This elegy is dedicated to the memory of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and to the memory of Earle Brown (1926-2002), whose music has been intertwined and juxtaposed here with images of the glorious Combines.
Elegy for Robert Rauschenberg has been created from footage filmed by Art21 at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles during the 2006 exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg: Combines. Among the works seen in whole or in part are Minutiae (1954); Interview (1955); Monogram (1955-59); Canyon (1959); Gift for Apollo (1959); Black Market (1961); Empire II (1961); Pantomime (1961); Ace (1962); and Gold Standard (1964).
The video is set to music composed by Earle Brown who, along with Rauschenberg, was a member of a small group of friends in the 1950s that included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Morton Feldman, Jasper Johns, and Christian Wolff, among others. In the spirit of that long-ago friendship, and in the collaborative spirit of that time and group, excerpts from the following works by Brown have been selected and collaged, with permission of The Earle Brown Music Foundation, for this video: Music for Violin, Cello, & Piano (1952); Octet I (1953); Folio and 4 Systems (1954); String Quartet (1965); New Piece (1971); and Special Events (1999).
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