"Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two.)" --Robert Rauschenberg

The early 1950s, when Robert Rauschenberg launched his career, was the heyday of the heroic gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg challenged this tradition, inventing new interdisciplinary models of artistic practice that shaped the decades to come. Published in conjunction with this century's first retrospective of this defining figure in postwar art, this richly illustrated catalog reframes Rauschenberg's widely celebrated Combines (1954-64) and silkscreen paintings (1962-64) in fresh ways. It also illuminates lesser-known periods within Rauschenberg's career, including his work of the early 1950s and that from the late 1960s onward, now compelling and prescient to contemporary eyes.

Over the span of six decades, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) worked in an astonishing range of mediums including painting, sculpture, prints, photography and performance. Working alone and in collaboration with artists, dancers, musicians and writers, Rauschenberg produced a vast body of work that set the course for art of the present day.