I don’t know about you, but I’ve always needed a key to the door, floatees, training wheels to really connect with the arts. I’m not talking about appreciating them; I’m talking about actually relating to the work. Knowing the story behind a piece of classical music helps me to connect with it. For example, knowing why Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” is unfinished gives me a thing to grasp onto in what, to my untrained ears, would otherwise be a sea of random, lovely notes. (I’ll spare you my Treatise on the Importance of Mindful Ignorance—you’re welcome—but suffice it to say that ignorance can be a powerful learning tool if you point it in the right direction.)
Anyway, with the artwork of Robert Rauschenberg, my key to the door was Stanley Donwood. Donwood is the artist who, sometimes with Thom Yorke (as White Chocolate Farm), has done all of the artwork for Radiohead’s albums.
Like Radiohead’s music, Donwood’s weird, dystopian, often anti-capitalist work makes instant sense to me. I was raised by TV in American cities. I grew up at the mall. I get the existential despair that comes from participating in corporate team-building exercises and sitting in traffic.
So when a friend pointed out that Donwood’s work was inspired by Robert Rauschenberg, the key turned and the little door in my brain clicked open. Right! His paintings at the Menil DO look familiar, come to think of it…
Just like hearing Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima in Twin Peaks: The Return gave me a visual key for understanding the music, in a much less violent way, Stanley Donwood’s work did that for me with the work of Robert Rauschenberg. Suddenly, I could see his work somehow, and in seeing it, I started to love it and to understand it.
So, when Jade Dellinger, the director of the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery contacted me about being on an episode of the Tiny Histories podcast, I was more than there for it. I may have squeaked when I got his email. Just a little. And talking to him was so much fun. First he told me the great story he wanted to tell on the podcast (all about Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and other artists and engineers who smuggled an art museum onto the moon), and then he told me a zillion other great stories about working with members of DEVO and the Go-Go’s.
Take a listen here to learn more about Rauschenberg, the Moon Museum, and Jade Dellinger for yourself. Maybe it’ll be a key in the door for you.