Dyslexia and Creativity Through Rauschenberg and Close The interrelation between creativity and learning disabilities is not a correlation that is backed by scientific studies, however the work and lives of both Robert Rauschenberg and Chuck Close show the positive effect that having a learning disability can take with regards to creative processes. Both artists have Dyslexia, a learning disability characterized by difficulty with reading, speech sounds, and how the individuals relate to letters and words. This is an examination not only of the backgrounds, processes, and works of these artists, but also how their Dyslexia may have played a part in shaping each of these artists’ novel visions. In Port Arthur, Texas, Robert Rauschenberg…show more content… There the artist received is Bachelor of Art degree, which he completed in 1962. The following year, Close enrolled at Yale where he earned an MFA by 1964. In that same year, Close received a Fulbright grant which allowed him to study abroad for a year at the Akademie der Bildenden in Kunste, Vienna. When he returned to the states in 1965, Close accepted a position as a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst until 1967 when he then moved to New York City to begin his—at the time unknown—incredible art…show more content… When Rauschenberg needed objects for use in his work he wouldn’t go out searching for them, instead waiting for them to ‘find’ him. The idea behind this is that “he wanted to use things that turned up on their own in the course of his activities.” “Rauschenberg’s combine paintings—the artist’s alternative to the term assemblage—began tentatively around 1951 with the White Paints piece and the works based on the application of printed matter and other flat materials to the canvas.” Rauschenberg’s work had a unique vision and sought to “redirect the viewer’s attention from the psyche of the painter onto the outside world. This aesthetic culminated in his work of the early 1960s—the last “Combine” paintings such as Reservoir, and his photo-silkscreen compositions of 1962-1965 in which photographic ‘found’ images replaced the real found objects of the Combines as mirrors of the experiential world.” These Combines are only one example of Rauschenberg’s inclination to extend the limits of the conception of what art could be at the time. “With found objects—such in Reservoir—Rauschenberg extended the action painter’s stress on self-actualization through the spontaneous act of painting by exploiting the vivid associations attached to real things: the objects make the experience of the painting seem more
