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Yale University Press has published Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, a major new book in the field of art history by Robert Saltonstall Mattison, Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art History and head of art.
Rauschenberg is one of the most prolific and best-known artists of the post-war period. His work, ranging across a number of disciplines, has influenced avant-garde art since the 1950s. The artist allowed Mattison into his studio to observe him at work, resulting in an in-depth examination of selected projects so that the meaning of Rauschenberg’s art, his working procedures, and the reasons behind his various artistic choices may be better understood. Like Rauschenberg’s own work, the book ranges across a variety of disciplines, relating the artist’s output to the visual arts, politics, technology, dance, urban theory, and other contemporary issues.
Mattison explains the influence of urbanism on Rauschenberg’s “Combine” paintings of the 1950s and explores his involvement with the “space race” during the 1960s and 1970s, relating his works to popular culture and demonstrating the development of his ideas about the peaceful exploration of space. He examines Rauschenberg’s extensive involvement in the performing arts, tracing his connections to avant-garde dance in America, addressing his own performances, and focusing on his work with well-known choreographer Trisha Brown. He also deals with the effect of Rauschenberg’s dyslexia on his art.
The final chapter examines the artist’s most extensive undertaking, the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange. One venue of this seven-year, 11-country project was Chile, which Rauschenberg visited during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Mattison shows how in dangerous political circumstances the artist was able to execute and exhibit works critical of the government. The book is widely illustrated with Rauschenberg’s works and photographs of the artist in performance and in the studio
Mattison also wrote about Rauschenberg’s work in a prior book, Masterworks: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella in the Robert and Jay Meyerhoff Collection, published by Hudson Hills Press in 1995. His other books are Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s World, Hudson Hills Press, 1990, and Robert Motherwell: The Formative Years, UMI Research Press, 1987.
His current research topics include female performance art of the 1960s and an examination of six contemporary artists at mid-career.
Curator of more than 25 exhibitions, Mattison has shared his research in many academic publications, including book chapters and articles published by journals such as Arts Magazine, Art International, The New Arts Journal, The Print Collector’s Newsletter, Studies in Iconography, Women’s Art Journal, and others, as well as entries in International Dictionary of Art and Artists, The MacMillan Dictionary of Art, and The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. He has written essays for exhibition catalogues of galleries in Tokyo, New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and other cities.
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1981, Mattison has led students on study-abroad trips to Vienna and the Soviet Union. He conducts national and international cultural tours with museum groups, providing behind-the-scenes learning experiences in art, architecture, and history in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Texas, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Vienna.
Mattison earns praise as a valued mentor for Lafayette art majors focusing on art history. One recent example, Liza Lesser ’03(Miami Beach, Fla.), graduated magna cum laude with honors in art last May after conducting a yearlong thesis under his guidance on contemporary architect Richard Gluckman. Through interviews with Gluckman, studying his buildings in person, and other research, Lesser determined how his projects fit into the minimalist movement. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Alpha Theta, the international honor society for the study of history, Lesser is studying the history of modern architecture at Art Institute of Chicago, the nation’s best school for the study of fine arts, according to the College Art Association.
“Professor Mattison’s enthusiasm and true love for art makes working with him exciting,” she says. “He put time aside from conducting his own personal research to work with me and helped me get my foot in the door for interviews, traveled with me to see sites in New York City, and was always available to help with the project.”
Lucile Smith ’03 (Neptune, N.J.) is receiving free tuition and a $15,000 stipend to work towards a master’s in library science through an assistantship with the College of Library and Information Science at University of Maryland. She graduated magna cum laude with honors in both art and French after completing a yearlong thesis in French under the guidance of Mattison and George Rosa, associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, on historical, social, and political events that sparked the use of caricature during the French Revolutionary period.
Mattison mentored Jennifer Gibbs ’02, adouble major in art and government & law, and now special assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney’s deputy chief of staff, in her independent study of the ideological divide between the arts community and the Republican Party. Gibbs chose to add an art major after taking a course with Mattison.
“I found his enthusiasm contagious,” she says. “He taught me to look at the world with a different eye, to try to understand and appreciate the work whether or not I agreed with the message or style.”
Mattison has received a number of honors and fellowships, including Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for excellence in research and teaching in 2002, the Sears-Roebuck Award for Superior Scholarship and Teaching in 1991, the Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award in 1988, faculty research fellowships in 2002, 1990, and 1985, and a junior faculty leave in 1986.
He also received funding for a Sloan Workshop in Engineering Methodology in 1987, a Sloan Grant for development of an architectural structure and design course in 1985, a Senior Colloquium Development Grant for participation in development of the course Art and Politics between the Wars in 1984, Princeton’s Samuel Kress Fellowship for Dissertation Research in 1990, and Kress and Graduate Fellowships from Williams College while studying there.
Mattison earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985, writing a dissertation on “The Art of Robert Motherwell during the 1940s;” an M.F.A. from Princeton in 1979; an M.A. from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art in 1977; and a B.A. with high honors from Middlebury College in 1974.