Notes

• "The lecture was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, (October 21, 1997) and, with revisions, for the Menil Collection, Houston, (May 7,1998), on the occasion of "Robert Rauschenbeerg: A Retrospective."
• "Leo Steinberg is the rare art historian who has known the pressures implicit in reviewing the work of living artists. In his engrossing lecture, filled with exciting insights and personal memories, he surveys the career of Robert Rauschenberg, one of the great American postwar artists. Beginning with his own experience as a moonlighting critic in the turbulent art world of New York in the 1950s and 1960s, he reveals much about himself and more about the insolent originality of the young Rauschenberg." "Steinberg offers in-depth discussions of such major challenges as the Erased de Kooning Drawing, Bed, and Monogram. Where his interpretations differ from those of other critics, he shows how, and why. And he reflects candidly on his own changes of mind over the years." "Steinberg warns against the modish interpretations that now load Rauschenberg’s work with murderous symbolism or same-sex iconography. He argues that meaning in this artist’s work is almost unspeakable, and the novel relationship established between the work and the viewer more subtly intentioned."–BOOK JACKET