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The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
Robert Rauschenberg
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Artists reflect and document the essence of their era through their work.

Robert Rauschenberg emphasizes the significant role of artists as observers and recorders of the societal and historical context in which they live. Their creations serve as a mirror that captures the feelings, events, and changes of their time, allowing future generations to connect with the past through the lens of creativity and expression.

Themes

ArtistHistoryWitnessCreativityArt

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared during an art exhibition to highlight the role of artists.

More from Robert Rauschenberg

Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
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I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realised they were not so artificial.
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I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.
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My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
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There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
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I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.
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