Rauschenberg Obits: Shades of Degayed

People seem to love controversy and attacks, but let's start with the good news: Christopher Knight's Rauschenberg obituary in the Los Angeles Times is exactly what all the other write-ups ought to be. Knight immediately makes clear that Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were lovers, he acknowledges that Rauschenberg's companion Darryl Pottorf also collaborated with him on his work, and he naturally cites the gay aspects of Rauschenberg's art and why they are important.

The candidly titled "Monogram" is also an unconventional declaration of identity. Western art has used goats as a symbol for priapic sexual energy ever since the Dionysian satyrs of ancient Greece -- half man and half goat, always merrily drinking and dancing. The outrageous interlace formed by the goat and the tire astride a landscape of cast-off debris dates from the conformist social atmosphere of the Eisenhower years, when an anti-Communist "Red Scare" was accompanied by an anti-homosexual "Pink Scare." Critic Robert Hughes described the unforgettable "Monogram" as "one of the few great icons of male homosexual love in modern culture" -- the complement to Meret Oppenheim's famous Surrealist sculpture of a phallic spoon in a fur teacup.

Unfortunately, Knight stands alone. At the other end of the spectrum is Matt Schudel's obit in the Washington Post. Schudel includes Johns but degays their relationship, omits homoerotism in his flat analysis of Rauschenberg's work, and only cites "companion" Pottorf in his final sentence. Yet while ignoring Rauschenberg's homosexuality, Schudel does discuss the artist's alcoholism, writing, "he consumed more than a bottle of whiskey a day for many years." (No other paper stooped to that.) Likewise, although Mark Feeney writing in the Boston Globe does say Rauschenberg and Johns "became lovers," he disregards the ramifications of that fact and spends more time on Rauschenberg's dyslexia than his homosexuality. In the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman mentions Pottorf midway but disingenuously dances around sex with Johns:

The intimacy of their relationship over the next years, a consuming subject for later biographers and historians, coincided with the production by the two of them of some of the most groundbreaking works of postwar art.

At least Kimmelman has the sense to examine how an artist's private life informs his work:

The process, used for works like “34 Drawings for Dante’s Inferno,” created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secret. Perhaps there was an autobiographical and sensual aspect to this.

But, really, in 2008 being closety about gay art isn't postmodern, or po-pomo, nor is it understandable or excusable. It's a disgrace.

Comments

[libhomo]

The AP obit I read about him mentioned his relationship with Jaspar Johns.