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- [00:08]
A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful that you're here. And a special thanks for being here during our fall pledge drive. Your support really matters. Coming up on the show today, we're going to hear the future of audio storytelling. I'll speak with local student reporters and storytellers who are finalists for the NPR Student Podcast Challenge. They are taking on topics like accessibility, teaching and cell phones in schools. They'll be here in studio to talk about their work. But first, we'll spend an hour on two artists who use photography to document a New York that has radically changed. Coming up later in the show, we'll learn about a new exhibit featuring the work of David Wojnarowicz. Then that's the plan. Let's get started with Robert Rauschenberg's New York Pictures from the Real World. Robert Rauschenberg is best known as a groundbreaking and experimental artist, someone who blurred the lines between sculpture, painting, photography, even dance. But before he became one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he was an observer of the world around him, driven to relentlessly photograph it. In fact, one of his early ideas was to photograph the country inch by inch. That plan eventually got downsized. Now a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York shows how he approached photography and used it in his artistic practice. It's called Robert Rauschenbag's New Pictures from the Real World. Joining me now to talk about it is Sean Cochran. He is the senior curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. Also written part of the catalog that accompanies the exhibit. Sean, welcome back to all of it.
- [02:07]
B
Great to be here. Thanks so much.
- [02:08]
A
It's always good to see you. I want to say that today would have been Robert Rauschenberg's 100th birthday.
- [02:14]
B
That's correct.
- [02:15]
A
So before we go on, before we start, is there anything you'd like to share about him, about his work, what he's meant to you?
- [02:23]
B
Well, I think looking back over at 100 years, what we see in his work is that he broke all the rules. And in fact, he broke all the rules allowing future generations to break the rules to have artistic freedom. And that's really, I think, his legacy in a beautiful way to look back at his work.
- [02:45]
A
Why did McNy want to take a look at his work?
- [02:49]
B
Well, we're always interested in seeing how artists see the city. And for him he had a long history with New York. He came to New York in the late 1940s and was here for several decades and then off and on in the later part of his life. But the city changed so much over the years and he took a break from photography in most of the 60s and 70s. But there are these early photographs from the 1950s where the city was in the post war boom. Yet he was a. A pretty starving artist at the time. So there's that perspective and then there's the perspective of a fairly successful artist, a very successful artist, actually in the late 1970s at a time when the city was kind of at the doldrums and trying to pick itself back up off the floor. So there's two different times of seeing the city from an artist at two very different places in his life.
- [03:50]
A
A lot of people know him as a painter and an experimental artist. How central was photography to his process?
- [03:58]
B
Photography was there throughout and really an overlooked, essential part of his work beyond just making his own photographs, which even early on he incorporated into his paintings. As time went on, he would appropriate pictures from mass media, from magazines, Popular Image Press, and then make silkscreens from them for his silkscreen paintings, et cetera, et cetera. So whether they were his own pictures or appropriated pictures, they were always there, they were always present in his work.
- [04:37]
A
How did Robert Rauschenberg get started as a photographer?
- [04:42]
B
Well, he initially, his wife, Susan Weil, whom He married in 1950, was interested in cyanotypes and they together made cyanotype photographs of human bodies and flowers and things like that. And that's actually the first thing he ever had exhibited in a museum.
- [05:11]
A
Oh really?
- [05:12]
B
That work was exhibited in Photography and Abstraction at Museum of modern art in 1951. So that was amongst his earliest experiences with photography. But then at Black Mountain College, that's where he really learned the medium. He was taught by several really innovative artists, including Hazel Larson Archer. And then two other well known photographers were visiting artists, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskin. And between those three and kind of the cultural scene of New York and all the photographers that were here in the intervening years, he was really grounded and interested in the possibilities of the photographic medium.
- [05:58]
A
I'm talking about the exhibit Robin Rauschenberg's new Pictures from the Real World. It's on display at the Museum of the City of New York through April 19, 2026. Joining me now to talk about it is Sean Cochra, the museum senior curator of prints and photographs. So when I looked through this book, this is a hard question, but what makes a Rauschenberg photo a Rauschenberg photo?
- [06:23]
B
It's a good question. He was really interested in the powers of observation, of really looking hard at things and seeing what was there that was often overlooked. The things New Yorkers, we do it all the time. Just like we say, New Yorkers don't look up. You know, New Yorkers just kind of have their places to go and they move there and they don't really pay too much attention to the world around them. What he did, particularly in New York, was slowed down and tried to look hard and look at what was often overlooked or discarded or kind of abandoned and bring attention to it and think about what that meant about New York and what it meant about society.
- [07:14]
C
How does the style of photography differ from what was considered traditional?
- [07:20]
B
Like street photography?
- [07:21]
A
Street photography?
- [07:22]
B
Yes. Well, at the time, you know, there were photographers like Garry Winogrand or Joel Meyerowitz who were kind of prowling the streets and they were taking really candid pictures of human. Human interactions, the candid moments, the ineffable kind of collision of people. Whereas Rauschenberg was not really as interested in the specificity of interactions of humans. He was more interested in the markers of humanity, the moments of not necess the like the remnants of human presence, the kind of things people left behind that signify their culture.
- [08:10]
C
The exhibit is organized into three sections. Let me get this right. Early photographs in and out City Limits and Photograph in Painting. Explain what each section highlights. Give me the elevator pitch on each section.
- [08:24]
B
Oh, sure. So the early photographs are the pictures made primarily from 1950 to about 1963. 65. And those are really. Those are square format photographs that are really more reflexive of his personal life at the time. There's a lot of portraiture of people who were significant in his life, from Susan Weill very early on, to later, Cy Twombly. There's a portrait of Cy Twombly lying on a Staten island beach. And then a bit later, several portraits of Jasper Johns and a portrait of Merce Cunningham and David Tudor, who was the pianist for the Cunningham Dance Company, and then other images around his studio in the world.
- [09:19]
C
So you were the one that chose these pictures, Sean?
- [09:21]
B
Yeah.
- [09:22]
C
What were you looking for.
- [09:27]
B
Really? The things that. The things that best represented what he was trying to do with photography. Again, in these early pictures, it was about looking at the formal aspects of photography from experimenting with camera shake or cause there's a photograph that's kind of blurry of Susan or the Flatness of picture planes. There's a picture of his studio and it's just the wall with lots of tchotchkes and they become very abstract. Abstract to portraits of people who were important in his life but were maybe composed in a maybe more artful way, including the TWI Sombly or Cy Twombly picture of him lying on a beach, which is at an angle with a blanket with stripes. And it becomes this kind of geometric pattern. And then there's a picture. There's pictures of his studio, which one is a light bulb against a black wall. And it becomes this otherworldly thing. So there's lots of different things happening there when it comes to the in and out city limits pictures which come in 1979. So about 20 years later, this is where he goes out into the world. And they're a lot less personal, but they're more about looking at the signs and symbols of urban life, of humanity, of kind of like what. What is there of culture that is often overlooked?
- [11:05]
C
What did we learn from those pictures? They're kind of interesting.
- [11:08]
B
Yeah, There's. There's pictures of. There's. There's pictures that have subtle Cultural, Social. Cultural critique. There's photographs that are very much interested in the. The symbols of. Kind of contemporary. I'm not sure what the right word is. The contemporary economy and the engines of what makes the city run, be they. And sometimes with multiple layers of meaning. For instance, one of my favorite pictures is a photograph of a Pegasus that appears to be leaping in a kind of ziggurat of buildings. And that's the old logo for mobile ExxonMobil. Right. So it has a symbol of. It's a symbol of contemporary economics. It's also a mythological symbol. So there's layers there of potential meaning.
- [12:16]
A
Did Rauschenberg. They have a neighborhood that he was drawn to.
- [12:19]
D
To take pictures in?
- [12:21]
B
Well, he. His studios throughout the 50s and 60s were mostly in the Seaport area. He lived in Cold Water Flats. Many of those buildings have since been demolished. But after winning the painting prize at the Venice Biennale, he purchased his home, his kind of forever home on Lafayette Street. And a lot of the pictures from In N out city limits are of downtown Manhattan.
- [12:52]
C
The images in the catalog. It's a beautiful catalog. Are black and white.
- [12:56]
A
Did he ever take pictures in color?
- [12:58]
B
He did not really favor color because he thought that they were less open to interpretation. They were maybe too specific and too tied to a time and a moment. Whereas the black and white, you could massage a bit and they could be used in again later on in his silkscreen paintings, and they could be more transformative.
- [13:29]
A
I'm talking about the exhibit Robert Rauschenberg's New Pictures from the Real World. It's on display at the Museum of the City of New York. Joining me to talk about it is Sean Cochran, the museum senior curator of prints and photographs. Over the course of the exhibit, he goes from penniless artist to the winner of the Ven Biennale to becoming a globally celebrated artist.
- [13:54]
C
How is this personal transformation, his professional transformation?
- [13:59]
A
How does it appear in his work?
- [14:02]
B
Well, I think he was, you know, very early on that. That poverty, frankly, led to invention. You know, he. He couldn't afford canvas and paint, so he walked around the streets of New York and found objects, which he would eventually create combines. These combine sculptural paintings. And that. That is when I talk about Rauschenberg breaking the rules, breaking all the rules so other artists could break the rules. That's where it all starts, really, in a lot of ways. But as he becomes more comfortable, he's. He's comfortable enough to continue to experiment, and he's comfortable enough to be able to pioneer collaborations between engineers at Bell Laboratories and see what a scientist and an artist being paired up, what they could possibly do. He was free enough to go down to Captiva and experiment with junk, making sculptures from found junk and from. To continue to work with silkscreen paintings on fabric. And he was a really restless artist, and I suppose his success allowed him to explore that restlessness.
- [15:25]
C
In the catalog, it says his camera was stolen in 1967. What happened?
- [15:33]
B
I can't remember exactly the story, but often it happens on the subway. I can't remember the specifics, but I would bet that's it. But by that time, he was also finding the pictures he wanted for his paintings in magazines. So, you know, it was kind of, in a sense, convenient because he didn't need the camera as much anymore. He was able to find the imagery he was looking for.
- [16:00]
C
So he stopped taking photographs.
- [16:02]
B
I mean, he largely stopped taking photographs. I think he continued to make personal snapshots and things like that, but not the kinds of images that he would come back to making. In the 1970s, late 1970s, as you.
- [16:16]
C
Looked back on his oeuvre, what surprised you? What surprised you about the work of Robert Rauschenberg?
- [16:25]
B
That restlessness and that he would never cease to experiment, that no matter where he was or what the situation was, he was creative and he would use the materials available to express that creativity and that he was And I think in many ways, an artist's artist. He was admiring of other artists, he was encouraging of other artists, and he would collaborate, like I said, with the engineers in Bell Labs, and he would always look for new ways to explore creativity.
- [17:06]
C
What do you think people will think about New York after going through this exhibit and experiencing these photographs?
- [17:15]
B
Well, I think what you really see is an artist's journey and the way an artist experienced the city over the course of several decades. You'll see again that kind of struggling artist and his inner circle in the early photographs. And then later you see a city kind of picking itself up from the Ford to city drop dead moment, and a city kind of beginning to find itself. And by that point, he was coming back and forth from Captiva to New York. And so he's familiar, but he's in some sense an outsider again. So he's seeing a city from a new perspective.
- [18:08]
C
It's kind of interesting. It sounds like you learn a lot about the artist, but you learn a lot about New York, but then you learn a lot about the artist, but then you learn a lot about New York.
- [18:16]
B
Yeah. And that's what's so, so interesting about what we. My job, I think, is that every, you know, as a. When we look at photographers, they always have a personal perspective, and that's. There's the facts of what's in the frame of the camera, but then there's the perspective of the person behind the camera. And that intersection is what really makes art and it makes looking at photographs so interesting.
- [18:45]
A
I got a note here that says, you know, about the next exhibit after this. Can you tell us about it or.
- [18:52]
B
No. Our exhibit or. Well, you know, there are several other exhibitions that are part of the larger Rauschenberg Centennial Foundation. You know what?
- [19:03]
A
I missteps. And then our next segment. Our next segment.
- [19:07]
B
Oh, oh, the David Wojarowicz photographs. Yes, Those I think, are fantastic. And that's a photographer who kind of explored the city, taking on an alter ego. And there's the layers of his perspective, the. The alter ego he takes on and the city at the time. It's a fascinating exhibition and body of work, and I encourage everyone to go see that as well and to listen.
- [19:41]
A
To our next segment as well. Indeed, I've been speaking with curator Sean Cochran about the exhibit, Robert Rochenberg's new Pictures from the Real World. It's on display at the Museum of the City of New York, one of my favorites. That is up through April 19, 2026. Sean, thanks a lot.
- [19:57]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [19:59]
E
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- [20:29]
D
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