The "Wonder" Of Consumer Culture:on Robert Rauschenberg’s Mixed Media Art

In the 1950 s and 1960 s of the last century,due to the take-off of industry and the development of science and technology,a wide variety of material commodities were industrialized and mass-produced on a large scale.The gathering of many commodities made the domestic consumer market of the United States show a prosperous state.The great abundance of material goods and the rapid iteration of commodity fashion make the American society appear a new social landscape--the "spectacle" of consumer culture.In daily life,this "spectacle" of consumer culture has changed people’s consumption concept and lifestyle.In art,the range of media materials selected by artists in artistic creation has also been greatly expanded.Artists have broken the restrictions of traditional painting media,selected a variety of ready-made products with distinct characteristics of industrialization and consumption,and used a variety of artistic expression methods and means for combination creation,making mixed-media art become the mainstream of American art in the second half of the 20 th century.The research object of this paper,Robert Rauschenberg is regarded as an important representative of American avant-garde art.He promotes the contemporary art of the United States to a more diversified artistic expression.He is the most representative artist who applies mixed media art in the society of consumer culture.He uses a variety of consumer materials and ready-made collage,reproduction,combination to form his paintings,and his artistic creation involves almost all art fields,such as combination painting,screen printing,photography,collage,weaving,scenery,dramatic performance and other fields.Although Rauschenberg was not the initiator of "combinational painting",his unprecedented,comprehensive and innovative selection of media materials is enough to make him a qualified speaker of American consumer culture.After consulting a large number of literatures related to Rauschenberg,the author finds that the current academic research on Rauschenberg generally focuses on two categories: one is to start with the style of Rauschenberg’s artistic works,to analyze the language forms and creative ideas of "combination painting" and "ready-made art";Second,it Outlines the influence of Rauschenberg’s "mixed media art",especially its far-reaching influence on China,Japan and other countries and regions,as well as his Overseas Exchange Cultural Activities(ROCI),which provides important support for the communication and integration of world culture and art.However,there are few researches on the relationship between artistic creation and consumer culture.Therefore,based on the ideological theories of Jean Baudrillard’s "La société de consommation" and Guy Deboer’s "La Société du spectacle",this paper takes consumer culture as the entry point and analyzes and studies the diversified,quotidized and commercialized media materials used in Rauschenberg’s works to explain how his artistic creation become the artistic embodiment of the "spectacle" of American consumer culture.He himself is an observer,assember,creator and lyricist in this "spectacle" of consumption,and further expounds the author’s point of view that the field significance of Robert Rauschenberg’s art works is a reflection and criticism of consumer culture.