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Why did Robert Rauschenberg's art burn out?

A new exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's late work shows the artist at his weakest – while his great friend Cy Twombly was still going strong in his 80s
Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly (right)
Shared ideas ... Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly (right). Photograph: Jacques Haillot/Corbis Sygma and David Lees/Getty

In my review of this year's Edinburgh art festival, I am harsh about the late work of the American artist Robert Rauschenberg. A survey of his works from the 1980s and afterwards, at Inverleith House, reveals an artist who seemed to be retreading old ideas remorselessly. It was a sad contrast with the later work of his friend Cy Twombly.

  1. Robert Rauschenberg
  2. Botanical Vaudeville
  3. Edinburgh
  4. EH3 5LR
  1. Until 2 Oct
  2. Details:
    0131 248 2971
  3. Venue website

The recent death of Twombly was mourned by many, including me. Right up to the end, this painter of emotional and poetic abstract love letters did wonderful work. I was invited by his gallery, the Gagosian, a couple of years ago to see some of his last paintings of flowers, almost wet from his studio, with a view to writing a catalogue essay about them. For some time I was left alone with these sensual clouds of colour, depictions of roses that floated in empty space. I felt heartened that here were truly authoritative paintings by a living giant: writing about them would be a treat.

Why did Twombly keep his intensity right to the end, while Rauschenberg lost his? To guess at this we need to go back to the start of their story. Twombly, Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns formed what has been called a "triumvirate" of artistic originality 60 years ago. They shared ideas, sensibilities and, above all, a common thread of biography. The three young artists had overlapping relationships; all three were obsessed with revelation and secrecy.

Rauschenberg made works such as Canyon (1959), in which he dramatised the divisions of America and his own life; a photograph of his son and a stuffed eagle conjure up the myth of Ganymede, carried off by the god Jupiter. In another of his works from this period, a stuffed goat is stuck suggestively through a tyre; in another, his bed becomes a painting, stained with passion.

The sexual desire that bursts out of Rauschenberg's early work involved Twombly directly: they were lovers. But as Rauschenberg's fame grew, he was seen as a serious artist with a social and political vocation; the secret love of his early art diffused into vagueness.

Twombly, meanwhile, moved to Italy, dedicating his life to an art of passion. He never stopped making paintings about love and loss. Carnal lusts enflame his graffiti paintings of the 1960s; even in his late works, he is still mourning love, summoning up lost beauties. What Twombly, Rauschenberg and Johns share – think of the collaged news stories half-hidden by waxy colours in Johns' Flag – is a sense they are telling stories that never quite give up all their secrets. But Rauschenberg and Johns, who became celebrated figures in the American art world while still young, seemed to lose the thread, to forget what it was they were trying to say; Twombly, sensually meditating in Rome, never forgot.

Twombly was the romantic of the three, and still sang love songs in his old age. In Tacita Dean's film portrait of the artist, he is seen looking through art catalogues. "There's a Rauschenberg," he says, "and a good one, too." He was still thinking about his friend. The power of love kept Twombly's art alive long after everyone else burned out.

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