NEW YORK, NY.- In 1964, when Robert Rauschenberg became the first contemporary American artist to win the Grand Prize in painting at the Venice Biennale, it signaled the beginning of a tumultuous cultural shift, fixing the world’s gaze on American art. A new documentary by Amei Wallach, Americans in Venice: Robert Rauschenberg Rewrites the Rules, will tell this story of the intersection of art and international politics and the turbulent events surrounding this landmark moment. Through a rich trove of archival footage and interviews with leading artists, curators, and critics filmed in New York, London, and at the opening of the Venice Biennale this spring, Wallach will foreground the art against a background of world events.
The documentary film, which is expected to be released in March 2018, coincides with Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, a major retrospective, which debuted at Tate Modern. The exhibition is currently on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art through September 17, 2017, and will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from November 18, 2017 through March 25, 2018.
“The film puts in context a moment of optimism and international outreach that seems particularly pertinent at this moment as an illumination of what art makes possible and what soft power can do,” says Amei Wallach, producer and director. “The electrifying footage we shot in Venice this spring will bridge past and present to explore the meaning of art and globalism today.” Wallach met Rauschenberg on a number of occasions in New York and at his studio in Captiva, Florida, beginning in the late 1970s, though her work as a journalist for Newsday, Smithsonian magazine, and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.
Americans in Venice: Robert Rauschenberg Rewrites the Rules tells the story of how Rauschenberg’s seminal art developed, explores the art scene that produced it, chronicles its enduring influence on artists today, and looks at art by other legendary American artists who showed in Venice that year: among them, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain.
Against ticking clock pacing, the film recounts the suspense, intrigue, down and dirty politics, and conspiracy theories set amidst the glamorous parties, passionate debates about the art, and of course, the art itself. The outrage at American audacity and arrogance peaked at the award ceremony, when even the Vatican newspaper chimed in. But young Italian artists hoisted Rauschenberg on their shoulders in celebration of the new era. By summer’s end, America had become more deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War, and Rauschenberg’s friendships were disintegrating.
Among the many art world luminaries that appear in the film are several that attended the 1964 Venice Biennale. They include Calvin Tomkins, the New Yorker writer who has written at length about the Biennale and Rauschenberg, and the artist Christo, who was bewildered, he said, by the Venice pandemonium, having come not so long ago from the other side of the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria.
Featured interviews with artists include Mark Bradford, who is representing the U.S. in Venice this year; Carolee Schneeman, who received a lifetime achievement award in Venice this year, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat; and Marina Abramovic. Christine Macel, the director of the 2017 Venice Biennale, and Robert Storr, director of the 2007 Biennale, and the art historian Irving Sandler also offer perspectives on the current state and history of the Biennale as well as related past and present world events.
Venice’s renowned jeweler, Atillio Codognato, whose clients included Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Coco Chanel, has collected Rauschenberg's paintings since the 1964 Biennale. Surrounded by his resplendent jewels in his shop off of Pizza San Marco, Codognato recalls how he was first drawn to Rauschenberg’s work.
Rauschenberg’s victory at the 1964 Venice Biennale was not without rancor, accusations, and name-calling. Some claimed that his win was nothing but a CIA or State Department plot. There were charges that his selection was rigged because of the last-minute addition of an American to the jury, not to mention the hurried transport by barge of Rauschenberg’s massive paintings from an exhibition at the American Consulate to the Biennale site.
The convenient timing – the night before the jury's decision – of a triumphant Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance with lighting, sets, and costumes by Rauschenberg, and music by John Cage, was seen as a ploy to boost the artist's visibility. This added to the suspicion that Americans were once again guilty of uncouth antics on yet another playing field: the international art world. The accusation that a new breed of American art dealers, Leo Castelli and his ex-wife, Ileana Sonnabend, was conspiring in New York and Paris to manipulate the art market further developed into a toxic anti-American expansionism brew in this tense moment at the height of the Cold War.
