Facts Of Life Poem by gershon hepner

Robert Rauschenberg would say
he could remember what he made
'like yesterday, ' but was dismayed
because what he did yesterday
was something he could not recall.
To make each day a work of art,
not mass produced but à la carte,
should be the target that we all
should aim for. Things that we produce,
like poems, paintings, tapestries,
our gifts to friends whom we can please
by proving that we have a muse,
may matter less than any acts
of love we can perform today,
though readers and collectors may
not pay a price for them. The facts
of life that matter most are love
and friendship, with a price above
the price of rubies, pearls and gold,
though on no market ever sold.

Inspired by an article by Diane Haithman on Robert Raschenberg, who died on May 12,2009 (“Memories of Rauschenberg: ‘A giant among artists, ’” LA Times, May 14,2008) :
Artist Robert Rauschenberg used to say he intended for his work to fill the gap between art and life – and the morning after his death, friends and colleagues were left struggling for words to describe the gap he left in their lives and in the art world. “My first thought was, the world won’t be the same without him, but then I thought: We still have him, ” said Rosamund Felsen, owner of the Rosamund Felsen Gallery at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station, who heard of Rauschenberg’s death Tuesday morning in a call from her daughter. Colleagues credited the influential, Texas-born artist with breaking the boundaries traditionally separating painting, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression…. Paul Schimmel, chief curator of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, remembers Rauschenberg with profound appreciation. Schimmel organized MOCA’s 2006 “Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, ” which featured the influential painting and sculpture hybrids the artist pioneered in the 1950s and won the best monograph show award from the American branch of the International Assn. of Art Critics.The show had its debut the year before at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Schimmel also curated the museum’s 1992 exhibition “Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition 1955-62, ” which included Rauschenberg’s work. Schimmel said it was in 1992 that he began discussing with the artist the possibility of a show of his combines, but Rauschenberg was hesitant. “I began to realize that he had always resisted a comprehensive view of the combines because Bob was an immensely creative and ambitious person to the very end, and much as he loved and was touched by the emotion and autobiography of these works that propelled him to international fame, also they were works that he was always judging himself against.”Schimmel walked through the combine exhibition with Rauschenberg twice: Once at the Metropolitan Museum and again at MOCA. “Both times, he spent a surprisingly short time in the gallery, ” Schimmel said. “I think the memories on a personal level were almost too hard to bear in the presence of the objects themselves.” Like others, Schimmel quoted the artist, who said with rueful humor upon revisiting his early work: “How do I remember all this? I remember these works like yesterday, but I don’t remember what I did yesterday.”


2/16/09