Not long ago in these pages, Karen Wilkin described the
standard history of American art as “freeze-dried.” Rarely has a
critic pointed up the confines of art historical discourse
as pithily.
Even the casual student of art knows what such a
history entails, with its litany of movements and artists.
It is one that extols novelty over aesthetics, style over vision, Barnett
Newman over Fairfield Porter. It is a history that exalts an avant-garde,
no matter how moribund, over the rigors of tradition. It is a
history that has attempted to elevate Marcel Duchamp to a status
equal to that of Picasso and Matisse and, for the most part, succeeded.
It is a history as blah as it is blind—blind, that is, to the arts
of painting and sculpture. Within this fast and
flavorless telling
of history Robert Rauschenberg plays a pivotal role.

As an art student, I first learned of Rauschenberg as the artist
who erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning.
This was not simply an
audacious prank, we were told,
but an undertaking of epic proportions. Reading
what has been written about the artist in light of his
retrospective, it becomes clear that this was but one of many such
endeavors. Indeed, one marvels not just at the scope of
Rauschenberg’s artistic influence, but at how different
life on earth would have been without him.
Charles Stuckey writes in the exhibition catalogue,
for instance, that the latter half of the twentieth century “might well
be