FACULTÉ DES LETTRES
AN ANALYSIS OF ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG’S COMBINE-PAINTING PERIOD
Louise Gauthier
Mémoire présenté pour l’obtention du grade
de Maître ès art (M.A)
ÉCOLE DES GRADUÉS
UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
AVRIL 1990
livresrares (c) droits réservés de Louise Gauthier 1990
/
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many critics believed that Robert Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period was a revival of the revolutionary Dada movement. Indeed, in many articles, critics referred to the combines as "neo-dada". In the mid 1960s, however, a new wave of criticism began to surface which strongly criticized this categorization. Rather than considering Rauschenberg as a neo-dadaist, these critics saw him as a precursor to Pop. The purpose of this paper will be to show that while both critical perspectives contain some elements of truth, neither one adequately explains the combine-paintings and the basic artistic project that motivated them. After examining the points of view defended by some representatives of these opposed perspectives, I shall argue that the essential value of Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings does not lie in their relationship to either Dada or Pop. Unlike Dada’s total rejection of the institution of art in bourgeois society and Pop art’s cynical acceptance of it, Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings work within the institution of art in order to subvert it, thus reformulating the historical avant- garde’s unfinished project of breaking down the distinction between art as an autonomous entity and day-to-day life.
RÉSUMÉ
Au cours des années cinquante et au début des années soixante, plusieurs critiques d’art proclamaient que la période des combine-paintings de Robert Rauschenberg était une renaissance du mouvement révolutionnaire dada. En effet, dans plusieurs articles de l’époque, on note une utilisation fréquente du terme "néo-dada" pour faire référence à la production de Rauschenberg. Au milieu des années soixante, cependant, une nouvelle tendance critique émergeait condamnant cette catégorisation. Les tenants de cette nouvelle orientation voyaient Rauschenberg non plus comme un néo-dada mais comme un précurseur du Pop. Tout en reconnaissant la validité de ces deux positions critiques, je tenterai de démontrer, dans les pages qui suivent, que ni l’une ni l’autre expliquent de façon adéquate la période des
combine-paintings et le projet artistique qui l’a initiée. Après avoir examiné les points
de vue de quelques représentants de ces deux tendances antagonistes, je démontrerai que la valeur essentielle des combine-paintings ne peut être reliée ni au dada ni au Pop. En effet, à la différence du mouvement dada qui rejetait l’institution de l’art et du mouvement Pop qui s’intégrait, d’une façon cynique, à celle-ci, les combine-
paintings de Rauschenberg s’inscrivent dans l’institution de l’art de manière à la
subvertir et reformule ainsi le projet de l’avant-garde historique qui consistait à combler la brèche entre le statut autonome de l’art et la vie quotidienne.
Signatures : Louise Gauthier: Elliott Moore:
Today, more than ever, it is the task of Marxist critics to expose the popular equation of art and life for what it is - nothing but a mystification. What we need is a critical analysis of the unprecedented aesthetization of everyday life that took place in Western countries in the postwar era.
Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide.
Modernism, Mass Culture, Post Modernism
Since the beginning of this project in September 1987, I have considered my work to be the first step in the delimitation of a field of study which I hope will eventually guide me towards a more advanced and critical understanding of American culture. I have tried to single out problems - usually of a pictorial order - which I believe can contribute to the historical understanding of Postwar American society. This thesis is my understanding of the relationship of art and life in capitalist society.
My first thanks go to my supervisor and friend Dr. Elliott Moore who played a key role in this project. With him, I was comfortable enough to have lengthy discussions on topics which I had long been thinking about but which I was dealing with more on an intuitive level than on an intellectual one. I would like to thank him for having invested so much time and energy in my work and for having persistently believed in my intellectual potential. I would also like to thank, in alphabetical order, my friends and colleagues Daniel Béland, Marc Grignon, Micheline Joemets, Jean- Pierre Labiau, Alain Major, Lisanne Nadeau and Philip Raphals for having shown a constant interest in my research and for having criticized my work. It is with them that I have learned that research and writing are a collective experience. I also thank the official readers of my thesis, Nicole Jolicoeur and David Karel.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the graduate students in the art history programme at Laval University for their comments and helpful suggestions brought about in the context of our seminars (especially Lire Bakhtine under the supervision of Dr. Moore and Esthétique et socio-critique under that of Alexander
Sadetky). The discussions that took place in those seminars, and on other occasions, supplied me with the extra stimulation and energy I needed to develop my understanding of the problems I am concerned with in this thesis. I would also like to express my appreciation to the History Department and to Le Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche (FCAR) for their generous financial support. Without it, it would have been difficult for me to have produced my work in two years.
Finally, my warmest thanks go to my family. For their friendship, their sense of humour and their candid view of reality in the many moments of uncertainty I experienced throughout the past two years, I wish to express indebtedness to my three sisters Michèle, Sylvie and Isabelle. I owe, however, my greatest thanks to my parents, Isabelle and Pierre Gauthier, who have always unconditionally encouraged me to do what I believed I must and who always respected and praised my decision for having chosen art history as my field of study and work. To them, I dedicate my thesis with love.
ABSTRACT... i
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS... ii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ... vii
INTRODUCTION... 1
Notes... 6
CHAPTER ONE - Neo-Dada and Pre-Pop... 7
I. The debate between the neo-dada and the anti-neo-dada critics... 7
A The "radical" neo-dada critics... 7
B. The "moderate" neo-Dada critics ... 8
C. The anti-neo-Dada critics... 9
Exclusion vs Inclusion ... 9
D. Rauschenberg’s reference to abstract expressionism as a critique of the institutionalization of art (parody) ... 12
II. Rauschenberg as pre-Pop... 18
A Rauschenberg’s reference to abstract expressionism as an acceptance of the institutionalization of art (pastiche) ... 18
B. Rauschenberg and Pop - similarities and differences... 19
a. The use of the media... 20
b. The fragmented homogeneous non-contradictory whole vs the unsynthesized contradictory unity... 21
c. Commodity society and the image of the image of reality... 21
d. Sublation and false sublation of art ... 22
e. The non-organic totality... 23
Notes... 25
CHAPTER TWO - The Formation of an Unsynthesized Contradictory Unity ... 29
I. The mode of apprehension of the combines: a discussion on the vernacular glance and the museum gaze... 29
A The vernacular glance... 30
B. The museum gaze... 30
the gaze and the glance in opposition... 32
II. Non-Hierarchy and Hierarchy ... 34
A The combine as non-hierarchical... 34
B. The combine as hierarchical ... 40
C. Sandler vs O’Doherty - the status of the elements (context) ... 40
Notes... 43
CHAPTER THREE - Isolation, Totality and Ideology ... 45
I. The combine-paintings and their relationship to the formation of ideology... 45
A Day-to-day ideology... 46
B. The materialization of the vernacular glance (early combines) ... 48
C. The institutionalization of Rauschenberg’s attempts ... 50
Notes... 52
CHAPTER FOUR - The Historical Avant-Garde and Post-Avant-Garde At: Rauschenberg’s Combines Seen as Neither Neo-Dada nor Pre-Pop But as a Reformulation of the Historical Avant-Garde’s Initial Intention ... 53
I. The historical avant-garde... 54
A. Intention... 54
B. Failure ... 54
II. Post avant-garde art... 55
A Biirger’s interpretation of post-avant-garde art as uncritical ... 55
B. My criticism: not all post-avant-garde art can be considered uncritical ... 56
C. The continuity of the avant-garde... 57
D. The uncritical aspect of post-avant-garde is not a generalized principle but rather a possibility: Pop... 59
E. The historical avant-garde did not resolve anything but helped point out the problem ... 60
F. The possibility of a critical post-avant-garde art: Rauschenberg’s combines continue in the path set by the historical avant-garde (isolation and continuity)... 61
CONCLUSION ... 66 I. Different from Dada... 66 II. Different from Pop ... 67 III. Between Dada and Pop by working on the limits of art (institution) and
life (day-to-day experience) ... 69 Notes... 70
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 71
Fig. 1. Robert Rauschenberg. Black Painting. 1951-52. Newspaper and enamel paint on wood panels. 204 x 147 x * cm. (80 1/2 x 58 x * in.). The Mayor Gallery, London, England. (S-4)
Fig. 2. Robert Rauschenberg. Black Painting. 1952. Newspaper and enamel paint on wood panels. 183 x 137 x * cm. (72 x 54 x * in.). Morton Feldman, New York, U.S.A (F-173)
Fig. 3. Robert Rauschenberg. Red Painting. 1953. Red enamel paint, newspaper on wood panels. 201 x 84 x * cm. (79 x 33 1/8 x * in.). Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A (F-174)
Fig. 4. Robert Rauschenberg. Collection (since 1976. Formerly Untitled). 1953-54. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, newsprint, comic strips, reproductions, fabric, wood, metal, mirror on wood panels. 201 x 244 x 10 cm. (79 x 96 x 3 3/4 in.). Michael & Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, France. (F-175)
Fig. 5. Robert Rauschenberg. Minutiae. 1954. Combine-Painting. Oil, fabric, paper, newsprint, metal, plastic, wood, string, mirror on wood panels. 215 x 206 x 77 cm. (84 3/4 x 81 x 30 1/2 in.). Collection of the artist. (W-9)
Fig. 6. Robert Rauschenberg. Charlene. 1954. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, newsprint, reproductions, mirror, plastic, wood, metal on wood panels. 226 x 284 x * cm. (89 x 112 x * in.). Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland. (F-176)
Fig. 7. Robert Rauschenberg. Satellite. 1955. Combine-Painting. Oil, fabric, paper, newsprint, pheasant, wood on wood. 203 x 108 x * cm. (80 x 42 1/2 x * in.). Claire Zeisler, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A (F-216) Fig. 8. Robert Rauschenberg. Rebus. 1955. Combine-Painting. Oil, pencil,
paper, newsprint, comic strips, posters, reproductions, fabric on wood panels. 244 x 330 x 4 cm. (96 x 130 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.). Mr. and Mrs. Victor Ganz, New York, U.SA (F-177)
Fig. 9. Robert Rauschenberg. Bed. 1955. Combine-Painting. Oil, pencil, pillow, sheets, quilt, on wood support. 191 x 80 x 17 cm. (75 1/4 x 31 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) Museum of Modem At, New York, U.S.A (F-180)
Fig. 10. Robert Rauschenberg. Hymnal. 1955. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, fabric, wood on wood panels with metal bolt on string and section of telephone directory. 163 x 124 x 18 cm. (64 x 49 x 7 1/4 in.) Michael and Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, France. (F-178)
Fig. 11. Robert Rauschenberg. Levee (formely Untitled). 1955. Combine-Painting. Oil, fabric, paper, reproduction, diagram, necktie on canvas.
149 x 109 x * cm. (55 x 42 3/4 x * in.) Lois Long, New York, U.S.A. (S-viii)
Fig. 12. Robert Rauschenberg. Interior. 1956. Combine-Painting. Oil, pencil paper, wood, embossed metal, hat and nails on canvas. 115 x 118 x 19 cm (45 1/4 x 46 1/3 x 7 1/2 in.). Ileana Sonnabend, New York, U.S.A. (W-275)
Fig. 13. Robert Rauschenberg. Memorandum of Bids. 1956. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, fabric on canvas. 150 x 114 x * cm. (59 x 45 x * in.). Michael Sonnabend, New York, U.S.A. (F-182)
Fig. 14. Robert Rauschenberg. Gloria. 1956. Combine-Painting. Paper, newprint, oil and fabric on canvas. 169 x 161 x * cm. (66 1/2 x 63 1/4 x * in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. (F-181)
Fig. 15. Robert Rauschenberg. Lincoln. 1958. Combine-Painting. Oil, water col or, paper, fabric and metal on canvas. 43 x 53 x * cm. (17 x 20 7/8 x * in.). Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. (W- 283)
Fig. 16. Robert Rauschenberg. Curfew. 1958. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, fabric, newsprint, Coca Cola bottles, bottle cap on wood and canvas. 144 x 100 x 6 cm. (56 1/2 x 39 1/2 x 2 5/8 in.) Peter M. Brant, Greenwich, England. (F-183)
Fig. 17. Robert Rauschenberg. Thaw. 1958. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, newsprint, fabric on canvas. 127 x 102 x * cm. (50 x 40 x * in.). Robert C. Scull, New York, U.S.A. (F-185)
Fig. 18. Robert Rauschenberg. Bypass. 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, newsprint, color prints, billboard on canvas. 150 x 135 x * cm. (59 x 53 x * in.). Robert and Jane Meyeroff, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. (F-186)
Fig. 19. Robert Rauschenberg. Photograph. 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, photographs, metal, fabric, wood, necktie on canvas. 117 x 138 x 7 cm. (46 3/8 x 54 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.). Mitchell, Hutchins, inc., New York, U.S.A (S-103)
Fig. 20. Robert Rauschenberg. Broadcast. 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, newsprint, bolts, diagram, fabric, wood on canvas, plus three sources of sound from three radios. 157 x 193 x 13 cm. (62 x 76 x 5 in.). Private collection. (F-187)
Fig. 21. Robert Rauschenberg. Monogram. 1955-1959. Freestading Combine-Painting. Stuffed Angora goat, rubber tire, rubber heel, tennis ball, metal plaque, hardware on canvas and wood mounted on four wheels. 107 x 161 x 163 cm. (42 x 63 1/4 x 64 1/4 in.) Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden. (UL)
Fig. 22. Robert Rauschenberg. Canyon. 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, pencil, paper, metal, photograph, fabric, wood, buttons, mirror, stuffed eagle, cardboard box, pillow on canvas. 220 x 179 x 58 cm. (86 1/2 x 70 1/2 x 22 3/4 in.). Michael and Ileana Sonnabend. Paris, France. (F-189) Fig. 23. Robert Rauschenberg. Bride’s Folly. 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, fabric, sleeve, fork, paper on canvas. 147 x 99 x * cm. (57 3/4 x 39 x * in.). (Collection unavailable). (UL)
Fig. 24. Robert Rauschenberg. Trophy I (For Merce Cunningham). 1959. Combine-Painting. Oil, paper, photograph, fabric, wood, metal sign, button on canvas. 168 x 104 x 5 cm. (66 x 41 x 2 in.). Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland. (F-190)
Fig. 25. Robert Rauschenberg. Allegory. 1959-60. Combine-Painting. Oil, fabric, buttons, mirror, sand, metal (tin ceiling), glue, umbrella on canvas. 184 x 291 x 30 cm. (72 1/4 x 114 1/2 x 11 3/4 in.). Mrs. Ludwig, Koln, West Germany. (F-192)
Fig. 26. Robert Rauschenberg. Pilgrim. 1960. Combine-painting. Oil, pencil, paper, newsprint, fabric on canvas with painted chair. 201 x 137 x 47 cm. (79 1/4 x 53 7/8 x 18 5/8 in.). Folkwang Museum, West Berlin, Germany. (W-293)
Fig. 27. Robert Rauschenberg. Studio Painting. 1961. Combine-Painting. Oil, newsprint, metal chain, coton bag on canvas. 184 x 173 x * cm. (72
1/2 x 68 x * in.). Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Gosman, Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A. (F-193)
Fig. 28. Robert Rauschenberg. Reservoir. 1961. Combine-Painting. Oil, pencil, fabric, wood, metal on canvas with two electric clocks, rubber thread weel and spoked wheel rim. 217 x 159 x 37 cm. (85 1/2 x 62 1/2 x 14 3/4 in.). National Collection of Fine Arts, South Carolina, U.S.A (S- xiii)
Fig. 29. Robert Rauschenberg. Pantomime. 1961. Combine-Painting. Oil, unidentified object and two electric fans on canvas. 101 x 152 x * cm. (40 x 60 x * in.). Leo Castelli, New York, U.S.A. (F-206)
Fig. 30. Robert Rauschenberg. Third Time Painting. 1961. Combine-Painting. Paint, wood, fabric, clock on canvas. 213 x 152 x * cm. (84 x 60 x * in.). Harry N. Abrams, New York, U.S.A (F-197)
The letter and the number between parenthesis which are located at the end of each captions refer to the book and the page number from which the reproductions were taken. Letters refer to these sources:
F = Forge, Andrew. Rauschenberg. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1969. S = Robert Rauschenberg. National Collection of Fine Arts. Washington,
Smithsonian Institute, 1976. UL = Laval University, slide library.
W = Robert Rauschenberg. Werke 1950-1980. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin, 1980.
The asterisk (*) indicates that the third dimensional arrangement of some of the works was not included in the sources which were available to me.
Le remède à cette parcellisation de la culture et à sa séparation de la vie ne peut venir que du "changement de statut de l’expérience esthétique lorqu’elle (...) est utilisée pour explorer une situation historique de la vie", c’est-à-dire, quand "on la met en relation avec les problèmes de l’existence".
Albretch Wellmer quoted by Jean-François Lyotard1
Between 1953 and 1962, Robert Rauschenberg produced a series of works in which painting was combined with a wide variety of vernacular objects and refuse. He called these combine-paintings. The reason for this production, as stated by Rauschenberg, was to work in the gap between life and art. In these works, the paint, the canvas and the aesthetic organization of the various elements integrated in the works are held by Rauschenberg’s pictorial argument to be signs of art, whereas the vernacular objects and refuse have the role of representing the apparently more objective status of real life.
As opposed to the general tendency of Rauschenberg criticism which suggests that the discrepancy between art and life has been resolved by Rauschenberg having successfully integrated elements of both into a single work, I believe that the basic structural premise of Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period rather rests upon an unsynthesized contradiction of these two seemingly opposed forces. Indeed, there seems to be, in Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings, an ongoing conflict between these two apparently distinct groups of elements.
In 1951, Rauschenberg painted a series of white paintings. Ordinary housepaint was applied uniformly with a roller on flat, blank panels. Before completing this series, Rauschenberg began a series of black paintings (fig. 1, fig. 2). In these paintings, tom newspaper was pasted to the canvas surface then painted over with mat or shiny black enamel paint. While the previous works had non-textured surfaces, the black- paintings now had full, textured surfaces and seemed closer to a low relief sculpture than a two-dimensional painting. Following the production of the white and black paintings, Rauschenberg painted a series of red paintings (fig. 3) which were essentially made of red paint and refuse. It is out of these works that Rauschenberg produced such works as Untitled (fig. 4), Charlene (fig. 6) and Rebus (fig. 8) which are the first examples of his combine-painting production.
By taking into account Rauschenberg’s pictorial argument that the combines contain both elements of art - more specifically modem American art of the 1940s and the 1950s - and elements of our daily environment, we could say that what Rauschenberg is doing is attempting to create some interaction between them. The combine, as a whole, attempts to establish a mediation between the so-called art and life elements by opposing the vernacular objects and the painterly marks.
I will discuss Rauschenberg’s criticism of the institutionalization of art, or more specifically abstract expressionism, as an autonomous category. I will not go into a discussion of Rauschenberg’s criticism of abstract expressionism before its institutionalization, although I will mention that the ideological premise of the movement (i.e. the focus on universality) is also something that is being criticized by Rauschenberg.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, many critics believed that Robert Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period was a revival of the revolutionary Dada movement. Indeed, in many articles, critics referred to the combines as "neo-Dada". Among those who have defended this position are George Heard Hamilton and Dorothy Gees Seckler. While the "neo-Dada" designation was more widely accepted
in the 1950s and early 1960s than it is now, most received critical discourse as reflected in art historical reference works and other studies still refers to Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings as "neo-Dada"2.
In the mid 1960s however, a new wave of criticism strongly criticized this designation. Rather than considering Rauschenberg as a neo-Dadaist, these critics began to see him as a precursor of Pop art. Barbara Rose and Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin are among those who have come to see Rauschenberg’s combines as pre-Pop. Today, the value of Rauschenberg’s work is generally viewed in terms of the contribution it made to the development of Pop.
The purpose of this paper will be to show that while both critical perspectives contain some elements of truth, neither one adequately explains the combine-paintings nor the artistic project that motivated them. Unlike Dada’s total rejection of the institution of art in bourgeois society and Pop art’s cynical acceptance of it, Robert Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings work within the institution of art in order to subvert it, thus reformulating - but not yet resolving - the historical avant-garde’s unfinished project of breaking down the distinction between art as an autonomous entity and day-to-day life.
After examining the points of view defended by the critics mentioned above and by discussing the notions of inclusion, appropriation and contextualization set forth by such authors as Alain Jouffroy and Galvin Tomkins, I shall argue that the importance of Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings goes beyond their relationship to Dada and to Pop.
By discussing Brian O’Doherty’s notion and use of the vernacular glance and the museum gaze with respect to Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period, I will build up an argument based, on the one hand, on his comprehension of the combines as being essentially non-hierarchical in character and, on the other hand, on Irving Sandler’s understanding of them as fundamentally hierarchical, in order to show that
both arguments are, although partial, equally correct when they are understood within the totality of the combine-painting period. It is, I believe, largely by following the development of the combines from a non-hierarchical structure to a hierarchical one that it is possible to see that there is a development within the combine-painting period itself which, I feel, corresponds to various ways by which Rauschenberg attempted to deal with the problem of the discrepancy of art and life.
By introducing the vernacular object and the vernacular glance into his works, and by using such construction principles as fragmentation, heterogeneity and non hierarchy which make possible the formation of what I will call an unsynthesized
contradictory unity, I will attempt to demonstrate that what Rauschenberg’s combine-
paintings do is initiate a process of crystallization of the ideology of day-to-day life. I will discuss Valentin Voloshinov/MikhaH Bakhtin’s concept of ideology and then focus my attention on the combines produced between 1953 and 1955 in order to show that the discussion on the materialization of the vernacular glance, and therefore of day-to-day ideology, is valid only with respect to Rauschenberg’s early combine-painting period. I will argue that whereas the early pictorial landscape-type structures (non-hierarchical combines) deal more closely with day-to-day experience, the later, more plastic ones (hierarchical combines) correspond more specifically to the bourgeois institutionalization of art and life into two distinct spheres of experience.
While I hold that Rauschenberg’s interest in working in the "gap" between art and life is maintained throughout his combine-painting production, I will argue that the articulation of this problem shifts from the early combines to the later ones. Whereas in the early combines, the institutionally imposed separation of art and life is questioned by Rauschenberg having established various non-hierarchical relationships between the elements which lead up to the materialization of the vernacular glance, in the later ones, the establishment of hierarchical relationships between the elements of art and non-art deal more with the acceptance of the opposition of art and life that is maintained in bourgeois society.
Finally, by taking into account the process of institutionalization which occurs within the combine-painting period itself, I will discuss the historical avant-garde’s initial intention, its impact on post-avant-garde art and the way in which I believe Rauschenberg’s combine-painting production fits into the general pattern of the development of the historical avant-garde project.
1. Jean-François Lyotard, "Réponse à la question: qu’est-ce que le postmodeme?". Le
postmodeme expliqué aux enfants, 15. 2
2. See, for example, the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981), 454.
Neo-Dada and Pre-Pop
I, The debate between the neo-dada and the anti-neo-dada critics
A The "radical" neo-dada critics
In an article entitled "Painting in Contemporary America" published in the May 1960 issue of Burlington Magazine, George Heard Hamilton argues that artists seeking to propose an alternative to what he chooses to refer to as Action Painting1 split into two general directions: while one is based upon a revival of formalism (Hamilton refers more specifically to the work of Ellsworth Kelly which he sees as reinstating some of the problems set forth by Naum Gabo and Josef Albers), the other is based on a revival of Dadaism. In his opinion, Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings are the most outstanding example of this second orientation2. Indeed, Hamilton argues that because Rauschenberg’s combines contain a wide variety of materials, they should be considered as a continuation of Kurt Schwitters’s early twentieth century collages.
Harold Osborne shares this opinion3. However, while both Hamilton and Osborne openly defend the neo-Dada labelling of Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings, they
propose no clear support to their claim apart from pointing out that the works are partly constructed of ordinary objects and materials.
B. The "moderate" neo-Dada critics
Another critic with a point of view similar to that of Hamilton and Osborne is Dorothy Gees Seckler. In a review published in 1961, Seckler refers to Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings not as neo-Dada as such, but rather as new assemblage art or modern Dadaism. While trying to create a link between Rauschenberg’s work and a previous art historical category, Seckler goes one step further by attempting to establish a distinction between Rauschenberg’s combines and the original Dada object. According to her, the new assemblage art, especially the kind which incorporates junk-yard objects, bears a resemblance to the original Dada object in that both want to dispense with formal communication and adopt the vernacular of the streets4.
However, she points out that whereas the original Dadaists had a revolutionary outlook toward the development of society and were committed to the cause of anti-culture, the modem Dadaists, she argues, have more of a parodie point of view. While the original Dadaists, she states, were radically opposed to the use of any element which conveyed established, official ideology, the modern Dadaists include art historical references and cultural cliches without necessarily wanting to abolish either one of them.
C. The anti-neo-Dada critics
Exclusion vs Inclusion
For Alain Jouffroy, this is what fundamentally distinguishes Rauschenberg from the Dadaists. In three articles written between September 1962 and May 1964, Jouffroy strongly maintains his anti-neo-Dada position. In his opinion, Rauschenberg formulates an outlook on the problem of art that takes on a very different orientation from the one exposed by the Dada movement. While Dada rejected the past and attempted to destroy conventional notions of art, Rauschenberg, he contends, constantly includes the past and works within the limits of art.
Like Jouffroy, Calvin Tomkins rejects the neo-Dada designation5. Rauschenberg, he states, does not go through a process of exclusion but rather of inclusion. Thus, because the combines deal with such themes as multiplicity, variety and inclusion, Tomkins considers that it does not make much sense to categorize them as neo-Dada. Whereas the original Dadaists were first and foremost against existing politics, against European culture, against, that is, all established ideological systems, Rauschenberg, he argues, now stands against nothing6. He responds to the past, to culture and to politics by including images of all three. He responds, for example, to recent past art not by rejecting it, but rather by incorporating signs of it into his work. He uses, for example, the highly connotative drips, spatters and brushmarks made famous by the Action Painters, and works through them, not apart from them.
Hence, while Dadaism rejected the past by violently reacting against it, by pushing it aside and by discrediting it, Rauschenberg incorporates objects, images and techniques used in past art into his own work.
Rauschenberg’s combines do, as Alain Jouffroy points out, incorporate signs which refer to Dadaism and other early twentieth century avant-garde movements. And I believe that it is precisely because of their openness to an acceptance of the past
-and more specifically of the Dadaist sign -and formal structure - that the combines cannot be understood as a revival of this revolutionary movement.
While some critics have come to see a similarity between Rauschenberg’s combines and Kurt Schwitters’ collages, Jouffroy argues that the productions differ radically. While he agrees that both artists do incorporate ordinary objects into their works, Schwitters, he argues, transforms their identity by using them as formal components in order to reveal their aesthetic potential. The objects therefore end up losing the meaning they had in their original context and acquire a new one, this time based on their formal actualization. For him, the new aesthetic quality that the objects acquire become more relevant than the objects which are actually used. In opposition to this, Jouffroy contends that the objects used in the combines retain their original identity. While constantly working to create a rigorous formal structure, Rauschenberg, according to Jouffroy, uses ordinary objects not only in an effort to expose their aesthetic potential, but also in order to incorporate fragments of contemporary society, fragments of urban life into the work of art:
Les objets des combine-paintings sont souvent laissés intacts et leur identité est toujours respectée. (...) En incorporant des objets de la vie quotidienne moderne, ceux-ci ne peuvent jamais être considérés du seul point de vue esthétique, mais toujours comme des fragments de la société industrielle. Il ne s’agit plus seulement, comme c’était le cas dans le Merz et le Merzbau de Schwitters, de construire une oeuvre d’art sur la base des objets réels, mais de donner à ces objets mêmes leur plus haute charge d’émotion et de suggestion - à tout le moins de leur rendre hommage sans jamais changer leur identité7.
The fact that the combines contain elements particular to early twentieth century avant-garde movements, namely the vernacular object, implies that there is an acceptance of the past. And that is a very different outlook from the one Dadaism defended. When the Dadaists did use art historical references, they did so with a destructive intent. In the combines, however, the various art historical references are
integrated in the works and coexist side by side with objects and materials taken from our eveiyday cultural environment. Rauschenberg works with established ideological systems, not against them, and that, in my view, is what opposes his work to that of the Dadaists.
It therefore appears as though the neo-Dada designation of Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings can only be justified if one focuses solely on parts of the works, namely, the non-artistic elements. Indeed, this attribution fails to stay relevant when one considers the work in its entirety. By ignoring the other signs incorporated into the work, such as the brushmarks which establish a constant reference to recent past art (namely American painting of the 1940s and early 1950s), one can only yield a partial view of the problem. As Jouffroy points out, while many non-artistic elements are brought into the works, they do not overshadow the presence of the painterly brushstrokes. And in Jouffroy’s opinion, what Rauschenberg seeks to establish by joining both together is some interaction between the two:
La surface de la toile ne cesse d’être peinte, et si des fragments de mots arrachés à des affiches publicitaires (...) viennent s’y incorporer, la peinture survit à cette invasion de la réalité. On dirait que (...) Rauschenberg cherche là un accord entre deux extrêmes, comme s’il ne voulait renoncer ni à la vie, ni au passé immédiat de l’art moderne, ni à rien8.
It is therefore essential to understand that the structural elements which represent "life" are put into combination with those of "art" in an organized aesthetic context. By overlooking the mediations between the objects and the painted surface, the elements of so-called life and of art are made to appear as separate, unrelated entities.
Although Jouffroy is convinced that Rauschenberg’s combines reestablish a relationship between art and life, he does not argue, as some critics have done, that
Rauschenberg broke down the distinction between modem art and everyday living, aesthetic vision and actual experience:
(L’oeuvre de Rauschenberg) incite le spectateur à modifier d’un seul coup sa perception de l’art et sa compréhension du monde. Elle le met ainsi au pied du mur qui semble infranchissable. Quel est ce mur? Eh bien, précisément, celui-là qui sépare l’art moderne de la vie quotidienne et condamne la vision esthétique et l’expérience vécue à se tourner le dos. Ce mur, seul un aveuglement bien étrange (...) peut pousser à croire qu’il n’existe pas. Non, Rauschenberg à lui seul ne saurait le mettre à bas: il est trop long, trop épais, trop étayé et cimenté par les habitudes artistiques9.
Therefore, as Jouffroy points out, it is not so much that Rauschenberg breaks down
the distinction between art and life as that he materializes the tension between them:
Rauschenberg puts both entities in opposition and exposes the discrepancy between the value of the elements used.
D. Rauschenberg’s reference to abstract expressionism as a critique of the institutionalization of art (parody)
For Alain Jouffroy, as for Calvin Tomkins, the most outstanding manifestation of the inclusion of the past in Rauschenberg’s combines is the incorporation not of signs from early twentieth century avant-garde movements but of recent past art. Indeed, instead of rejecting what they refer to as Action Painting, Rauschenberg introduces signs of it into his work by using a variety of gestural marks particular to that style10.
However, while Rauschenberg integrates the action painter’s gestural brushmark, Jouffroy argues that its meaning in the combine is different from the one it had in its original context. Rauschenberg, in other words, appropriates the painterly mark.
And because the painterly mark goes through a process of appropriation (i.e. of de- and re- contextualization), it loses part of its initial meaning and gains a new one:
La peinture dont partiellement Rauschenberg a recouvert la toile, c’est avec arbitraire qu’elle a été choisie, mais d’un arbitraire bizarrement juste, celui de l’inspiration pure - du cri11.
Jouffroy does not believe that Rauschenberg paints from pure inspiration but rather that he is borrowing, appropriating the painting of pure inspiration (i.e. of Action Painting). Rauschenberg incorporates into the combines much of the officialized pictorial vocabulary of the 1940s and 1950s. However, rather than employing this vocabulary in the same way it had been until then, Rauschenberg borrows signs of it along with the concepts and references that were attached to them, integrates them with a variety of ordinary objects and images and makes them interact with these elements taken from day-to-day living contexts. The material (i.e. the substance) is torn out of its original context which gave it its meaning, isolated and turned into a series of fragments opposed to other fragments which, presumably, come from different source: that of real life.
Thus, instead of producing works presumably isolated from day-to-day living contexts, Rauschenberg embeds the old abstract expressionist structure into a new kind
of structure which sets an opposition between the painterly mark and the vernacular
object. By the very act of borrowing, Rauschenberg shows that the so-called act of creation, or the embodiment of creative inspiration, has now turned into a formula, into a repeatable recipe thereby examining the very principle according to which the individual is considered to be the only, or at least the primary, creator of the work of art and which makes its apartness seem impossible or useless to explain in terms of being essentially the result of a historical and social development. The expressionist mark becomes, in Rauschenberg’s combines, a sign of artistic value, of aesthetic acceptability. The gestural mark becomes a connotation of itself as "art" specifically through its re-contextualization12.
Rauschenberg is borrowing a complete sign: marks and meaning together. And this act of borrowing, I believe, does not function as a blank assimilation of the gestural mark. In "Postmodernism and Consumer Society", Frederick Jameson establishes a distinction between two types of imitation: pastiche and parody. While he considers both parody and pastiche as construction principles which are used to imitate an object or a particular style, and which both involve a decontextualization of the form or style that is being imitated, parody evaluates and criticizes what is being imitated. Pastiche, as opposed to this, is an imitation of an object or style but without establishing a critical distance from it. The appropriated sign becomes a neutral code and is used as an a empty form. As Jameson explains:
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask (...) but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody’s ulterior motive, without laughter (...). Pastiche is a blank parody, parody that has lost its sense of humour13.
Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings, I believe, use parody, not pastiche, as one of their main construction principles. I do not consider Rauschenberg’s appropriationist process to be an empty one; I do not consider it to be a bland banalization of "art" or, more specifically, of the signs of art. Rauschenberg uses (rather than repudiates) the legitimatized structure of the work of art at that time and integrates it into a new one:
Vivant d’une "double vie", (la parodie) met en rapport "discordant" deux "plans" (le second étant T'ensemble ancien") au sein d’une même oeuvre. (...) "le second plan se dilue jusqu’au concept général de ‘style’" et (...) "la parodie devient un simple élément dans la dialectique de la relève des codes"14.
The expressionist structure becomes a part of a new one. The work’s claim to individual creativity is mocked by the very processes of appropriation, fragmentation,
contextualization, and sometimes repetition Rauschenberg uses. The combine painting is no longer expressionist but represents, makes obvious, the expressionist painterly inscription as the sign of the embodiment of a style through its opposition to the vernacular object. Rauschenberg’s strategy therefore involves an aesthetic (e.i. critical) appropriation of the institutionalization of art15.
As I have stated at the beginning of this paper, the painterly mark is held to be a sign of the general category of art. More specifically, the paint is held to be a sign of personal expression as art turned into a style. It is a sign of the generalization of experience, of the institutionalization of experience from actual (day-to-day) experience.
Now, not only is there a division in the general structure of the combine, there is also a division within the "art" group itself. The elements of art refer to the way art was understood in the 1940s and 1950s. Because the discourse on painting in the 1940s and 1950s took on two different orientations (Greenberg - abstract objectivism vs Rosenberg - individualistic subjectivism), the painterly mark in the combine embodies both. It is, I believe, important to take into account the difference of interpretation with respect to art in order to understand that what Rauschenberg was dealing with when he chose to work on the problem of the discrepancy of "art and life" was a fundamental concern at that time and, therefore, that his production inscribes itself within a very concrete historical trajectory, that is to say, within the context of post-war American artistic production that emphasized universality of form and of the self as opposed to the particularity of day-to-day experience.
The avant-garde16 retained traces of political consciousness, but devoid of direction. Pollock, Rothko, Gottlieb, Newman (...) did not reject the idea of some kind of action, of some reaction to the social situation. They did not avoid the problems of the age but transformed them into something else: they
transformed history into nature (my emphasis). (...) The
American painter kept intact (...) the idea that the artist can communicate with the masses, though now
through a universal rather than a class-based style. Political analysis was replaced by "a fuzzy world whose sole inhabitant is eternal man, who is neither proletarian nor bourgeois"17.
Rauschenberg continued along the same line as the abstract expressionists by working on the problem of art and life; but instead of rooting the possibility of change in the absolute, he rooted it in the apprehension of daily life. Rauschenberg integrates, within the institutionalized framework of art, elements referring to the material context of day-to-day life.
From representing the universal, the paint now becomes a sign of art as seen as
universal (le. as being autonomous from the socio-economic conditions of the time).
The construction of the category "art", within the combine-painting, goes through a process of particularization (embodiment of individual creation) to generalization (institutionalization of individual experience into a style). Rauschenberg makes the individual brushmarks become "artsy" by opposing them to ordinary vernacular objects.
In the combine, the paint is brought into an immediate and concrete setting because of its opposition to the vernacular object. The vernacular object, as we have seen, is held to a sign of (day-to-day) life. The sub-group "life" is also based on a structure that goes from the particular to the general: from having been individual elements of daily life, they become signs of daily life. They turn into signs of (daily) life, and not only of what they individually stood for in the context from which they were taken. The individual parts are used to make a more general argument. However, while they turn into signs of daily life, they also have the quality of maintaining their individual significance because of their junk-like quality, thereby making it possible for the work to be rooted in a kind of here-and-nowness, which the signs of art (i.e. of abstract expressionism) no longer have the capacity to do. Integrated within the context of the work of art, the object has the effect establishing a reference to
day-to-day environment and existence. It is a more particular group, a more specific one, because it is mediated by immediacy.
Opposed to the signs of daily life, the brushmarks become a sign of art. What was once particular (individual innovative expression, materializing, supposedly, a common, universal state of being), now becomes interchangeable. The brushmark, in the combine, becomes a sign of art. It becomes the sign of a style.
The elements of art (the painterly mark which refers to the dominant form of pictorial production of the 1940s and 1950s) and of life (vernacular objects and refuse) are put in opposition within the combine-painting itself. Because the paint is now put in opposition to the vernacular object, it looses part of its original meaning and gains a new one: the brush mark must not be read as a sign of individual self- expression but a sign of art turned into a style, that is to say, as a sign of artistic convention.
It is the interaction between these two groups of elements that creates the meaning of the combine. And the key to understanding the development of the combine-painting
period rests in the type of interaction that is articulated between these two groups of elements. As I have mentioned before, Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period itself
goes through a process of transformation from the early combines to the later ones. And I think that this transformation is based upon a shift in the relationship established between these two groups of elements. Both these groups of elements are integrated in the same work, in the same context. It is therefore necessary for us to see these structures in interaction with one another. Once we take this into account, it is possible, I believe, to see that, in the early combines, the opposition between the two groups of elements practically disappears (because of the presence of various non-hierarchical relations) whereas in the later combines (because of the presence of various hierarchical relations), there is a reinstatement of the division between the groups of elements which has the effect of rebuilding the image of life
and art as two distinct spheres of experience. The combines themselves eventually undergo a transformation.
Hence, this dialectical process not only occurs within the combine-painting itself (art - general vs life - particular) but also within development of the combine-painting period from the early combines to the late combines: from an inductive structure (early non-hierarchical combines which attempt to break down the distinction between art as an isolated subsystem and day-to-day life) to a deductive structure (late hierarchical ones which show Rauschenberg’s institutionalization of his attempts). The inductive nature of the vernacular object remains present in the early combine and progressively disappears in the later ones.
The vernacular object remains particular in the early combine (it has a direct, immediate reference to its original context) and then turns into a generalization in the later combine: the object turns into an image of itself. It turns into an image of day-to-day life. The object, in the late combine-painting, turns into a general category of life that is opposed to the general category of art (represented by the paint). Thus, in the late combines, not only is there an aesthetization of the brushmark, there is also an aesthetization of the vernacular object. The combine
itself becomes institutionalized.
II. Rauschenberg as pre-Pop
A. Rauschenberg’s reference to abstract expressionism as an acceptance of the institutionalization of art (pastiche)
Barbara Rose and Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin take into account Rauschenberg’s reference to abstract expressionism. And, like Jouffroy, rather than understanding his appropriation of the expressionist brushstroke as having the same value it had in its original context, they understand it to be a sign which refers to the problem of the institutionalization and commodification of art in capitalist society. The problem, however, is that both Rose and Dubreuil-Blondin seem to consider
Rauschenberg’s appropriation of the expressionist brushstroke to be a cynical acceptance of the status of art in bourgeois society. Rose sees Rauschenberg’s appropriation of abstract expressionism as being very close or practically identical to Pop’s "cool irony"18. This consideration appears clearly in Rose’s criticism when she puts Rauschenberg’s combine-painting production in her category of "New American Dada".
For Rose, the "New American Dada" did not set out to abolish the established order of the institution of art but rather produced a wide range of works corresponding to the ideological beliefs of western capitalist society. As opposed to the original european Dadaists, the "New Dadaists", she states, sought neither to criticize, to scandalize nor to satirize:
What once seemed vanguard invention is now merely over-reproduced cliché. Anti-art, anti-war, anti-materialism, Dada, the art of the politically and socially engaged, apparently has little in common with the cool detached art it is supposed to have spawned. (...) Not only is neo-Dada not anti-art, it is very seriously pro-art19.
B. Rauschenberg and Pop - similarities and differences
Both Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin and Barbara Rose consider Rauschenberg to be a precursor to Pop20. Both believe that it is because of his contribution to the development of Pop art that Rauschenberg is still considered to have been one of the most important artists of the 1950s.
In La Fonction critique dans le Pop art américain, Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin considers Rauschenberg’s combines to be the first manifestations of the Pop art movement primarily because of the presence of comparable formal characteristics. Rauschenberg’s production, in her opinion, resembles that of Pop art in that both he and such Pop artists as Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein
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use or refer to elements present in western capitalist society, the most obvious of which, in her opinion, is the emphasis on media oriented images. While the integration of the representational and commercial image is, to her mind, one of the most obvious resemblances with respect to Rauschenberg’s combines and the Pop art production, she specifies, however, that there are other obvious similarities; both Rauschenberg and Pop artists depersonalize the abstract expressionist painterly brushstroke21; both, according to her, structure their works in such a way as to create flat, superficial surfaces22; and finally both Rauschenberg and Pop artists use similar compositional methods the most common of which are repetition and fragmentation23.
With respect to the pre-Pop designation of Rauschenberg’s works, because of certain comparable formal characteristics, it does appear possible to see Rauschenberg’s combine-paintings as having had an impact on the development of Pop art. However, I believe that the value and the importance of Rauschenberg’s combines cannot rest in its relation to the development of Pop art alone24.
a. The use of the media
For example, it is clear that Rauschenberg did not primarily emphasize visual imagery that refers to commercial images or any other form of media-oriented manifestations. The inclusion of the media does not stand out any more than the paint, the vernacular object and the junk. While Pop artists focus on mass-culture images and cliches, Rauschenberg includes images indiscriminately. Works like
Rebus (fig. 8), Gloria (fig. 14), even Canyon (fig. 22) from 1959 do not insist on the
predominance of media-oriented materials and images. Rather, they are buried in the plethora of fragments which come from all aspects of life - from the more personal side of life to the cold mechanical one of industrial society. There is no more emphasis on the impersonal imagery of the media than there is on the art historical references and the vernacular object. While Rauschenberg’s combines are composed of a mass of heterogeneous elements which are placed in constant
interaction with each other, the Pop work is composed of a mass of homogeneous elements allowing only signs of a similar origin to interact. In Pop art, the media largely remain the unifying principle; in the combines, the media are always contradicted by other aspects in the work.
b. The fragmented homogeneous non-contradictory whole vs the unsynthesized contradictory unity
As Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin points out, both Pop artists and Rauschenberg use fragmentation as one of their basic modes of pictorial organization. However, although Pop relies on the principle of fragmentation, the images used in that fragmentation come from the mass-reproduced reality of commodity society, forming a non-contradictory unity.
c. Commodity society and the image of the image of reality
While Pop art is based on fragmentation, it is not based on heterogeneity. In the Pop work, there is no attempt to create a structure comprised of elements in contradictory tension since the elements integrated in these works come from the same initial source: namely, mass-culture. The images used as well as their construction principle do not work in an effort to emphasize the contradictory relationship between reality as it appears in mass-culture and the more contradictory relationships which are at the basis of this seemingly non-conflictual reality in capitalist society. Pop art chooses to remain within the framework of the depthless, fictional image. As Jean Baudrillard perceptively stated:
Nous sommes là au foyer de la consommation comme organisation totale de la quotidienneté,
homogénéisation totale, où tout est ressaisi et dépassé
dans la facilité, la translucidité d’un "bonheur" abstrait, défini par la seule résolution des tensions25. (...) (Le Pop) vise non seulement l’immanence du monde "civilisé", mais son intégration totale à ce monde26. (...) l’univers des images et des objets
fabriqués transparaissant au fond comme une nature
(..y.
d. Sublation and false sublation of art
Pop art’s use of the construction principle of fragmentation does not serve as a means to produce structures in contradictory tension, as, I believe, Rauschenberg does with respect to his combine-painting production. While Pop art attempts to give the impression that the problem of the discrepancy between art and life has been resolved by having integrated visual imagery of mass culture into art, Rauschenberg’s combines, unlike the work of such Pop artists as Warhol, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein, do not present the illusion that art achieved its goal of breaking down the distinction between art and life, but rather presents it as a still unresolved problem.
Pop art emphasizes the structure of consumer society whose survival largely depends on the maintenance of the false sublation of art. As Andreas Huyssen stated:
It is not reality itself that provides the content of the work of art, but rather a second reality - the portrait of the mass idol as the cliché image that appears millions of times in the media that sinks into the consciousness of a mass audience. (...) The artist has surrendered to the principles of anonymous mass reproduction and has documented his closeness to the image world of the mass-media28.
In Pop art, art and life interbreed, but to the benefit of the existing social praxis based on reification29. Not only does Pop art work within the existing praxis of life in bourgeois society, it is eager to be absorbed in it. Pop art accepts its status as a commodity; and this acceptation obliterates the critical distance that needs to be maintained between art and life in bourgeois society. Art becomes life; life, that is, as seen through the media. Baudrillard has suggested that Pop art had no choice but
to adapt itself to the institutionalized artistic discourse and that it was precisely because it fully integrated itself that it was able to single it out:
La seule démarche rigoureuse (du Pop) est d’intégrer (le) discours mythologique (de l’américanité) et de s’y intégrer soi-même. Si la société de consommation est enlisée dans sa propre mythologie, si elle est sans perspective critique sur elle-même, et si c’est justement
là sa définition, il ne peut y avoir d’art contemporain
que compromis, complice, dans son existence même et sa pratique, de cette évidence opaque. (...) on ne saurait reprocher au Pop de mettre en évidence (la logique de r'américanité")30.
In the combines, however, the negation of a synthesis between the elements becomes the structural principle. It is the contradictory relationship between the heterogeneous elements that constitutes the unity of the work. The combine, like every other work of art, forms a unity, but that unity has now integrated contradiction within itself. Whereas the Pop work forms a fragmented homogeneous non-contradictory whole, Rauschenberg’s combines articulate what we might call an unsynthesized contradictory unity. It is no longer the harmony of the individual parts that constitutes the whole but the contradictory relationship of heterogeneous elements31. The work is no longer an organic whole, it is put together by fragments32. The unity which is articulated is now a mediated one.
e. The non-organic totality
In his Theory of the Avant-garde, Peter Bürger marks a distinction between two types of works: the organic work, in which individual elements have meaning only when they relate to a whole, and the non-organic work, in which individual parts have a much higher degree of autonomy and can be seen both individually or in groups. While in the organic work, the parts and the whole coincide with each other and give the spectator a complete, rationalized representation of a particular moment or event, in the non-organic work, the parts do not automatically coincide with each
other because the work is no longer put together according to the congruence of part and whole but is rather put together by fragments, thus enabling the formation of a non-linear whole. Because of its adherence to fragmentation as one on its fundamental principles of pictorial organization, the non-organic work enables signs, motifs of different origins to exist side by side into a single work. The method of fragmentation is used to form a new kind of totality (fragmentation toward totalization)33.
In the non-organic work, unity is achieved neither by the harmony of individual elements enabling the combination of the parts in a single theme nor by the subordination by one element of the other elements. Instead, unity is achieved by the embodiment of opposing relationships between the elements. And, because the parts do not constitute a coherent whole and the whole does not depend on the relation of the parts, the work, according to Bürger, leads the spectator to move to another level of interpretation: instead of trying to grasp the meaning though the nexus of whole and parts, the spectator now directs his attention to the principle of construction that determines the structure of the work34.
Because of its reliance on multiplicity, fragmentation, heterogeneity and non-linear relationships, I consider Rauschenberg’s combine-painting period in its entirety to be non-organic. And, within the non-organicity of the combines, Rauschenberg seems to have developed a system in which the relationships between the elements range from non-hierarchical to hierarchical. It is as if Rauschenberg had produced an organic (unified) body of works based upon a non-organic (fragmentary) structure that has evolved from non-hierarchical relationships (in the early combines - approximately 1953-1955) to hierarchical ones (in the later combines (1958-61)) when he began to incorporate larger and larger objects in painting and started dividing the elements more and more.
1. "Action Painting" is Harold Rosenberg’s terminology designating the dominant artistic movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Others, including Clement Greenberg, rejected that terminology and instead preferred referring to that particular body of works as "abstract expressionism". Each term conveys its own meaning and is the complete opposite of the other. While the former is closer to what Mikhail Bakhtin/Valentin Voloshinov has called "individualistic subjectivism" or individual expression, the latter is in closer relation to what he called "abstract objectivism" or the formal analysis of the specificity of the medium. See
Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1986.
2. George Heard Hamilton, "Painting in Contemporary America", The Burlington Magazine (May 1960), 197.
3. "Robert Rauschenberg", The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1981), 454.
4. Dorothy Gees Seckler, "Start of the New Season - New York", Art in America, vol. 49, no. 3 (1961), 85.
5. Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall Robert Rauschenberg and the Art of Our Time. New York, Garden City, Doubleday Company Inc., 1980.
6. Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall Robert Rauschenberg and the Art of Our Time, 182.
7. See Alain Jouffroy, "Rauschenberg". Les Prévoyants (Bruxelles, La Connaissance (1964) 1974), 146-147.
8. Alain Jouffroy. "Rauschenberg". Les Prévoyants, 150.
9. Alain Jouffroy, "Rauschenberg ou le déclic mental", Aujourd’hui, art et architecture, no 38 (septembre 1962), 23.
10. The elements of art, although represented by the limits of the frame, the support and the aesthetic organization of the elements of the work, are most importantly represented by the painterly marks which, as Jouffroy and Tomkins point out, are the most outstanding representation of modern pictorial expression turned into recent artistic convention.
11. Alain Jouffroy, "Rauschenberg ou le déclic mental", 23.
12. Rauschenberg’s appropriationnist process involves a manipulation of the signs of art (abstract expressionism) and a rupture with what had been done before, but not a rupture in the form of a negation, or a radical rejection of the signs of art but rather a rupture in the form of a distanciation, a redefinition by means of a re-contextualization of those signs. 13. Frederick Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society", The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays
on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Washington, Bay Press, 1983),
14. Youri Tynianov quoted by Elliott Moore in "L’oeuvre parodique de Robert Rauschenberg", Travaux sémiotiques, UQAM, no 3 (1984), 85.
15. It is my belief that the "gap" which Rauschenberg speaks of and which is at the very core of his pictorial argument has largely been brought about by the way in which Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg have oriented their criticism of artistic production of the 1940s and 1950s, in the way these discourses have been accepted and in the way the creation of these discourses have largely contributed in orienting the way we have seen - and continue to see - these paintings. It would seem that Rauschenberg’s pictorial intervention is in direct relation to Greenberg’s formalist theory and Rosenberg’s transcendentalist theory which made the production of the 1940s and 1950s a viable and legitimate form of artistic expression. Rauschenberg’s combines seem to present themselves as a response to both the purity and the autonomy which Greenberg associates to "abstract expressionism" and to Rosenberg’s belief that Action Painting is an extension of the inner-life of the artist, completely excluded from the tradition of art. The combines, it seems, are a response both to Greenberg’s position which seeks to demonstrate that painting is an autonomous phenomenon isolated not only from its social context (i.e. pictorial form is determined solely by the tradition of painting) but also from its artistic context (the distinctiveness of every form of art rests in the distinctiveness of its medium), and to Rosenberg’s position which attempts to show that painting is a purely individual act, excluded from its social and artistic context (painting is an act of individual liberation that goes beyond the structure of society and the tradition of art). Rauschenberg seems to work in the interstice of Greenberg’s and Rosenberg’s discourses, that is to say, in the interstice of "art as art" and "art as (inner) life". Rauschenberg combines in his works the legitimized gestural mark and the formal conventions of painting with a wide range of vernacular objects and materials which are at times two-dimensional and at others three-dimensional. By opposing ordinary objects (newspaper, ties, sleeves, pillows, light bulbs, photographs, cardboard boxes, buttons, cans, comic strips, etc.) to the medium of painting (the paint, the flat surface (wood panels or canvas), the organization of the elements), by integrating three-dimensional or sculptural elements to the pictorial surface, by incorporating not only Greenberg’s shallow depth but also a wide range of other illusionistic spaces (created by the juxtaposition of different images), Rauschenberg questions the inherent characteristics of painting as defined by Greenberg and opposes himself to see painting simply as a form of art in search of its technical essence. By adding objects which, according to Greenberg, do not belong to the essence of painting as such, and by adding sound, linguistic signs and verbal utterances, Rauschenberg questions whether art can actually be defined as a viable form of artistic expression solely of the grounds of the uniqueness of its medium. Accordingly, Rauschenberg also opposes himself to Rosenberg’s idea that art is essentially the expression of the inner-life of the artist and that one can actually liberate oneself from conventions, history and tradition. He decontextualizes the action painter’s brushmark by putting it in opposition to ordinary objects and materials. By placing the action painter’s gestural brushstroke in a new, different context - that of the combines - he reveals it to be what it actually is - substance - and therefore recalls that art is made possible only through the convention of signs.
16. Guilbaut’s use of the term "avant-garde" is different from Peter Burger's. For Guilbaut, the term refers to any new, oppositional art. Guilbaut uses it in a very general way. Bürger, as opposed to this, refers not to the "avant-garde", but more specifically to the "historical avant-garde" which refers to a specific moment in time, namely, the first decades of the twentieth century. By understanding the term in a very general way, Guilbaut is able to see abstract expressionism as avant-garde. I am inclined to believe that Bürger would see abstract expressionism as "modem", that is to say as autonomous and as specifically the type of art the historical avant-garde set out to destroy.
17. Serge Guilbaut. How New York Stole the Idea of Modem Art. Abstract Expressionism,
Freedom and the Cold War, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1983), 113.
18. Terry Eagleton would call it a "dark parody" of the avant-garde. Frederick Jameson would call it a pastiche of it.
19. Barbara Rose, "Dada Then and Now", Art International (January 1963), 24. It is interesting to notice that despite her apparent rejection of the similarity between Dada and the new wave of American artists which have developed an interest in the common object and the representational image, Rose - along with other critics - still insists on sustaining a reference to Dadaism by labelling the American production as "new", "neo" or "American" Dada. Rose’s apparent rejection of - but constant reference to - dadaism can make one wonder if the pre-Pop and the "neo-Dada" interpretations are the same thing after all. While stating that she does not consider Rauschenberg’s combines to be a revival of dadaism, Rose still refers to them as "neo-Dada". She includes in this category many artists that will later be called Pop. Consequently, Rose seems to consider "pre-Pop" as "neo" or "new" Dada - that is to say, as being an outcome of Dadaism. "New American Dada", as Rose calls it at first, involves a total acceptance of the institutionalized system of art. See Rose’s discussion on "New American Dada" in "Dada Then and Now" (1963) and on "Pop art" in
American Painting Since 1900 (first published in 1967).
20. Nicole Dubreuil-Blondin, La fonction critique dans le Pop art américain (Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1980), 61.
21. Dubreuil-Blondin. See, among others, pages 140 and 207. 22. Dubreuil-Blondin, 134.
23. Ibid.
24. Tomkins also sees Rauschenberg’s work to be different from that of Pop art: "Rauschenberg’s famous "gap" seemed to be a terrain unique to Rauschenberg. None of the Pop artists chose to work there - they were all pretty sure that what they were doing was making art." See Tomkins, Off the Wall, 183.
25. Jean Baudrillard, La société de consommation. Ses mythes, ses stmctures, (Paris, Denoël, 1970), 25.
26. Baudrillard, La société de consommation, 176. 27. Baudrillard, 179.
28. Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass-Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press), 146.
29. While some critics may argue that the critical value of Pop art is precisely that it has laid bare the commodity character of contemporary art production, my point is not to discuss the pertinence of such an interpretation but rather to show how Rauschenberg’s combines do not function on the same premises and in the same way Pop does even though Pop might well be seen by some to have a critical function.
30. Baudrillard, 177. While Baudrillard explains the state of culture in capitalist society very well, he seems to have given up on its potential transformative power: total integration is all that is left. He says: Tart a perdu son pouvoir d’opposer". "The End of Utopia and the Concept of Revolution", The Convergence of Art and Philosophy. Colloquium organized by the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Art, Department of Art and Art Education, New York University, presented at Michael Schimmel Auditorium, Tish Hall, NYU May 23, 1989.
31. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, Translated by Michael Shaw, Theory and History of Literature, volume 4 (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1984), 82.
32. Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 70.
33. This new form of pictorial unity on which Rauschenberg relies in his combine-paintings was brought about by the historical avant-garde movements. For a discussion of the organic and non-organic work, see Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, chapters four and five. 34. Bürger, 81.
