A primordial swamp with 1,000 gallons of bubbling, glooping, pungent mud has been installed at Tate Modern as part of a show celebrating one of the 20th century’s artistic trailblazers.
The gallery will open its Robert Rauschenberg retrospective to the public on Thursday, a winter blockbuster and the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work for 20 years.
Rauschenberg, who died in 2008, was one of the titans of 20th-century American art, best known to some for his combines, which are painting-sculpture hybrids.
But he was interested in almost all art forms and techniques including painting, sculpture, photography, stage design, technology and performance.
“He was driven by curiosity,” said Christopher Rauschenberg, the artist’s son. “It was always, ‘What would happen if I did this? If I did that?’ He had a very clear sense of, ‘By the time I know how to do something, it is time to do something else’. He was always trying to discover and explore.”
One of the show’s highlights is Mud Muse (1968-71), which is 1,000 gallons of bubbling Bentonite clay in a 12ft by 9ft (365cm x 274cm) tank. It is from a time when everyone was fascinated by the moon, after the Apollo landings, and the work could be a recreation of the surface.
The work is also something of a technical feat in that it is listening to itself. The mud’s bubbles and spurts are measured by microphones, which in turn trigger a complex series of pumps to release more air and create more bubbling.
The Tate’s director of exhibitions, Achim Borchardt-Hume, who co-curated the show, said it had been a big undertaking to set up Mud Muse. It is a normally a star of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and is being seen in the UK for the first time.
“We’ve spent a week with technicians from the Moderna Museet, who are expert in setting it up and getting the Bentonite to the right consistency to bubble to perfection. It needs to have the right degree of gloopiness … technically it is a very complicated work.”
The same museum is lending Monogram, considered one of Rauschenberg’s most important combines. In this case it is a stuffed angora goat bound to a tyre and placed on a canvas. It has come to the UK for the first time in 50 years.
Borchardt-Hume said there were many examples of museums lending works they seldom allowed to leave their buildings. “Many of them feel a great attachment to Rauschenberg as an artist and felt very much that they wanted to be as supportive as they could be.”
He said Rauschenberg’s legacy lived on. He was someone who, in a way, gave permission for subsequent generations of artists to do what they do. “What he did was to create huge amounts of open space for others to work in.”
The Rauschenberg show has been organised by Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After London it will travel to MoMA and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2017.
• The Robert Rauschenberg retrospective will be at Tate Modern in London from 1 December to 2 April.
