A newspaper that you're not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn't think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.
Robert Rauschenberg

An empty canvas is full.
Robert Rauschenberg

And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.
Robert Rauschenberg

And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.
Robert Rauschenberg

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway.
Robert Rauschenberg

And I think that even today, New York still has more of this unexpected quality around every corner than any place else. It's something quite extraordinary.
Robert Rauschenberg

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.
Robert Rauschenberg

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable.
Robert Rauschenberg

Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically.
Robert Rauschenberg

I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.
Robert Rauschenberg


I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.
Robert Rauschenberg

I don't mess around with my subconscious.
Robert Rauschenberg

I don't think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else.
Robert Rauschenberg

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.
Robert Rauschenberg

I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.
Robert Rauschenberg

I think maybe chance works better in a situation like music because music exists over a period of time, and you don't maintain constantly the you can't refer back from one area to another area.
Robert Rauschenberg

I wouldn't use the same color in a picture in more than one place.
Robert Rauschenberg

I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.
Robert Rauschenberg

I'm sure we don't read old paintings the way they were intended.
Robert Rauschenberg

If you don't have trouble paying the rent, you have trouble doing something else; one needs just a certain amount of trouble.
Robert Rauschenberg