Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Figure 20. David Smith. Cubi XX. 1964. Stainless steel. MurphySculpture Garden, University of California at Los AngelesPredecessors ofPop ArtIt was in 1948that Robert Rauschenberg(born 1925)enrolled at the unusual,innovativeBlack MountainCollege in NorthCarolina, where hewould learn importantlessons from artteacher Josef Albersand radical musicianJohn Cage. From Albers,the color theorist,Rauschen-berglearned that onecolor was as goodas another, so thatit became almostimpossible for himto decide to use onecolor instead of another,because to doso would expressa personal preference—somethingthat he did not wantto do. In oppositionto Albers’ highly orderedapproach to art, Rauschenberg came to find his own freedom to “dosomething that resembles the lack of order I sense.” Influenced by Zen Buddhismand the I Ching, the much older Cage sought to create sounds as wellas silence in such a way as to extinguish the artist’s personality, memory,and desires. The purpose of art was not creating personal masterpieces buta perpetual process of discovery, of “purposeless play,” in which anyonecould participate. Rather than being something separate from life, for Cageart was a way of waking up to the very life one was living. With a seriesof all-white and all-black paintings in the early 1950s, Rauschenberg, like134