Robert Rauschenberg Combines and Photems Mr Rauschenbergs work

Robert Rauschenberg Combines and Photems

• Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon, ” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

Canyon 1959 Combine Painting: Oil, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, cardboard box, printed paper, printed reproductions, photograph, wood, paint tube, bald eagle, string, pillow.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked. Patrician Barnacle (Scale) 1981 Solvent transfer, Acrylic, and Fabric with mirrored plexiglas and stepladder on wood.

Photem Series #2 1981 Five Gelatin Silver Prints on Aluminum Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Photem Series #10 1981 Five gelatin silver prints on aluminum

The Interloper Tries His Disguises (Kabal American Zephyr) 1982 Solvent transfer on plywood with tire tread, iron wheel, and engraved brass plate.

Untitled For Studies From Chinese Summerhall , 1982 -83 Color Photograph 2 feet 6 inches x 7 feet 4 inches