Rauschenberg: solutions for a small planet

Art in America, Feb, 1998 by Roni Feinstein

As one turned the corner into the first tower gallery, one found an elegant and thorough display of early work; executed in a vast array of mediums, most of this work was seen in both of Hopps's earlier Rauschenberg exhibitions. Included were White Paintings, Black Paintings and Elemental Sculptures; the Erased de Kooning Drawing; early Joseph Cornell-inspired box sculptures; paper collages; photographs; early transfer drawings; Dirt Painting (for John Cage); and a few Gold Paintings. Rich both in surface effects and material, the latter are a series of small, square works whose surfaces are covered over with gold (and sometimes also silver) leaf. These paintings call to mind Rauschenberg's preoccupation since the mid 80's with costly metallic supports of brass, bronze, aluminum and copper, materials exploited for their colors, reflective properties and patinas. The Gold Paintings, however, were executed in 1953 as part of a series of works in which Rauschenberg challenged people's perceptions of the esthetic and monetary value of materials found in works of art. (He also created a number of allover compositions in "base" materials like dirt and pink tissue paper.) Rauschenberg's personal lack of prejudice with regard to materials -- his unwillingness to recognize hierarchies -- has been among the most important features of his work throughout his career. He has demonstrated time and again that he can make art out of anything: a rusty nail and block of wood, a crumpled bit of metal a shiny length of fabric, an expanse of mirrored aluminum and steel, a vat filled with mud.

The exhibition continued back on the ramp with the Red Paintings, which began much like the Black Paintings, their surfaces layered with newspaper and other flat collage elements which were entirely covered over with paint. Then, in 1954, something happened. From the restraint and discipline of his earlier works, Rauschenberg moved to the opposite pole, the change in his art occurring like an explosion or release. The new works were splashy, extroverted, theatrical and excessive. While paintings displayed at the Guggenheim managed to trace that change -- his move to an expressionist handling of paint and materials and his progressive unveiling of the collage elements and exploitation of these elements as carriers of content -- many of the important works of this defining moment in Rauschenberg's career were absent, among them Untitled (with stained glass window), Pink Door, Collection and Charlene. Museums and collectors were apparently unwilling to lend the works (conservation reasons no doubt played a large role). Collection, for example, is a large-scale piece that features a wide range of predominantly flat collage materials, among them newspaper articles and funny papers, magazine photographs and printed art reproductions, blank sheets of paper,. plain and printed fabrics, the lid of a cigar tin, a round mirror and bits of wood, assembled in rectilinear fashion on three wood panels. The bottom third of each panel is in turn divided into three vertical zones randomly painted red, yellow or blue. One finds in this work that Rauschenberg was already well on his way to cultivating the personal repertory of gestural paint marks that he was to draw from and expand over the next several years -- drips, splatters, heavily impastoed scribbles, flatly painted areas, thick lines of paint squeezed directly from the tube and "hinge" strokes, horizontal marks made with a loaded brush from which little rivulets of paint drip abundantly down the surface, uniting the collage materials and other brushstrokes in their wake,