Robert Rauschenberg's Archive, New Yue Minjun, Kenny Scharf's Cosmic Cavern in London

Robert Rauschenberg

In 1965, before Robert Rauschenberg moved to Captiva Island, he lived in a building on Lafayette Street in Manhattan that had been an orphanage at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has been renovating the five-story building. It contains much of Rauschenberg's work, which the Foundation is organizing into the artist's catalogue raisonné, which is estimated to take fifteen to twenty years to complete. The first volume will reportedly be published in 2025.

 

Rauschenberg purchased the building as a studio and living space. He moved to Captiva Island in 1970, but kept the Lafayette Street building. 

 

The property on Captiva Island is currently used as a retreat for artists in residence. The building on Lafayette Street is being is used by the Foundation Staff and students and professionals, by appointment only, who are doing archival research .

 

Yue Minjun

After a ten-year hiatus, Yue Minjun has a solo show at Tang Contemporary Art last year. The new works show were done during the pandemic, while Minjun was living in Chuncheng, in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Like most of us, Minjun was forced to stay close to home. And, like other artists who had to used the time to observe the world around them, Minjun was inspired by the flowers of the city and painted soft and mysterious portraits of flower-faced people. (He still paints portraits of his own smiling face).

 

Minjun is one of China's foremost contemporary artists, and his recent works have earned him a new generation of collectors. His style has been labeled Cynical Realism. Much of his works have been cynically political, and there is still that feeling in some of his paintings, watercolors and sculptures, but there is also a joy in his work that a new audience can appreciate.

 

Kenny Scharf

The work of Kenny Scharf, and over 100 artists from around the world, are included in Beyond the Streets, the massive exhibit of street art at Saatchi's 70,000 sq. ft. space in London.

 

The Beyond the Streets exhibit in Los Angeles in 2018 and in New York in 2019 were very well received. The current exhibit examines the roots of graffiti from the 1970s to the present, with massive installations at the large gallery.

 

One of Scharf's Cosmic Caverns is part of the exhibit. He describes the Cosmic Caverns, which he has been making for more than thirty years, as a place where he can find "peacefulness in chaos."

 

 

Beyond The Streets London will be on exhibit through May 9, 2022.

 

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March 2, 2023