ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG

“I consider the text of a newspaper, the detail of photograph, the stitch in a baseball, and the filament in a light bulb as fundamental to the painting as brush stroke or enamel drip of paint.”, said Robert Rauschenberg. He is describing his ‘Combine Paintings’, of which Untitled is amongst the very earliest, that marked a major shift not just in the Abstract Expressionist that was the dominant movement of the day, but in the course of American Art. They bridged a gap between Abstract Expressionism and the soon emergent Pop Art, combining found imagery and pop culture objects with a saturation of thick, impasto paintwork and an openness to chance operations and randomness that allows for perceptual shifts in the work. As Rauschenberg developed this style of art-marking further, the images became more refined, clearer in their messages and ideologies. Yet here we see the beginnings of change, the first step towards a flattening of mediums where painting and sculpture became not separate practices but something combined.

HENRY MATTSON

In Woodstock, New York, Henry Mattson could starve more slowly and more comfortably than he could in the city. This was his own admission and resignation, that life as an artist would not bring wealth or comfort but was worthwhile nonetheless, and he could live in Woodstock for pennies on the Manhattan dollar enough to pursue the only thing he ever wanted to do. Born in Sweden, he arrived in America at the turn of the century with thirteen dollars in his pocket. He picked up irregular work at machine shops, harvester companies, and landscaping firms while taking art classes in the evenings and painting as a hobby. He was encouraged by his mentor to give up painting and find a trade, advice Mattson followed for a little while until he found it impossible to continue to deny his truest desire. So to Woodstock he went, subsidising his painting with odd jobs until, through perseverance and talent, he became nationally renowned and a hero of the artists movements of upstate New York. He was, in so many ways, an archetype of the American dream, and of the northern dreamer of folk tradition who believed in beauty so much that he risked it all, and won.

JOSEPH BEUYS

An elusive guru of modern art with mysterious and dark origins - the life of Beuys was an extension of his performance art. As teenage volunteer for the Nazi air force known as the Luftwaffe, he began to consider life as an artist. Later on, Beuys would often tell the story of his body being salvaged from the wreckage of his crashed plane by the indigenous people of Crimea and nursed back to health wrapped in fat and animal skins. The plane crash happened but no other part of the story was true - instead it was a way to bridge a gap between his fascist, violent beginnings and the deeply humanist, emotional, shamanistic artist he became. He crated a charismatic, messianic persona that was deeply spiritual, and proclaimed far and wide the healing power of art in a world that was wounded. “Our vision of the world", he said, “must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact.” This work, ‘The Shaman’, is a self portrait - an animalistic form appears in the centre and above it, the disembodied hat-wearing head of Beuys, all rendered in a thick, almost blood-like red. It is the portrait of a spiritual man, not unfamiliar with the darkness of violence.