10 March 12 - 18, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Remembering Rauschenberg The work of the late Texas pop artist Robert Rauschenberg assumes new significance at the Nasher. BY KENDALL MORGAN A s a forerunner of pop art, Texas-born artist Robert Rauschenberg’s impact on the contemporary art world is immeasurable. Famed for painting, photography and performance, his sculptural practice may be the most surprising aspect of his legacy. Al- ways questioning the line between art and everyday materials, these assemblages are the basis of an innovative show at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Not quite a retrospective, Rauschenberg Sculpture nonetheless takes a deeper look at the artist’s sculptural practice from his earli- est forays into the medium to his later mas- terpieces. “Sculpture is an interesting concept for a Rauschenberg exhibition, as he really iden- tified himself primarily as a painter,” says Nasher’s senior curator Dr. Catherine Craft. “In the beginning, that’s where the stakes of what contemporary art in the mid-century United States were, but he often returned to sculpture as he began to try and incorporate more and more objects in his work. As he put it, objects that have no business being anywhere near a wall came off the wall and into a room.” Perhaps his “combines” (pieces that blur the line between sculpture and paint- ing) from the 1950s are among his most in- fluential ideas. Rauschenberg Sculpture highlights these pieces, along with his Japanese Clayworks, Kabal Amer- ican Zephyrs and sculptures from the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Inter- change (ROCI) series, an ambitious inter- national traveling exhibition designed to promote world peace. For Craft, Rauschenberg Sculpture was the fulfillment of a decades-long fascination with an artist whose sculptures she first encoun- tered while working at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in the early ’90s. The artist’s sculptures have not been on view locally since the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s 1995 show devoted to the subject. The return of his work is a timely concept brought to life by the Nasher’s new director, Carlos Basualdo, who planned the memorial show to coincide with Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday. “When Carlos became director of the Nasher, he came in knowing there were a lot of activities going on around the 100th anni- versary of Rauschenberg’s birth,” Craft ex- plains. “At first, I thought it was just going to be a few pieces, but in conversation with the foundation and seeing how long it had been since there was a presentation of his sculp- ture in the museum, he encouraged me to be ambitious.” Without carving, modeling or weld- ing, Rauschenberg’s sculptures embrace the history of objects while serving as a report- age of humanity. While crafting his “souve- nirs without nostalgia,” the artist gravitated to discarded items such as crab traps, tires, tin cans, wooden chairs and even a turtle skull by turning trash into treasure. “From the very beginning of his career, there’s a fascination with bringing objects from the real world into his art,” says Craft. “Why shouldn’t art look at least as interest- ing as whatever you’re seeing outside the window? In his case, he came to maturity in New York City, so often what he was seeing outside his window were objects people left out on the street. Then, in 1970, when he re- located to Captiva, Florida, he would often make runs to the scrapyard to snap up ob- jects there.” Fond of an epic title, the artist often ex- plored the link between art and science, ref- erences to other cultures and nods to mythology in works like Petrified Relic from the Gyro Clinic (Kabal American Zephyr), The Brutal Calming of the Waves by Moon- light and Three Traps for Medea. “He loved language and writing,” says Craft. “At the Rauschenberg Foundation, there are long lists of potential titles he made up, but they should be seen as descrip- tive; they’re often a way to add another layer to the work. Three Traps for Medea is among the small handful of works that have these classical allusions or stories. Medea was with Jason, who was going to leave her for another woman, so she murdered her children. [Rauschenberg] used crab traps [in] a construction meant to capture objects, and it is a fairly intense kind of sculpture. These are the works that I’m astounded to be able to include.” The perfect juxtaposition to Rauschen- berg’s often rustic assemblages is the stylized, splashy prints, drawings and sculptures of his contemporary, Roy Lichtenstein. Also cu- rated by Craft, a collaboration between the Nasher and the Dallas Museum of Art, pres- ents Roy Lichtenstein in the Studio. “I think they complement each other,” says Craft. “Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein are within two years of being contempo- raries, but vastly different in their own way of dealing with what it meant to live in the 20th century with these commercial images and the availability of media.” Rauschenberg Sculpture is on view through April 26, and Roy Lichtenstein in the Studio is on view through Oct. 24. ▼ FILM HOMEGROWN TALENT TAKES ON PIXAR THREE DALLAS-RAISED ARTISTS BRING THEIR LOCAL ROOTS AND UNIQUE CREATIVE JOURNEYS TO PIXAR’S LATEST HEARTFELT ANIMATED FEATURE. BY PRESTON BARTA P ixar’s newest animated feature, Hop- pers, arrived in theaters nationwide this Friday. At its core, the film tells a deeply resonant story about preservation, empathy and the fragile spaces where hu- man ambition meets the natural world. Mabel, voiced by Piper Curda, the film’s fiercely determined 19-year-old protagonist, takes on the monumental task of saving a sanctuary called The Glade. A relentless mayor named Jerry, voiced by Jon Hamm, wants to pave over it, declaring that “people love highways.” For Mabel, the stakes are painfully clear: “To some people, it’s an empty piece of land. But for those animals, it’s home.”The artists behind Hoppers bring im- pressive resumes to the project, with decades of experience on Pixar’s most beloved films. Ian Megibben, the film’s director of photog- raphy for lighting, has helped shape the look of Pixar hits including WALL•E, Soul and Lightyear. J.D. Northrup, a technical supervi- sor, guided the detailed animation of the film’s rich backgrounds, building on a techni- cal skill set honed over years at Pixar. Jon Reisch, the movie’s effects supervisor, is a vet- eran whose credits include Cars, Monsters University and Elemental. Bringing a world this lush and emotion- ally complex to the screen takes a village. And for Hoppers, that village is rooted deep in Dallas’ storied neighborhoods, long be- fore they were shaping digital ecosystems in California. Northrup and Reisch sat in many of the same classrooms at Cistercian Preparatory School in Irving, where Northrup’s early fascination with com- puter science and creative problem-solving took hold, and where both began to see the world through lenses shaped by art, science and collaboration. “Out of college, I moved back,” Northrup tells the Observer. “I was working odd jobs — driving for Jason’s Deli, all kinds of things. That’s where I met my wife, who was work- ing as an art director at a small motion graphics house off 75 and Mockingbird. Dal- las was a place where you crossed paths with creative people every day.” For years, Reisch’s understanding of vi- sual storytelling was grounded not only in the images on a screen but also in his father’s influence as a commercial photographer in Dallas. He still teaches photography at Cis- tercian to this day. “My dad’s classes would always be packed, and it was in those darkrooms and Kevin Todora/ Courtesy Nasher Sculture Center Robert Rauschenberg’s “Petrified Relic from the Gyro Clinic (Kabal American Zephyr),” 1981. ▼ Culture
