Rauschenberg's Combines/The Metropolitan Museum of Art/December 30, 2005
Robert Rauschenberg's Combines are just that - combinations of materials and objects that forty-five years ago were not the stuff that large-scale art was made of. He includes bits of weather-worn signs that once graced shop fronts, old tires, cans, stuffed animals (most famously the goat in Monogram (1955-59) and a bald eagle in Canyon (1959). These materials challenged art audiences still trying to grasp Jackson Pollack’s aggressively enigmatic paint splashed canvases, to further question their concept of art and even more importantly, beauty. Other artists before Rauschenberg had created collages out of unlikely materials, including Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Cornell’s elegant boxes. But by bringing collage to such a large scale, Rauschenberg’s intent and process of combining color and texture feels all the more arbitrary and perfect.
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