Lot Essay
One of Rauschenberg's earliest Combines, the present work comes between the conceptual, single-color works of the early 1950s and the object-laden paintings that follow it. This painting declares that life--in forms of autobiography and the outside world, in collaged scraps of real things--is valid material for painting. As such, it marks a crucial stage in the development of a new aesthetic.
1953 was a year of fertile experimental for the artist. He began to use non-traditional media such as pigments mixed with dirt or with pink clay and gold leaf. He also engaged in even more startling investigations of the limits of art; for instance, it was at this time that he created a work of art by erasing a highly finished de Kooning drawing. Moreover, at the end of 1953, Rauschenberg began to make monochrome paintings, such as White Lead Painting, 1953-1954 (location unknown), that explored the nature of specific materials. At the same time, he also initiated a series of Red paintings. He later said that he was distressed by the critical response to his White and Black paintings, since the critics had talked only of their "negativism". As Rauschenberg stated, "I became disturbed [by] the outside assumptions, the prejudices around the colors being 'black' and 'white' . . . People thought the black was about 'old' . . . and the white was about 'negation' and 'nothing' . . . The next move was obvious--to pick another color. So, I picked the hardest color I found to work with, which was red" (Interview with Billy Kluver, 1963, quoted in ibid., p. 164).
In the summer of 1954, Rauschenberg took the process one step further and added found objects and constructed elements to his panels, thereby creating the first Combine paintings. The tenor of these paintings is nostalgic, and they refer, in Alan Solomon's words, to "life back home, and not to the metropolitan environment in which he was working" (A. Solomon, Robert Rauschenberg, exh. cat., The Jewish Museum, New York, 1963).
Perhaps the present painting is both a document of Rauschenberg's longing for home, and a declaration of his need for autonomy. The Combines present a new aesthetic, one which absorbs and simultaneously denies the color relations of Albers (who taught Rauschenberg at Black Mountain) and also challenges the formal and gestural language of Abstract Expressionism.
1953 was a year of fertile experimental for the artist. He began to use non-traditional media such as pigments mixed with dirt or with pink clay and gold leaf. He also engaged in even more startling investigations of the limits of art; for instance, it was at this time that he created a work of art by erasing a highly finished de Kooning drawing. Moreover, at the end of 1953, Rauschenberg began to make monochrome paintings, such as White Lead Painting, 1953-1954 (location unknown), that explored the nature of specific materials. At the same time, he also initiated a series of Red paintings. He later said that he was distressed by the critical response to his White and Black paintings, since the critics had talked only of their "negativism". As Rauschenberg stated, "I became disturbed [by] the outside assumptions, the prejudices around the colors being 'black' and 'white' . . . People thought the black was about 'old' . . . and the white was about 'negation' and 'nothing' . . . The next move was obvious--to pick another color. So, I picked the hardest color I found to work with, which was red" (Interview with Billy Kluver, 1963, quoted in ibid., p. 164).
In the summer of 1954, Rauschenberg took the process one step further and added found objects and constructed elements to his panels, thereby creating the first Combine paintings. The tenor of these paintings is nostalgic, and they refer, in Alan Solomon's words, to "life back home, and not to the metropolitan environment in which he was working" (A. Solomon, Robert Rauschenberg, exh. cat., The Jewish Museum, New York, 1963).
Perhaps the present painting is both a document of Rauschenberg's longing for home, and a declaration of his need for autonomy. The Combines present a new aesthetic, one which absorbs and simultaneously denies the color relations of Albers (who taught Rauschenberg at Black Mountain) and also challenges the formal and gestural language of Abstract Expressionism.