Combine painting

Further information: Robert Rauschenberg
The artwork «Buksa mi» (my pants) by the Norwegian artist Bjørn Krogstad, from 1968, an example of combine painting

A combine painting is an artwork that incorporates various objects into a painted canvas surface, creating a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture.[1][2][3] Items attached to paintings might include photographic images, clothing, newspaper clippings, ephemera or any number of three-dimensional objects. The term is most closely associated with the artwork of American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) who coined the phrase[4] to describe his own creations. Rauschenberg’s Combines explored the blurry boundaries between art and the everyday world. In addition, his cross-medium creations challenged the doctrine of medium specificity mentioned by modernist art critic Clement Greenberg. Frank Stella created a large body of paintings that recall the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg by juxtaposing a wide variety of surface and material in each work ultimately leading to Stella's sculpture and architecture of the 21st century.[5]

Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg and his artist friend/flat mate Jasper Johns used to design window displays together for upscale retailers such as Tiffany's and Bonwit Teller in Manhattan before they became better established as artists.[6] They shared ideas about art as well as career strategies.[6] Paul Schimmel of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art described Rauschenberg's Combine paintings as "some of the most influential, poetic and revolutionary works in the history of American art."[6] But they've also been called "ramshackle hybrids between painting and sculpture, stage prop and three-dimensional scrap-book assemblage" according to Guardian critic Adrian Searle.[6] Searle believed the "different elements of the Combines have been described as having no more relation than the different stories that vie for attention on a newspaper page."[6] Jasper Johns, as well, used similar techniques; in at least one painting, Johns attached a paintbrush right inside his painting.

Examples of Rauschenberg's Combine paintings include Bed (1955), Canyon (1959), and the free-standing Monogram (1955–1959).[2] Rauschenberg's works mostly incorporated two-dimensional materials held together with "splashes and drips of paint" with occasional 3-D objects.[2] Critic John Perreault wrote "The Combines are both painting and sculpture–or, some purists would say, neither."[2] Perreault liked them since they were memorable, photogenic, and could "stick in the mind" as well as "surprise and keep on surprising."[2] Rauschenberg added stuffed birds on his 1955 work Satellite, which featured a stuffed pheasant "patrolling its top edge."[7] In another work, he added a ladder. His Combine Broadcast, featuring three radios blaring at once,[3] was a "melange of paint, grids, newspaper clips and fabric snippets."[8] According to one source, his Broadcast had three radios playing simultaneously, which produced a sort of irritating static, so that one of the work's owners, at one point, replaced the "noise" with tapes of actual programs when guests visited.[8] Rauschenberg's The Bed had a pillow attached to a patchwork quilt with paint splashed over it.[3] The idea was to promote immediacy.[3]

The prevailing theme of Rauschenberg's "combine" paintings is "nonmeaning, the absurd, or antiart." In this regard the combine paintings relate to Pop art and their much earlier predecessor Dada.[9]

Exponential increase in value

In the early 1960s, Rauschenberg's Combines sold from $400 to $7,500.[3] But their value shot upwards. In 1999, the Museum of Modern Art, which had balked at buying Rauschenberg's work decades earlier, spent $12 million to buy his Factum II which the artist made in 1957.[10] Rauschenberg's Rebus was valued in 1991 at $7.3 million.[11] It's a three-panel work created in 1955 which takes its name from the Latin for a "puzzle of images and words;"[12] it "builds a narrative from seemingly nonsensical sequences of found images and abstract elements," according to The New York Times.[7] MOMA bought Rebus in 2005.[12] Rauschenberg reportedly said that the images in Rebus jostle with each other "like pedestrians on a street."[12] Rauschenberg's Photograph, a Combine painting from 1959, was valued at $10.7 million by Sotheby's in 2008.[11] His work Bantam sold for $2.6 million in 2009.[13] In 2008, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, who described Combines as "multimedia hybrids", wrote MOMA was "Rauschenberg Central" because it owned over 300 of his works.[7] The Whitney owned 60 Rauschenbergs.[7] In 2012, Canyon was donated to MoMA by the children of Ileana Sonnabend as part of an IRS settlement that valued the work at $65 million.[14]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Artspeak, Robert Atkins, 1990
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 John Perreault (January 6, 2006). "Rauschenberg's combines". Artopia. Retrieved 2010-01-08. If you have never seen Robert Rauschenberg's iconic Bed (1955), Canyon (1959), or the free-standing Monogram (1955-59),...
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Art: The Emperor's Combine". Time Magazine'. Apr 18, 1960. Retrieved 2010-01-08. Rauschenberg calls his works "combines' because they combine painting with props pasted or fastened to the picture ...
  4. ↑ New York Times October 24 2013 "“We are fortunate to have six Combines from the mid-’50s through 1961,” Ms. Temkin said, referring to the term Rauschenberg coined to describe works that incorporate castoff objects like tires, flatware or furniture."
  5. ↑ Unhappy Medium, Frank Stella and Kurt Schwitters by John Haber. Retrieved January 10, 2010.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Adrian Searle (28 November 2006). "Stuff happens: His work is packed with jokes, ideas - and farmyard animals.". The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-01-08. What Rauschenberg came to call his Combine paintings are the core of his art, ...
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Roberta Smith (May 16, 2008). "Rauschenberg Got a Lot From the City and Left a Lot Behind". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-01-08. In New York, MoMA is Rauschenberg Central. It owns nearly 300 works, many of them prints, and usually has at least a dozen major efforts on view.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Grace glueck (May 4, 2001). "ART REVIEW; A Collector's Collector Whose Works Went Pop". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-01-08. ...Broadcast. A carefully composed melange of paint, grids, newspaper clips and fabric snippets, it has fastened to its back a real radio, whose knobs are visible on the painting's surface.
  9. ↑ Varieties of Visual Experience, Edmund Burke Feldman, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; 3rd edition (March 1987), ISBN 978-0-8109-1735-4
  10. ↑ Kelly Devine Thomas (May 2004). "Tracking the highest prices paid for contemporary artworks". ARTNews. Retrieved 2010-01-08. ...New York’s Museum of Modern Art spent around $12 million in 1999 for Rauschenberg’s combine painting Factum II (1957)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Judd Tully (May 2, 2008). "Art+Auction". ARTINFO. Retrieved 2010-01-08. $10.7 million, set last May at Sotheby’s New York by Photograph, a small 1959 “Combine” painting.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Emmanuelle Soichet (January 23, 2007). "MoMA Acquires Rebus, A Key Early Work by Rauschenberg". BLOUINARTINFO. Retrieved 2010-01-08. the Museum of Modern Art announced today that it has bought the three-panel "combine" painting long thought to be a seminal work in the artist's development.
  13. ↑ Judd Tully (January 7, 2009). "New York: Contemporary Art". BLOUINARTINFO. Retrieved 2010-01-08. Robert Rauschenberg’s little 1955 combine painting Bantam (est. $3-4 million) for $2,602,500 ...
  14. ↑ Patricia Cohen (Nov 28, 2012). "MoMA Gains Treasure That Met Also Coveted". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-28. The I.R.S., however, insisted this masterwork was worth $65 million. It demanded they pay estate taxes of $29.2 million plus another $11.7 million in penalties.