Rauschenberg first paintings in the early 1950s comprised a series of all-white and all-black surfaces under laid with wrinkled newspaper. In later works he began making art from what others would consider junk—old soda bottles, traffic barricades, and stuffed birds and calling them "combine" paintings.
One of Rauschenberg's first and most famous combines was entitled "Monogram," a 1959 work consisting of a stuffed angora goat, a tire, a police barrier, the heel of a shoe, a tennis ball, and paint.
He died last night.
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Murray Jarvik, 84, inventor of the nicotine patch.
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World War II rescuer Irena Sendler, 98.
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Leyla Gencer, opera singer, whose age hasn't been determined. It was either 79, 83, or something else.
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Ice cream magnate Irvine Robbins of Baskin-Robbins fame, 90.
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Find a Grave has a memorial up for Dottie Rambo.
The Lexington Herald-Leader has an excellent obituary about Dottie Rambo:
"It was hard to sing gospel music and not record a Dottie Rambo song," said gospel singer Kenny Bishop, adding that his family's first album included Rambo's song Too Much To Gain To Lose.
"Everybody knew Dottie's music," he said. "I've been around Dottie when there were bigger celebrities in the room and she didn't have to make her way to them -- they made their way to her."
Christian songwriter and comedian Aaron Wilburn said that Rambo broke barriers.
"She took gospel into country; she took it into pop ... I know in the Christian field she's the greatest female writer, probably of all time," Wilburn said.
"To me, she was the Dolly Parton of gospel music," country music singer Wynonna Judd said in a statement. "She was effervescent and lit up a room when she entered it. Dottie had it -- that charisma and ability to fill a space with her smile. ... Her gift will live on in the hearts of many."
She wasn't hugely famous outside of gospel music, but she was highly respected in the music field as a whole.
The NYT finally has an obituary:
The audience for Ms. Rambo’s style of Southern gospel is chiefly white. But she broke through the genre’s racial boundaries as one of the first white artists to use black backup singers. Her 1968 album of spirituals, “It’s the Soul of Me,” became one of her most successful solo projects, but it caused a stir in the gospel world when it won a Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance, a category whose winners were usually black.
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