Robert Rauschenberg is a work of collaborative oral biography that tells the story of one of the twentieth century's great artists through a series of interviews with key figures in his life-family, friends, former lovers, professional associates, studio assistants, and collaborators.

Robert Rauschenberg is a work of collaborative oral biography that tells the story of one of the twentieth century's great artists through a series of interviews with key figures in his life--family, friends, former lovers, professional associates, studio assistants, and collaborators. The oral historian Sara Sinclair artfully puts the narrators' reminiscences in conversation, with a focus on the relationship between Rauschenberg's intense social life and his art. The book opens with a prologue by Rauschenberg's sister and then shifts to New York City's 1950s and '60s art scene, populated by the luminaries of abstract expressionism. It follows Rauschenberg's eventual move to Florida's Captiva Island and his trips across the globe, illuminating his inner life and its effect on his and others' art.

This makes oral history a peculiarly apposite way of approaching him. The voices in Sara Sinclair's new book appear as randomly put together as do the car tyre and stuffed goat of Rauschenberg's combine 'Monogram'. . . . And it is this fabrication that makes Sinclair's book so fine. Rauschenberg emerges from it less as a painting than as a combine; which is to say, a Rauschenberg.