentences like "Myrna Loy
is bearded hands" (the first man held up
mostly proper nouns, the second verbs,
the third adjectives, the fourth common
nouns); part, not all, of Deborah Hay's
costume for Map Room II (it had live
doves inside it once); the shoes embed-
ded in Plexiglas made for Rauschen-
berg by Arman and echoed some years
later by Laurie Anderson's skates in ice,
as well as the neon tube (like her bow)
that he carried about while wearing
them; and the amplified bedsprings that
Trisha Brown rolled around on and that
Paxton and Alex Hay rolled right over on
automobile-tire shoes. From Linoleum,
1966, the last of the great pieces, one
saw the 10-foot-long wheeled chicken
coop in which Paxton, lying on his belly
among live chickens, wheel himself
around the stage while Simone Forti, in
an antique wedding dress and sitting on
a throne, threw cooked spaghetti about.
As absurdist happenings Rauschen-
berg's work during these years often sur-
passed that of more famous masters,
eclipsed historically though it was by his artworks to be hung on walls. In the late
'60s the pieces distinctly lost vitality, be-
coming celebrity lists including every-
one from Frank Stella to Brice MArden to
Mel Bochner. Then, after a long hiatus
(1967-77) during which Rauschenberg
was occupied with other things, came
the supposed collaboration of recent
years, which on the whole might better
not have happened.
-THOMAS McEVILLEY