Lot Essay
In 1962, with his international reputation as one of the most innovative young artists firmly established by his famous series of Combine paintings (1955-1962), Robert Rauschenberg began his next great series, the Silkscreen Paintings. Comprising seventy-nine paintings created between 1962 and 1964, these works expanded the artist's vocabulary of images through his new commercial printing technique.
Rauschenberg began to work with silkscreens sometime in the fall of 1962, apparently after Henry Geldzahler, then curator of twentieth- century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brought him to Andy Warhol's studio. Warhol had begun to work with photographic silkscreens that August, using the process to produce paintings with both black and white and color images. Rauschenberg, however, until late August of 1963, confined himself to screened images in black and white. Initially, even the hand-painted touches that played over the images and the canvas surfaces were black, white and gray...Rauschenberg told [Calvin] Tompkins that he began the series of Silkscreen Paintings in black and white because he was 'a pushover' for color and he did not want it to interfere with the problems he had posed for himself (R. Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings 1962-64, New York 1990, p. 45).
Rauschenberg's images were all derived from photographs, taken either by the artist himself or lifted from magazines or newspapers. Since many came from the popular press, these paintings are often seen as early manifestations of the Pop sensibility that was emerging in New York at the time. Some of the images he used included shots of the nascent space program, President Kennedy, and contemporary baseball heroes Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in their race for the home-run crown. But unlike Warhol's use of the silkscreen--one image either centrally or serially placed on the canvas--Rauschenberg's Pop images were freely intermingled with seascapes and cityscapes, trucks and cars, and other common objects. The composition is Cubist based - most of the images or screens are lined up with the rectangular edges of the canvas, thereby emphasizing their unity with the surface. He used paint on the surface very consciously to counteract the illusionistic qualities of the photographic images of the silkscreen; similarly, the way the paint is squeegeed through the screens further denies the 'reality' of the images, rendering them even more abstract.
Rauschenberg turns normal perspective upside down by scrambling the scale of the images. In the three-point perspective of the Renaissance, the larger the object, the closer the image is to the viewer. Conversely, in Glider, the amoeba and the hands are the same size as the Gemini space capsule, and much larger than the men assembling the antenna array in the upper right. The illusion of depth is further countered by the paint overlapping and linking each image onto the same painting surface, much like a Cubist collage.
The Silkscreen Paintings...demand close looking...His self-proclaimed aim was 'to make a surface which invited a constant change of focus and an examination of detail,' a surface sufficiently rich in form and
content to reward scrutiny by both the eye and mind. Rauschenberg may have worked 'spontaneously,' inspired by the images at hand and his
concerns of the moment, but his was a highly self-conscious art in which he made innumerable formal and iconographical decisions in the process of working. He did not merely hold a mirror up to the world's multiplicity; rather, he exploited multiplicity to reveal something universal and profound about consciousness in an urban, industrial world. Although not didactic, his art demonstrates how to receive and process information and how to find order and connectivity in an apparently haphazard and discontinuous environment (R, Feinstein, op. cit., p. 23).
Rauschenberg exhibited a group of the Silkscreen Paintings, including Glider, at the Venice Biennale in 1964, and was awarded first prize in painting--the first time an American artist had won. In a typical move for this most mercurial of artists, after he had won he telephoned a friend back in New York and asked him to destroy the screens he had used to produce the series, "thereby ensuring that he would not repeat himself but would move on to something new" (ibid., p. 21).
Rauschenberg began to work with silkscreens sometime in the fall of 1962, apparently after Henry Geldzahler, then curator of twentieth- century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brought him to Andy Warhol's studio. Warhol had begun to work with photographic silkscreens that August, using the process to produce paintings with both black and white and color images. Rauschenberg, however, until late August of 1963, confined himself to screened images in black and white. Initially, even the hand-painted touches that played over the images and the canvas surfaces were black, white and gray...Rauschenberg told [Calvin] Tompkins that he began the series of Silkscreen Paintings in black and white because he was 'a pushover' for color and he did not want it to interfere with the problems he had posed for himself (R. Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings 1962-64, New York 1990, p. 45).
Rauschenberg's images were all derived from photographs, taken either by the artist himself or lifted from magazines or newspapers. Since many came from the popular press, these paintings are often seen as early manifestations of the Pop sensibility that was emerging in New York at the time. Some of the images he used included shots of the nascent space program, President Kennedy, and contemporary baseball heroes Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in their race for the home-run crown. But unlike Warhol's use of the silkscreen--one image either centrally or serially placed on the canvas--Rauschenberg's Pop images were freely intermingled with seascapes and cityscapes, trucks and cars, and other common objects. The composition is Cubist based - most of the images or screens are lined up with the rectangular edges of the canvas, thereby emphasizing their unity with the surface. He used paint on the surface very consciously to counteract the illusionistic qualities of the photographic images of the silkscreen; similarly, the way the paint is squeegeed through the screens further denies the 'reality' of the images, rendering them even more abstract.
Rauschenberg turns normal perspective upside down by scrambling the scale of the images. In the three-point perspective of the Renaissance, the larger the object, the closer the image is to the viewer. Conversely, in Glider, the amoeba and the hands are the same size as the Gemini space capsule, and much larger than the men assembling the antenna array in the upper right. The illusion of depth is further countered by the paint overlapping and linking each image onto the same painting surface, much like a Cubist collage.
The Silkscreen Paintings...demand close looking...His self-proclaimed aim was 'to make a surface which invited a constant change of focus and an examination of detail,' a surface sufficiently rich in form and
content to reward scrutiny by both the eye and mind. Rauschenberg may have worked 'spontaneously,' inspired by the images at hand and his
concerns of the moment, but his was a highly self-conscious art in which he made innumerable formal and iconographical decisions in the process of working. He did not merely hold a mirror up to the world's multiplicity; rather, he exploited multiplicity to reveal something universal and profound about consciousness in an urban, industrial world. Although not didactic, his art demonstrates how to receive and process information and how to find order and connectivity in an apparently haphazard and discontinuous environment (R, Feinstein, op. cit., p. 23).
Rauschenberg exhibited a group of the Silkscreen Paintings, including Glider, at the Venice Biennale in 1964, and was awarded first prize in painting--the first time an American artist had won. In a typical move for this most mercurial of artists, after he had won he telephoned a friend back in New York and asked him to destroy the screens he had used to produce the series, "thereby ensuring that he would not repeat himself but would move on to something new" (ibid., p. 21).