nerdnam:

Rothko and Pollack are modern, not postmodern. In fact, you're reaching back about 50 years for your examples.

Well, the original post said "modern, post-modern, whatever art," so it seemed reasonable to pick those examples, especially since they were working in the same time frame as Rauschenberg. Besides, people who actually pay attention generally say "contemporary" rather than "post-modern," which is really more of an architecture term.

But if you want more recent art, okay, I'll give you Jenny Holzer as an example. Her show at the Guggenheim maybe ten years ago was a revelation.

Heck, there's also Damien Hirst. The shark, for instance, sounds ludicrous, but I saw it last year and was surprised. It's not something I'd care to own, mind you, but it does have an interesting way of drawing you into its orbit while you're looking at it.

And, actually, that's an important point. I see a lot of art, and there's some I like and some I don't. Rauschenberg isn't my favorite, any more than Hirst, but I don't have to like a particular work for it to be good or for me to acknowledge that it's good. (My wife, who has formal training in art history, doesn't care for Renoir, which doesn't stop her from acknowledging the quality of the work or its importance to the development of art.) Your comments, and Shafer's, suggest mostly to me that you just don't like Rauschenberg. That's your privilege, certainly, but it has no bearing on the question of whether his work was significant or not.