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From ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
Alan R. Solomon
In the past several years the course of American painting has taken a dramatic new turn, so that for the second time since the end of the war important new developments in contemporary art have centered in New York, rather than in Europe. These innovations reach far beyond the familiar alterations of stylistic position which occur in every new generation, since they include a number of diverse new styles; instead, they have to do with a basic readjustment of all of the artist's attitudes toward his forms, his content, and his materials. As a result, we are presently experiencing the most radical alteration in modern art since the invention of cubism.
To some observers these changes seem old hat, but the seriousness, the importance and the scope of these new developments cannot be denied, despite the discomfort they stimulate. If the new abstract painting recalls the hard-edge geometric development out of cubism, it still differs significantly from the painting which preceded it in the thirties and forties. In the same way, the apparent relationship of the "New Realists" or "Pop Artists" to Dada has gravely misted many people, so that the distinction and the importance of these artists has not been fully understood.
What then is the character of this new art? In the first place, both the new abstract painters and the new "figurative" painters share a profoundly altered concept of the psycbological meaning of the painting or sculpture, in which a calculated measure of ambiguity and a persistent involvement in the deeper, inexplicable currents of feeling now shape the content of the work of art. For the former group, this means that the abstract vocabulary of shapes and colors generates a new insistent space and an equivocal formal tension which provoke enormously complex and compelling responses in the beholder, on terms distantly removed from the rational statement and the formal logic of abstract painting after Mondrian. If there is a paradox in this painting it is that ambiguities persist in the meaning despite the continuing clarity and purity of forms and colors, which differ in no essential way from earlier abstract painting.
None of these painters has altered the traditional attitudes toward materials and forms in art, which remain hierarchically pure. By contrast, the second group of artists has rejected wholly the idea that one kind of materials or another is more or less appropriate to the work of art. Indeed, they cannot any longer really be called painters, since the old distinctions between painting and sculpture have broken down to the extent that artists like Rauschenberg have had to devise new terms to describe the objects they make; in his case he calls his combinations of painting, collage and construction "combines." Furthermore, these artists have also set aside traditional esthetic values with respect to subject matter, and they have doubled back to a whole new range of previously reprehensible or even despicable subjects and images, which earlier bad only been encountered in commercial art and other vulgar sources.
For this second group of artists, the involvement in psychological ambiguity attributed to the abstract painters above is extended to include both the content of the work of art and the very fabric of the object itself. For them a whole new world of expression has thus been opened out, and this extraordinary expansion of possibilities accounts for the force and vitality of the new movement which has burst upon us in such an uncanny and, for some people, frightening way. The positive commitment of these artists to the exploration of a new order of materials, images and relationships, operating on a direct and non-rational level, together with their pervasive sense of humor, distinctly weighted on the dark side, have led many people, as I have already suggested, to confuse them with the earlier Dada group. Yet their connection with Dada is far less important than the differences between the new artists and the Dadaists.
The issue of the acceptability of the common objects, advertising art, refuse, news photographs or cartoons as elements of a work of art seems to raise the Dada ghost of anti-art anew, but the esthetic and social climate in which the new art is produced differs substantially from that of 60 years ago. The apparently negative attitude of the Dada group toward art and society actually grew out of a deep sense of esthetic and political frustration. The new artists operate, by contrast, in complete esthetic freedom, and politically they have disengaged themselves totally. Byway of explanation one might say that both the art battles and the historical battles have been fought for them by their predecessors, but whatever the explanation, the result seems to be that this new generation is wholly engaged in life and the process of art, in a direct, intense and optimistic way, without commitment to any of the familiar existing institutions. How did this come about? Apart from the larger historical considerations, two artists have played a major part in pointing the way for the new group. One of these, Jasper Johns, has had a great deal to do with the way younger artists are looking with new insight at both the abstract world of forms and the familiar world of the most banal objects. The other, Robert Rauschenberg, perhaps more than anyone else was responsible for reopening the broad question of esthetic appropriateness which has been discussed above. At the same time, Rauschenberg stands as the major link between the new art and the preceding generation of abstract expressionists, as well as with the more remote roots of the contemporary style in certain aspects of Picasso's Cubism of 1912-14.
The mature work of Rauschenberg which is illustrated in this exhibition spans a scant decade, from 1954 to the present. Despite the changes in style in this period, the body of his work consistently shows an involvement in an idea which he states clearly in the beginning and subsequently develops and enriches. His combines depend on the tension between freely manipulated oil paint, close to the expressionist style of de Kooning, and real objects, almost invariably "found" materials of great variety and in a relative state of decay. His painted surfaces, brightly colored and thickly applied (either squeezed from the tube or laid on in broad fluid passages which are scumbled or permitted to drip generously down the surface of the canvas), excite our visual and tactile senses, in the great tradition of twentieth century expressionism. The common source for both Rauschenberg and the generation of de Kooning is, of course, the bravura style of Picasso. The objects which Rauschenberg attaches to his canvases are either fragments of paper, cloth, wood or metal, usually rectangular and flatly applied, so that they refer to the surface, or a miscellany of three-dimensional objects, positively articulated, and often placed outside the frame of the canvas. Particularly in the earlier work, these are usually "strong" objects, with a high degree of associative value, like stuffed birds, pillows, or Coke bottles. Once again, the precedent for these objects turns out to be not Dada, but the constructions made by Picasso in 1912 and later, and, subsequently, the objets trouvˇs of Duchamp.
The basis of Rauschenberg's position lies extraordinarily close to the esthetic of Picasso, especially in the sense that both are involved in the tension between the illusionism of paint and the impinging presence of fragments of reality. Both exploit the ambiguities of reading and meaning which such juxtapositions induce, and both are caught up in the sheer visual delight of the contrasts of texture and color which such a range of materials permits. Both Picasso and Rauschenberg deliberately choose weathered objects, pieces of wood, for example, which have been crudely cut, accidentally broken, stained, painted and weathered, so that their patinas become rich and unpredictable. They show the accidental effects of uses long forgotten, such as old nails or nail holes, or attached fragments of unidentifiable materials. Except where he uses such complete objects as birds or photographs, Rauschenberg, like Picasso, carefully selects fragments which tend to suppress the true identity of the objects, so that he only permits fragments of words, for instance, to appear, with the result that letters become elements of the design, asserting their strong shapes and referring to the surface. In other words, they function as components of an enriched visual vocabulary which enlarges the range of pictorial opportunities open to the artist to a significant degree.
Many other artists have taken advantage of the visual possibilities suggested by Picasso's collage techniques, either in terms of the formal embellishments they permit, as in the case of Schwitters, or in terms of the ichnographical potential of specific images, as in the case of Max Ernst. In this sense, when Rauschenberg has been called a NeoDadaist, he is usually compared with Schwitters. Not only do his compositions have a cubist feeling in their tendency to dispose geometric shapes irregularly (a clear reflection of his relationship to Picasso and subsequent geometric abstraction), but they also depend, like those of Schwitters, on bits of familiar paper, refuse and nonsense fragments of words. Yet Rauschenberg's position is not really like Schwitters' or any other artist's, despite these superficial similarities. Schwitters' train tickets, or buttons, or bits of cloth, apart from the questions raised by their accidental origin (after Picasso) and apart from whatever private nostalgic meaning they may have, induce virtually no associative or emotive connotations. They do not call to our minds any situations or conditions which might evoke any pattern of interrelated responses in us. They simply tell us that in spite of their origins they function esthetically, and it is the most important quality they have in common with Rauschenberg's work.
The objects used by Rauschenberg have a high associative potential, because they are so powerful visually, because they are so manifestly decadent, or perhaps because they have been intensified by the artist in such away that they become tawdry or repulsive and therefore provocative. The setting of such images side by side might at first glance seem to be the result of an anecdotal intention; this possibility appears to be even clearer in situations like that in Canyon, for example, where we find a color photograph of the Statue of Liberty, and where we can read words like "LABOR" and "ASOCIAL." However, it is not true that the combines are intended to be anagrammatic statements of ideas, as it were, which we are expected to puzzle out and which will reveal their meaning to us if we succeed in fitting the pieces properly. There are no secret messages in Rauschenberg, no program of social or political discontent transmitted in code, no hidden rhetorical commentary on the larger meaning of Life or Art, no private symbolism available only to the initiate. The enigmatic confrontations which he poses for us seem to demand explanation, and they force us to examine them more closely, to search for the key, to look. Their real meaning is contained in this simple fact, since the more we look, the more we are faced with complexities of meaning. In this way the paintings constantly renew themselves; their real virtue lies in their multiplicity, and Rauschenberg's images have been chosen to maintain that condition of pictorial and psychological tension to which I have already referred. Resolution would destroy this tension, and the elements chosen never admit the possibility of logical interpretation or elucidation, either in themselves or in relation to the things with which they have been combined.
To take a specific example, the angora goat surrounded by a tire in Monogram is without a doubt one of the most extraordinary images of the century. Its "rightness" and clarity cannot be denied, and yet the goat absolutely defies any kind of rational explanation; it has no meaning, in the conventional sense. Yet there is a certain justness in the illoglcal association of the two elements which makes the object eminently satisfying to us, on a purely intuitive and utterly inexplicable plane. Rauschenberg seems uncommonly attuned to such possibilities and his great talent lies in his special sensibility to the evocative potential of his images which, despite their extravagance, never at any time become strained, obvious or trivial. The risk of overstatement in a piece like Monogram is one before which Rauschenberg never falters.
Indeed, Rauschenberg in all of his work is a kind of esthetic tightropewalker, easing his way along with a solid sense of balance above the pitfalls of ugliness, vulgarity or slickness. The sureness of his performance depends on taking chances; his absolute tact and his impeccable taste are concealed beneath the facility and the abandon of the performance. For those who are not aware of the distance he works above the net, his virtuosity can be confused with clumsiness. The casual, off-hand way in which he appears to work might suggest indifference and awkwardness, so that for them his boldness becomes affront. He might seem to depend too much on the bizarre encounter and the happy accident, on excessive statements and out-landish propositions. However, a more careful look at his intentions and at his way of working makes the absolute refinement of his position clear enough.
Perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate the mixture of deliberation and meticulous organization with planned accidental effects and slapdash execution is to compare the two versions of Factum, 1957 (not in the exhibition), which are virtually identical in shape, size and detail. The same elements of collage appear in both, while the smears and drips of paint almost coincide, granting the unpredictable and uncontrollable flow of the paint. Obviously Rauschenberg made the pair of paintings partly out of an awareness of this particular problem raised by his work, at the same time that he wanted to demonstrate the contrast between the exact equality of the mechanical collage elements and the minor variations in the painted passages, where each accident somehow establishes its own appropriateness. This kind of subtle idea, understated and ironic, always underlies Rauschenberg's solutions of the problem of the work of art, and it is through his constant re-examination of the inevitable paradox posed by the painting that Rauschenberg (along with Jasper Johns) has made his most important contribution to the progress of art and to the new generation....At any rate, when we turn to the meaning of Rauschenberg's art, the ambiguity and indeterminacy which are the conditions of his style make each combine a kind of unanswerable question, or series of questions, about art or experience, unanswerable because they are stated with such complexity, because they are formulated in terms which cannot be reduced to words, and because their purpose remains for them to be unanswered. Rauschenberg has said, "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)" The literal degree to which this is true should not be underestimated, and it becomes quite impossible to talk about Rauschenberg's art without discussing it in relation to the way it got made (his life).
In the first place, the unfamiliar and disquieted viewer might ask what motives apart from sheer perversity could account for hand-painted neckties attached to the canvas, bedding hung on the wall and smeared with paint, the ladder dividing a canvas in two, or the pair of real electric fans blowing at the canvas. Yet each of these situations with varying degrees of intensity raises questions about the quality of experience and the mechanics of the esthetic experience, about life (what is "real"?), and about art (what is "real"?). Is our response to the crass landscape painted on a necktie more "real" than our direct and tactile reaction to the smeared and dripping paint next to it? Is the abstract space of the paint less "real" than the illusionistic landscape on the necktie?
What is the difference between bedding on a bed (life) and bedding on a wall (art)? How are our responses to the familiar and comfortable altered by the introduction of ominous and enigmatic associations? The thousand comforts of a patchwork counterpane (grandma, home, childhood, order) give way to the horror (joy?) of corruption (enrichment?) by paint (blood?), producing Exhibit A, an arena of violence (what crimes, what unconscious feelings, what essential disorder?). And yet the question which is asked remains the same: Does not the work of art transcend life (reality) at the same time that its fabric is life? Is not the final meaning larger than violence and larger than comfort? Finally, perhaps the most important question Rauschenberg asks us: What is beauty, and where is it to be found? The answer, if there is one, must be: In life-art, despite any previous hierarchal ordering of materials or meaning. Rauschenberg's art is neither pejorative, nor a celebration of corruption. It is the highest and most affirmative statement of the quality and dignity of direct human experience, of the value of the least and most degraded object in the environment, of the potential for enrichment of the most hum-drum and deplorable conditions of our existence through a special way of looking, feeling, and questioning. Rauschenberg is a kind of transcendental voyeur (in the truest sense of Rimbaud and all modern artists after him) creating his own canon of beauty and thereby opening up a whole new world of esthetic experience for us.
The questions Rauschenberg asks about the work of art attack the fundamental basis of its physical nature. He refuses to allow the painting to remain a discrete rectangle, for example. He makes holes in it, through which the wall behind becomes an active force, providing a colored area of shadow as a result of the Magician's trick. He attaches a chair to the painting, a "real" object which has been activated by paint applied to it just as it is applied to the canvas, at the same time that the chair, by resting on the floor, relates the painting to its environment. In a similar way, a ladder divides the canvas into two unequal rectangles. They enclose a void, and yet they have no separate existence without the void and the ladder. Is the painting an object hanging on the wall or standing on the floor? How do we "use" the ladder? To what may we climb on it? Many of the objects used by Rauschenberg raise questions about their conventional functions in this way which their presence is not intended to answer. Neither should we consider them as symbols, in the sense that Miro introduces such objects into his pictures. Rauschenberg presents these objects to us as interrogatory confrontations which demand the answer that they are simply themselves, facts offered to us without prejudice except for his assertion of their appropriateness in these unfamiliar contexts.
In Pantomime a pair of identical old fans which actually work blow up clouds of paint, one dark, the other light, eddying against one another and literally seeming to move, since the canvas bellies against the currents of air. Here both the traditional physical inertness of the painting and the suggestion of expressive movement in paint have been called into question. Abstract masses of pigment imply movement in space through their plasticity and through the cursive flow of the brush strokes, but the optical effect of actual movement here underscores the immutably fixed condition of solidified paint. This inherent paradox is one to which Rauschenberg returns frequently. He does so not only as part of his questioning process, but also because he likes the idea that his paintings may have a degree of independent existence after they have left his hand, so that they may continue to modify themselves predictably or unpredictably. In Black Market (not in the exhibition) Rauschenberg has arranged for the viewer to add or remove objects from the combine, with the result that the picture changes after each encounter as a consequence of conditions absolutely beyond the control of the artist.
Rauschenberg was also probably the first artist to explore the possibilities of adding sound to a painting; the three radios in Broadcast when tuned produce a collage of sound exactly parallel to the visual conditions operating in the painting itself, so that fragments of "real" sound (commercials, news, rock and roll music) play against abstract sounds (truck ignition and neon static, dirty controls in the radios). These ideas have widely influenced the new generation of artists, as well as some of Rauschenberg's contemporaries, so that Tinguely's constructions with radios, Dine's showers from which a spray of paint descends, and Wesselman's interiors with real television sets have become almost commonplace.
In his turn, Rauschenberg has often been compared with Duchamp, whose paradoxical turn of mind he frequently recalls. The fact is that Rauschenberg was not particularly conscious of Duchamp until quite late, until his own position had been for the most part defined. It has become increasingly difficult in recent years to determine very precisely how influences operate on artists because the modern press transmits ideas so rapidly and extensively that a photograph in a picture magazine may have a profound effect on a painter. Much has been made of the influence of Duchamp on artists like Rauschenberg and Johns, or the younger group. Even though the work of Duchamp had been accessible in the museums and galleries throughout the fifties, actually the publication of the American edition of Robert Lebel's book on Duchamp in 1959 seems to have stimulated a considerable amount of interest in his work: Rauschenberg did not make his Trophy II, which is dedicated to Duchamp, until 1960-61; he also acquired the replica of Duchamp's Bottle Dryer which he owns at this same time. Consciously or unconsciously, Rauschenberg reveals a true community of spirit with Duchamp, and he has found in him reinforcement and reassurance for his own position....
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