Arriving in the art world at a time when Abstract Expressionism was the dominant paradigm, Johns and Rauschenberg reacted against what they considered the exaggerated emotional and philosophical claims of the older painters for their art. Rauschenberg later recalled that "The kind of talk you heard then in the art world was so hard to take. It was all about suffering and self-expression and the State of Things. I just wasn't interested in that, and I certainly didn't have any interest in trying to improve the world through painting." Similarly, Johns explained that "I'm neither a teacher nor an author of manifestos. I don't think along the same lines as the Abstract Expressionists, who took those sorts of things all too seriously." Instead of self-expression, the two young artists wanted to find new ways to use art to reflect everyday life. Rauschenberg famously declared that "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)" Johns echoed the same idea: "I'm interested in things which suggest the world rather than suggest the personality. I'm interested in things which suggest things which are, rather than in judgments."
The brash and iconoclastic Rauschenberg made a number of symbolic attacks on Abstract Expressionism. In 1953, he literally erased an Abstract Expressionist work. After obtaining a drawing from Willem de Kooning for the purpose, Rauschenberg carefully rubbed out the image, then framed the smudged sheet and hand-lettered a label, "Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg. "In 1957, Rauschenberg mocked the supposed spontaneity and uniqueness of the Abstract Expressionists' work by making two collage paintings, Factum I and Factum II, that appeared identical, even to the drips and splashes around several large brush strokes. Most damaging, however, was Rauschenberg's innovation of a new form of art. In 1954 he began to attach real things to his canvases, in order to make his paintings independent objects rather than illusionistic representations of them: "I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is. And I think a picture is more like the real world when it's made out of the real world." Rauschenberg named these three-dimensional works "combines," and they became so influential for successive generations of younger artists, many of whom were eager to break away from the traditional two-dimensional picture and the sanctity of traditional art materials.
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