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Lot Essay
As Robert Rauschenberg proclaimed in an early artist's statement "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two)" (Quoted in Sixteen Americans, exh. cat., New York, 1959, p. 59). Rauschenberg was speaking about his Combines, works which literally bridged this gap by injecting the materials of the everyday into the pictorial realm of art. Worn and used items gathered from the streets and stores of New York City were introduced and made into the artist's hybrid creations, art objects that charted a similar divide, existing somewhere between two and three dimensions, between painting and sculpture.
The artist's silkscreen paintings continued to incorporate this sort of readymade imagery, but the details in these new works unlike the variety of objects and materials in Rauschenberg's Combines, were exclusively photographic, garnered from newspapers and magazines, even on occasion from the artist's own Polaroids.
Inspired by a visit to Andy Warhol's studio, Rauschenberg started his silkscreen paintings in the fall of 1962. Warhol had begun the process several months earlier, in August, and he used this technique to produce works in both black-and-white and color. In the beginning, Rauschenberg confined his own production to black-and-white images. Knowing that he was "a pushover" for color, he did not want to complicate his considerations of composition" (Quoted in C. Tomkins, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg's and the Art World of Our Time, New York, 1980, p. 200). Although Rauschenberg's silkscreen paintings share Pop Art's flatness, techniques of mechanical production and commercial imagery, Rauschenberg's examples vehemently deny hard edges and cool impersonality. While the techniques employed in these paintings reflect mass media and commodity culture, Rauschenberg's silkscreen images are not only more akin to his earlier paintings, on which multiple and often unrelated images were collected and overlapped, but these compositions also bear more resemblance, in style and technique, to earlier artistic precedents, recalling aspects of Cubist collages as well as Abstract Expressionist brushwork.
"Rauschenberg employed a wide variety of paint touches in the Silkscreen Paintings--drips, splatters, washes, flat areas, expressionistically brushed passages, and dry, encrusted marks. These functioned spatially, compositionally, and, occasionally, as aspects of content. The amount and character of the brushwork in the series varied from dense to spare. Working improvisationally, Rauschenberg scrubbed paint onto the canvases straight from the can or tube, either with a cloth dipped in turpentine or with his fingers. He also rubbed, dripped, or splattered turpentine itself onto the surface; applied masking tape to an area, painted around it, and then pulled the tape away to leave a straight edge on one side and a rough edge on the other In his hands, a mechanical process ironically became malleable, sensitive, personal, open to improvisation and the touch and motion (via the squeegee) of his hand" (R. Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings, exh. cat., New York, 1990, p. 47).
This increasingly improvisational approach to a well-defined technique correspond to the artist's increasing involvement with dance and performance. During the years that he was making these paintings, Rauschenberg was also acting as the creative director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He was designing costumes and sets for the dancers, often with the materials at hand on the day of the performance, and in many cases, he was generating artistic tableau incorporating a wide variety of found materials. At the same time, Rauschenberg was embarking on his own choreography, directing happenings which juxtaposed disparate objects and events, so that seemingly unrelated items and actions were visually jointed, an aesthetic on stage that was certainly related to his work on canvas:
"The logical or illogical relationship between one thing and another is no longer a gratifying subject to the artist as the awareness grows that even in his most devastating or heroic moment he is part of the density of an uncensored continuum that neither begins not ends with any decision of his . . . . The use of the familiar is obscure, the use of the exotic is familiar. Neither sacrifices completely its origin, but the mind has to travel to follow just as the eye has to change to focus. In the end a viewer painting has been an invitation not a command." (Ibid., p. 76).
The present painting joins a dial with a rocket ship, a sailboat with stacks of dinner plates, a first aid kit with a repeated series of numbers (perhaps an homage to Jasper Johns), all arranged in a way that negates a single viewing position. At the same time, the enigmatic relationships among these images leave open multiple possibilities for accessible and associative symbolism. If Rauschenberg's decentralization of perspective and his mysterious meanings has the viewer who accepts his invitation figuratively turning in circles, the artist has, perhaps, achieved his goal. As he proclaimed in 1966: "I like live art. A painting is just too passive. The artist can never really feel what contact, if any, has been made between the spectator and the painting. I want to give the spectator a far more active role. I want him a part of my work" (Quoted in Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 1997, p. 233).
(fig. 1) Installation view of exhibition Robert Rauschenberg at the Jewish Museum, 1963. Dry Run shown on the left. Photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt.
(fig. 2) Robert Rauschenberg in his Broadway studio, New York, 1964. Photograph by Hans Namuth. c 2000 Hans Namuth Estate. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona
The artist's silkscreen paintings continued to incorporate this sort of readymade imagery, but the details in these new works unlike the variety of objects and materials in Rauschenberg's Combines, were exclusively photographic, garnered from newspapers and magazines, even on occasion from the artist's own Polaroids.
Inspired by a visit to Andy Warhol's studio, Rauschenberg started his silkscreen paintings in the fall of 1962. Warhol had begun the process several months earlier, in August, and he used this technique to produce works in both black-and-white and color. In the beginning, Rauschenberg confined his own production to black-and-white images. Knowing that he was "a pushover" for color, he did not want to complicate his considerations of composition" (Quoted in C. Tomkins, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg's and the Art World of Our Time, New York, 1980, p. 200). Although Rauschenberg's silkscreen paintings share Pop Art's flatness, techniques of mechanical production and commercial imagery, Rauschenberg's examples vehemently deny hard edges and cool impersonality. While the techniques employed in these paintings reflect mass media and commodity culture, Rauschenberg's silkscreen images are not only more akin to his earlier paintings, on which multiple and often unrelated images were collected and overlapped, but these compositions also bear more resemblance, in style and technique, to earlier artistic precedents, recalling aspects of Cubist collages as well as Abstract Expressionist brushwork.
"Rauschenberg employed a wide variety of paint touches in the Silkscreen Paintings--drips, splatters, washes, flat areas, expressionistically brushed passages, and dry, encrusted marks. These functioned spatially, compositionally, and, occasionally, as aspects of content. The amount and character of the brushwork in the series varied from dense to spare. Working improvisationally, Rauschenberg scrubbed paint onto the canvases straight from the can or tube, either with a cloth dipped in turpentine or with his fingers. He also rubbed, dripped, or splattered turpentine itself onto the surface; applied masking tape to an area, painted around it, and then pulled the tape away to leave a straight edge on one side and a rough edge on the other In his hands, a mechanical process ironically became malleable, sensitive, personal, open to improvisation and the touch and motion (via the squeegee) of his hand" (R. Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings, exh. cat., New York, 1990, p. 47).
This increasingly improvisational approach to a well-defined technique correspond to the artist's increasing involvement with dance and performance. During the years that he was making these paintings, Rauschenberg was also acting as the creative director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He was designing costumes and sets for the dancers, often with the materials at hand on the day of the performance, and in many cases, he was generating artistic tableau incorporating a wide variety of found materials. At the same time, Rauschenberg was embarking on his own choreography, directing happenings which juxtaposed disparate objects and events, so that seemingly unrelated items and actions were visually jointed, an aesthetic on stage that was certainly related to his work on canvas:
"The logical or illogical relationship between one thing and another is no longer a gratifying subject to the artist as the awareness grows that even in his most devastating or heroic moment he is part of the density of an uncensored continuum that neither begins not ends with any decision of his . . . . The use of the familiar is obscure, the use of the exotic is familiar. Neither sacrifices completely its origin, but the mind has to travel to follow just as the eye has to change to focus. In the end a viewer painting has been an invitation not a command." (Ibid., p. 76).
The present painting joins a dial with a rocket ship, a sailboat with stacks of dinner plates, a first aid kit with a repeated series of numbers (perhaps an homage to Jasper Johns), all arranged in a way that negates a single viewing position. At the same time, the enigmatic relationships among these images leave open multiple possibilities for accessible and associative symbolism. If Rauschenberg's decentralization of perspective and his mysterious meanings has the viewer who accepts his invitation figuratively turning in circles, the artist has, perhaps, achieved his goal. As he proclaimed in 1966: "I like live art. A painting is just too passive. The artist can never really feel what contact, if any, has been made between the spectator and the painting. I want to give the spectator a far more active role. I want him a part of my work" (Quoted in Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 1997, p. 233).
(fig. 1) Installation view of exhibition Robert Rauschenberg at the Jewish Museum, 1963. Dry Run shown on the left. Photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt.
(fig. 2) Robert Rauschenberg in his Broadway studio, New York, 1964. Photograph by Hans Namuth. c 2000 Hans Namuth Estate. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona