Rauschenberg: solutions for a small planet

Art in America, Feb, 1998 by Roni Feinstein

The direction Rauschenberg was now to take in his art -- one in which collage materials were exploited as aspects of an associative content -- was anticipated by his 1950-51 painting Should Love Come First? A collage of printed papers arranged in a rectilinear pattern against a white ground, it consists of signs and images of varying sorts that were selected and juxtaposed to form clusters of meaning. The linkages revolve around themes of sequentially (the "first" of the painting's title, the images of some 200 clocks and the sequence of numbers 1 through 8 extending from the shoeprints in the dance-step diagram to the page numbers printed and collaged on the page with the clocks), patterns of movement (the dance-step diagram and Rauschenberg's actual footprint) and sexuality (implied in the title and in the fact that the footprint doubles as a phallus, its tip pointing at a reproduction of Monet's Cliffs at Etretat, the orifice long ago nicknamed "porte de dame"). While this work is known to have been present in the back room at Rauschenberg's 1951 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery (it was photographed there by Aaron Siskind), it was not actually exhibited in the show, probably because, of all Rauschenberg's works from this time, it was the most personal and the one least connected to New York School concerns. In 1952, the artist painted over this work with black paint, transforming it into a Black Painting, thereby offering a literal manifestation of the fact that his interest in content, reading and meaning was for several years submerged, only to resurface late in 1954 with the Combines.

In the mid-'50s, Johns took the path of concealment: his Flag, Target and Numbers paintings, formed by newspaper collage under hardened shields of encaustic paint, were characterized by self-repression and denial("I have tried to develop my thinking in such a way that the work I do isn't me"). In diametric opposition, the content of most of Rauschenberg's earliest Combines was centered on autobiography and self. A freestanding untitled work from ca. 1954 contains a bevy of direct personal references: among the collage materials are family snapshots, newspaper clippings about his parents' silver wedding anniversary and about his sister being named Louisiana Yam Queen and photographs of his ex-wife Susan Well, of his young son Christopher and of Jasper Johns.[5] An image of a young man in a white suit is reflected in a mirror, recalling Narcissus at the pool, the young man seeming to "strut his stuff" like the stuffed hen standing beside him. A white suit was worn by the artist at his wedding and the actual white shoes and socks displayed in the box above may well be the very ones that he wore.[6] Thus the work offers reflections on his home, family, early marriage and fatherhood, and homosexuality. At the same time, like Odalisk (1955-58), which is often seen as its companion piece, the work explores gender stereotypes and levels hierarchies of printed matter, as when pornographic images of women are juxtaposed with reproductions of nudes from old-master paintings.