6 Artists to Follow if You Like Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg, born 100 years ago this year, was one of the 20th century’s most influential artists who, over the course of a 60-year career, left his distinctive mark on many different media, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and performance. Not only an important precursor of Pop Art, he has been described as “a forerunner of essentially every post-war movement since Abstract Expressionism.”

Rauschenberg is best known for his “Combines” (1954–64), which incorporated elements of both painting and sculpture into a single work. These pivotal experiments, made using mundane found objects such as newspaper clippings, photographs, bedspreads, cardboard, fabric, and rubber tires, are some of the finest artworks ever to explore the boundaries between art, popular culture, and the everyday world.

In 2025, several major exhibitions will explore different aspects of his legacy. For example, Hong Kong’s M+ Museum will take a comprehensive look at Rauschenberg’s longstanding engagement with Asian culture, while his collaborations with fellow artists will be examined in “Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly” at the Museum Brandhost in Munich. Finally, solo shows at Gladstone Gallery in New York and Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris will pay homage to his enduring importance (in May and October, respectively). Meanwhile, the 2025 edition of miart, Milan’s international art fair, will adopt his life and works as its curatorial theme.

Also a philanthropist and passionate advocate for social and political change, Rauschenberg established the Rauschenberg Foundation in 1990 to support artists and institutions who share his inclusive, collaborative, and multidisciplinary approach.

And his influence continues to be felt today. As Julia Blaut, the Rauschenberg Foundation’s senior director of curatorial affairs, pointed out, “In so many instances, artists today acknowledge his precedence, have run with his example, and have extended his ideas in completely original and unexpected directions.…He always was and remains an artist’s artist.”

So, to help celebrate what would have been Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday, here’s a list of six contemporary artists who share his pioneering spirit and innovative use of materials.

B. 1961, Los Angeles. Lives and works in Los Angeles.

Using found objects and everyday items such as maps, billboards, comic books, and movie posters, Mark Bradford creates monumental abstract paintings that are both formally complex and politically charged. First layering of paper, rope, and paint, Bradford then “excavates” the surfaces of his canvases using tools to reveal intersections of meaning between the different materials.

Directly inspired by Rauschenberg’s “passionate, multifaceted, and plural” approach, as well as his activism, Bradford’s intricate and ambitious works are deeply rooted in sociopolitical issues, addressing the exploitation of marginalized communities while also exploring the relationship between high and low culture.

Bradford received his BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1995 and 1997, respectively. He has exhibited widely at some of the most prestigious locations in the world and represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 2017. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a 2009 MacArthur Fellowship and an appointment to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

B. 1973, New York. Lives and works in Brooklyn.

The work of Brooklyn-based artist Gedi Sibony occupies its own unique space somewhere between sculpture, assemblage, and installation. Using discarded quotidian objects such as cardboard, plastic sheeting, carpet, and wood, he creates fragile works of poetic minimalism that reveal the expressive potential of the otherwise mundane materials he has rescued from oblivion.

Sibony has cited Rauschenberg as a direct influence, describing the practice of selective appropriation in his “Combines” as “an enactment by the artist, accomplished through total immersion,” which is mirrored in his own work.

Sibony graduated with an MFA from Columbia University in 2000, and his work has been exhibited in numerous group and solo shows. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions.

B. 1966, Beijing. Lives and works in Beijing.

Reflecting his experience growing up in the rapidly changing culture and society of contemporary China, Song Dong uses everyday objects and ephemera to explore themes of impermanence, self-expression, and the transience of human endeavors.

The artist has acknowledged Rauschenberg’s pivotal 1985 exhibition in Beijing (the first solo show in China by a contemporary Western artist since the Cultural Revolution) as a major influence. Impressed by the American artist’s playful transformation of ephemeral objects into poetic works layered with meaning and metaphor, Song Dong would then abandon painting in favor of sculpture, installation, video, and performance. These have included his beguiling assemblages of old wooden doors, windows, and mirrors, such as Da Cheng Ruo Que Φ185 No.03 (2020–23).

Song studied fine arts at Beijing’s Capital Normal University, graduating in 1989. He has exhibited widely since the early 1990s, including major solo shows at the Barbican Centre in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands.

B. 1959, Seattle. Lives and works in Nanaimo, Canada.

Regarded as one of the most important sculptors of her generation, Jessica Stockholder uses store-bought and mass-produced objects to create vibrantly colored large-scale sculptures and installations, which have been described as “paintings in space.” Meticulously arranged, these three-dimensional compositions explore the pictorial potential of objects and surfaces, along with the physical spaces that surround them.

Her bold combination of painting and sculpture has led to frequent comparisons with Rauschenberg, and she has acknowledged his formative influence. Describing the impact of his “Combines,” especially Monogram (1955–59), she recently observed that his “searching, dabbing gestures of idiosyncratic world-making…opened a door” for her own work.

Stockholder received her MFA in painting and sculpture from Yale University in 1985. Her work is held in many international collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the British Museum in London, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

B. 1966, New York. Lives and works in New York.

Flamboyant, irreverent, and peppered with both pop cultural and high-art references, the sculptures of Rachel Harrison juxtapose abstract forms with everyday consumer products, celebrity imagery, and brightly painted household tools. Often displayed in multimedia installations alongside her photographs and drawings, her sculpture works create a wryly humorous dialogue between art history, contemporary culture, and politics.

Her multifaceted approach and playful appropriation of the expendable detritus of American consumerism and popular media bears obvious parallels with the work of Rauschenberg, and in 2015 the Cleveland Museum of Art exhibited their work together, inviting a direct comparison between the two.

Harrison received a BA in fine art from Wesleyan University in 1989 and had her first solo show at New York’s Arena Gallery in 1996. Today her work can be found in numerous major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

B. 1981, Kingston, Jamaica. Lives and works in Kingston and Chicago.