Offer Waterman - Robert Rauschenburg: Transfer Drawings by Offer Waterman Gallery

Robert Rauschenberg â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Transfer Drawings from the 1950s and 1960s

Offer Waterman, London in association with Jonathan O'Hara Gallery, New York

Contents

4 – 5

Foreword Offer Waterman & Jonathan O’Hara

6 – 17

Five Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings and Their Times Lewis Kachur

18 –71

Plates 1 – 26

72 – 77

Plural Energies: Rauschenberg’s Impact on British Pop Marco Livingstone

78 – 82

List of Works

Foreword

It is with great pleasure that we present a selection of Robert Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings dating from 1958 to 1969. This is the first exhibition in London dedicated solely to this important body of work and we hope that it will provide an opportunity to expand and deepen its audience’s understanding of Rauschenberg’s intellectual potency, artistic authenticity and his continuing legacy within a global art history. The mystery and beauty of Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings lie in their openness to investigation. Their impact is instantaneous yet their imagery reveals itself to us slowly, encouraging further contemplation, offering divergent interpretations and rewarding inquisitiveness. Rauschenberg stated in 1987 that the strongest thing about his work is that he chose to 'ennoble the ordinary'. This selection of drawings, which unite a myriad of images and text plucked from contemporary life – athletes and political figures, news headlines and advertisements – reflect this assertion wonderfully.

A number of people have helped us enormously in staging this exhibition. We are indebted to Steven Schlesinger, without whom this project would not have been possible. We would especially like to thank Antonio Homem and Queenie Wong at the Sonnabend Collection Foundation and those private collectors, who do not wish to be named, for lending their outstanding drawings to the exhibition. Their generosity is truly appreciated. We would also like to offer our sincere thanks to David White, Gina Guy, Francine Snyder, Kayla Jenkins and all the team at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for supporting this exhibition and for sharing their invaluable knowledge and the Foundation’s archives with us. And finally, many thanks to Lewis Kachur and Marco Livingstone who have lent their voices to this catalogue in two illuminating essays, their insight is deeply appreciated.

Offer Waterman Jonathan O’Hara October 2016

Rauschenberg with three transfer drawings in his Front Street studio, New York, 1958. Work in background is Untitled, 1955. Image courtesy of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York.

Five Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings and Their Times Lewis Kachur

The Drawing Room In 1968, his most prolific year for solvent transfer drawings, Robert Rauschenberg allowed himself to be photographed by Harry Shunk while creating one of the 75 drawings produced that year. 1 The resultant 25 photo frames are the most complete documentation of his transfer drawing process. The photos were taken in a dedicated drawing room at the front of the second floor of Rauschenberg’s studio at 381 Lafayette Street, in an East Village building he had occupied from 1966. Entered off the stairwell landing through a heavily framed wooden door, it had two

windows on the west side, overlooking the busy multilane Lafayette Street (fig. 1). We see the windows raised, as Rauschenberg remarked, ‘I keep the windows open, to let life into the studio‘. 2 Placed between the windows, two rectangular tables span the room. The one nearest the windows holds six cans of Ronsonol lighter fluid, a watercolour set and tubes of paint, an assortment of pencils, pens, brushes, rags, a ruler, a tape dispenser, a bowl, a glass of water, and a pile of pages torn from magazines. A view from the opposite direction shows that the visible pages have images of cars, frequent presences in these drawings. The other table holds two

Fig. 1 Robert Rauschenberg, artist’s studio, Lafayette Street, New York, 1968. Also shown in fig. 2, p 8, fig. 3, p 9 & fig. 9, p 16.

additional drawings in process, of a standard size, about 22 by 28 inches, one of which can be identified as Soft Focus, 1968 3, and two small stacks of newspapers, the tabloid Daily News and the August New York Times, a concise summary of media low and high. There are further stacks of perhaps other printed matter at the far end. In several photos Rauschenberg holds down the printed source with his left hand and rubs a dry pen nib with his right to imprint the moistened media image onto the drawing sheet (fig. 2). In fig. 3 he leans over the table, and the act of drawing becomes bodily, as if he is pressing himself into the sheet. In several, there is an intensity in his focus as he places and rubs the chosen image or, in one case, a text entitled ‘Violence and Crime.’ In one shot he laughs, in another he smokes. In several, a large pile of crumpled, discarded pages is visible under the table (fig. 9, p16).

Fig. 2

Only in fig.1 do we notice a television in the corner, somewhat surprising in the creative space of the studio. As many critics have suggested, Rauschenberg is a major artist of the television age. With the drawings, the resemblance becomes almost physical in that the rectangular sheets are similar in size to the TV screen. Also, early analogue televisions were generally black and white, and prone to fuzziness or static, as is the imagery in the transfers. Rauschenberg has said, ‘I don’t want my personality to come out through the piece. That’s why I keep the television on all the time. And I keep the windows open. I want my paintings to be reflections of life’. 4 Not that the mass media provides a direct inspiration, but rather that the artist flows along in the river of media output, and is framed by it.

Fig.â&#x20AC;&#x2020;3

Fig. 4 Complete Relaxation, 1958 (upper centre detail) See Plate 2

Complete Relaxation, 1958 An idyllic sounding title names a work that is much about doubling. This is especially true of the pair of perpendicular figures at the centre, placed on either side of a protectivesuited diver (or astronaut?). The pair to the right is slightly fainter, as a second use of a source image would be, and they strongly recall the Dante and Virgil stand-ins in the contemporary Dante illustrations,

begun the same year. The woman exercising at upper left is also a doubled identical image, stacked vertically and the circular diagram at top centre is excised and doubled at some distance, at the lower left corner, just below a pair of jewels. The circle proves to be part of a diagrammatic land map, labelled ‘Acquire for Addition to Division’. It shows three streets: Dayton and

Newtown Lanes, and Main Street. The former two are indeed parallel lanes that intersect with Main Street in East Hampton, Long Island, a popular destination for post-war artists. Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns visited the area the following summer. They were part of a large group photograph by John Gruen that included artists Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan on nearby Water Mill beach. 5

Fig. 5 Untitled (de Gaulle), 1961, (lower centre detail) See Plate 4

Untitled (de Gaulle), 1961 The French colonial war in Algeria began in 1954 and lasted until independence was granted in 1962. It was a conflict that Rauschenberg likely heard more about during his visits to Paris in late April to May, and June 1961, where he made Untitled (de Gaulle). The French president’s face indeed appears three times, at centre left, and his name once. De Gaulle’s rise to the presidency was directly tied to the war. In May 1958 a military junta in Algiers demanded the appointment of de Gaulle as premier, which occurred on 1st June, and in January 1959 he became the first president of the Fifth Republic. Formal negotiations for Algerian independence began on 20th May 1961, but broke down and were suspended on 13th June. 6 During that time, after midnight on 5th June, several gun battles broke out in Paris between Algerian Muslims and French police, resulting in eleven Algerians being killed and eight French policemen wounded. Rauschenberg, as a recent visitor to Paris about to

return there, undoubtedly took note. In Untitled (de Gaulle) the word ‘Alger’ or ‘Algerie’ is repeated four times, and there are two maps of the country in North Africa, clearly marking this as Rauschenberg’s main focus. There is an image of tanks at the lower centre, near the headline ‘Apres une Nuit Drama-tique dans la capitale’. It is unclear if the capital referred to is Algiers, or Paris, or both. To the lower left, there is a clearer headline ‘Le territoire en etat d’Attente’, more clearly Algeria, along with single suggestive words like ‘anxious’. At the upper right, a sizeable ‘Appel a la Population’ is directed to the citizens of Paris. Most noticeably, the word ‘Parachute’ stutters in unevenly aligned large block capitals from the mid-left to the centre. This seemingly evokes the parachute imagery in the Combines, but in the spring of 1961 this word refers to the 22nd April Algiers mutiny of elements of the French military

occupation, including paratroopers, who sought to derail the independence negotiations in favour of continued colonisation. They threatened an attack on Paris, but the Air Force refused to fly them, and their putsch was overturned a few days later on 25th April. Many businesses in Paris were shuttered around this ‘anxious’ time, including in part Galerie Cordier, where Rauschenberg’s first Paris show opened on 27th April. 7 The words and images taken from French media are an instance of Rauschenberg absorbing his immediate context. As he did not read French, most of the chosen words are simple cognates yet this drawing indicates that he had grasped current events and the state of heightened alert in Paris. As he travelled increasingly in the 1960s, transfer drawing became his preferred mode of continuing to work on the road. As such, this medium also took on a layer of local currentness, and the diaristic. 11

Fig.â&#x20AC;&#x2020;6 Headline, 1962, (mid left detail) See Plate 7

Headline, 1962 The civil rights movement was a topic permeating Rauschenberg’s works from the mid-1950s. At first it is conveyed implicitly by images of the ‘Great Emancipator’ Abraham Lincoln, or black and white athletes in a foot-race. 8 By 1962, the issue was becoming more urgent. Andy Warhol was galvanised by reports of police dogs set on black marchers a little later in his Race Riot series of 1963 – 64. Warhol was the first owner, probably by exchange, of this drawing, whose very title recalls his newspaper paintings of 1961 – 62. Rauschenberg famously visited Warhol’s studio in mid-September 1962, and afterwards collaborated in providing family photos for Warhol’s Young Rauschenberg and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, both 1962. As opposed to the more even distribution of word and image in Untitled (de Gaulle), Headline is mostly composed of images which radiate out from the densest area to the left of the centre, allowing more blank space around the

perimeter. Around this centre are portrait heads of NY Senator Jacob Javits, Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, signalling a political context. The last is attached to a headline fragment ‘Hits Trail’, implying campaign travel. President Kennedy appears to be speaking and thus it anticipates the photograph that Rauschenberg will later silkscreen in paintings like Retroactive, 1964. At mid-left is the striking picture of a car boot emblazoned with the stars and bars of the Confederate flag, while a smaller flag flies in the front. Directly below is the transfer of the car’s licence plate, from Mississippi locale, home of some of the most pointed battles of the civil rights movement. At this moment, the state was especially torn over the integration of its university, where James Meredith had applied to become the first black student. 9 On 22nd September 1962, his effort was blocked by Governor Barnett. Court procedures followed and

the university was ordered to admit Meredith. Turmoil followed and The New York Times ran a front page banner headline on 1st October 1962: NEGRO AT MISSISSIPPI U. AS BARNETT YIELDS 3 DEAD IN CAMPUS RIOT, 6 MARSHALS SHOT. GUARDSMEN MOVE IN. KENNEDY MAKES PLEA. The Ole Miss riot continued to be reported over the next days. No doubt, this context explains the Mississippi car, the army troop photo at lower centre cutting through a large question mark and perhaps also, the images of President Kennedy and AttorneyGeneral Robert Kennedy, who were prominently involved in the Federal response. Nonetheless, there are a panoply of other themes in Headline, including sports once again. At the very centre is a small square oasis of calm and beauty, epitomised by older art, a frequent point of reference, in this case Vermeer’s renowned Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Fig. 7 Political Folly, 1968 (lower left detail) See Plate 12

Political Folly, 1968 ‘The 1968 Democratic Convention, held on 26th – 29th August, stands as an important event in the nation’s political and cultural history. The violence between police and anti-Vietnam war protesters in the streets and parks of Chicago gave the city a black-eye.’ 10 Ten Chicago galleries responded to these televised events by organising the oneday group exhibition Response to Violence in Our Society. It was held on 2nd November, just before the election, with proceeds going to the American Civil Liberties Union. 11

Political Folly was made for this exhibition and thus recalls Election, 1960 as among Rauschenberg’s most directly political drawings. The largest face is that of Senator Eugene McCarthy, the leading antiwar presidential candidate following the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy on 5th June. To his left are protesters gathered in a Chicago park, topped by a sign McCarthy/Peace. Further scenes of youthful protesters appear in the middle and at the right edge, where they crowd around the General John Logan Memorial statue in Grant Park. McCarthy’s rival, the victorious Democratic Party nominee

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and his wife pictured in profile are included at top right, upside down. Rauschenberg’s preference is clearly conveyed, in both scale and orientation, as well as the location of the signature at the lower left, beneath the protestors. The words at the bottom are interrelated. The masthead of the New York tabloid Daily News puns on the name of Chicago’s controversial Mayor Richard Daley, who was blamed by many for the excesses of the Chicago police and the words angled nearby, ‘Task Force Reports to Mayor’ suggest inquiries that were held after the riots.

Fig. 8 Orange Body, 1969 (lower right detail) See Plate 26

Orange Body, 1969 The main images in Orange Body are the two male heads at the mid right, one a football player, the other an astronaut. As helmeted men, in close proximity and alike in scale, an analogy is clearly drawn between them. One suspects it is of a heroic nature, given Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm for space exploration. 12 Beginning in late 1968, there was increased activity in the Apollo programme, with four missions preceding Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon on 20th July 1969. It is likely that Rauschenberg depicts one of the Apollo astronauts prominent in the news. There are three astronauts in Untitled, 1968 (RRF 68.d064, Plate 22). One can read the name Borman on the far left suit who was joined by Lovell and Anders on Apollo 8 which launched successfully on 21st December 1968 as part of the Lunar Orbiter programme. Athletics has long been a theme that Rauschenberg has featured. This is carried further with the running baseball player as a ‘marginalia’ below. He seems as quick and agile

as a Merce Cunningham dancer and, indeed, a dancing couple does appear at the upper right. The runner appears to be the St Louis Cardinals’ number 20, left fielder Lou Brock, especially noted for his speed. From 1966 to 1974 he led the National League in stolen bases every year except 1970. Isolated as an image at the lower right and topped by a string of orange lights, Brock is the most likely to be associated with Orange Body, written like a caption below his back foot. As early as the runners in Rebus, 1955, Rauschenberg has shown an awareness of the role of race in athletics. In Orange Body the theme is furthered by the bold headline at the lower left: ‘Deadlines Scrapped Over Desegregation’. Imagery relating to the civil rights struggle is one of the prominent themes in the transfer drawings. The combination of black man, Cunningham dancers, and astronauts occurs the year before in Untitled, 1968 (RRF 68.D011). There are six works titled in the format of a colour accompanied by the word Body. Along with Orange and Yellow,

there are Grey, Blue, Red, Green, as well as a seventh, the related Light Body. They all date to 1968 – 69. This is by far the largest and most significant series within Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings of the 1960s. Of those that have been traced, each takes the format of a rectangular box saturated with the title colour, with smaller scale imagery projecting into the white border. The sheets are all horizontally oriented and measure about 22 by 30 inches, thus the consistent size amplifies the unity of the series. Amusingly, Rauschenberg typically signs the works in the title colour, as here. Other images in Orange Body include a golf ball, liquids (Fresca soda and Listerine mouthwash), a suited man collecting rocks (another astronaut?), an insect (flea?) and a radar station. Orange Body thus samples a rich cross-section of Americana, ranging from the microscopic to the cosmic, and from the supermarket shelves to the space programme which, in this very year, fulfilled John F Kennedy’s goal to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. 15

Words These drawings begin just before the Combines, yet they anticipate the photographic appropriation of the silkscreen paintings of the early 1960s. Like the latter, they directly incorporate media images along with words and letters. Both are reversed in the transfer process, though reversed photographic images are significantly more legible than the language texts. Indeed, we can easily overlook that the pictures are flipped horizontally. Though thus less easily perceived, the reversed texts are equally significant, and engage in the play of word and image as they do when pasted directly into the surfaces of the Combines. By the mid-1960s, ‘ready-made’ newspaper or magazine texts incorporated in these drawings increase significantly and track the socialpolitical events which engage the artist. These bring to mind the levels of association and word play in Picasso’s Cubist collages with newsprint. 13

Fig. 9

In 1968, the amount of word imagery increases greatly, heightening the ‘torn from the headlines’ sensibility. Rauschenberg even experiments with drawings made entirely of words. Some mirror the layout of a newspaper (Porch, 1968, rrf 68.d040, Plate 18), in others, ads blare for our attention. At times, words cluster in block forms, shaped by pencil outlines (Volt, 1968, rrf 68.d032, Plate 14). Later, word-blocks take on an independent life, floated on sheets (Allocation 1, 1969, rrf 69.d001, Plate 24; Untitled, 1969, rrf 69.d003, Plate 25). These are forerunners to the Currents series of early 1970, which is entirely composed of collaged or transferred newspaper clippings.

Conclusion As a mode of imaging, the transfer drawings are shot full of contingency and paradox: notably that the ‘hatchings’, which appear hand-done, are not, in fact, drawn in a traditional sense, but indirectly scratched out of the source image from behind. As indirect markings, then, they have been analogised to Sigmund Freud’s ‘mystic writingpad’ metaphor for the perceptual traces on the layers of consciousness. But we might think of them equally as levels of perception, variable levels of attention in the ‘vernacular glance’ of the urban dweller. 14 They are insistently indexical, bearing a one-to-one relation to the media source image. They are also postmodern in that they convey the look of shading and hatching, without actually shading or hatching, thus establishing a new notion of what expression through ‘drawing’ could be. As a historical matter, Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings are crucial as the most consistent media that he worked with throughout his transition from the sculptural Combines to the silkscreen paintings and beyond. As Rauschenberg said at the time, they 'grew out of curiosity – could I deal with images in an oil painting as I had dealt with them in the transfer drawings and the lithographs?' 15 These transfer drawings should be recognised as a watershed in American art, marking the beginning of the age of direct media incorporation. Rauschenberg’s pioneering transfers ‘draw’ by their very process of appropriating media, well before the appropriation of the larger scale silkscreen paintings of the early 1960s. As Rauschenberg said, 'I think art is more like the real world when it’s made out of it.' 16

1 Harry Shunk and Janos Kender, Robert Rauschenberg, artist’s studio,Lafayette Street, New York, 1968 2 Barbara Rose, Rauschenberg, Vintage, 1987, p72 3 I am indebted to Helen Hsu of the Rauschenberg Foundation for this identification. The Foundation holds 14 prints from the 25 shots, presumably all those that Shunk printed for the artist. 4 Rose, Ibid 5 Reproduced: http://artistandstudio.tumblr.com/ post/34712886373/john-jonas-gruen-flying-point-beach water-mill 6 ‘Chronology of Algeria Conflict’, New York Times, 4th February, 1962, p161. The Guggenheim retrospective chronology indicates Rauschenberg was in Paris for events on 20th and 28th June. He also attended his gallery opening there on 27th April, then travelled to Stockholm before returning. 7 Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art, MIT Press, 2010, pp29 – 31 8 Kachur, 2007, p9 9 I am indebted to Jonathan O’Hara for drawing my attention to this story. 10 ’Brief History of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention,’ CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/ conventions/chicago/facts/chicago68/index.shtml 11 1968: Art and Politics in Chicago, DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, 2008, p19 12 Robert Saltonstall Mattison, Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, Yale University Press, 2003, Chapter 3. Remarkably, NASA invited Rauschenberg to Cape Canaveral to watch the Apollo 11 launch in July 1969. 13 As famously developed in Robert Rosenblum’s essay ‘Picasso and the Typography of Cubism,’ Penrose and Golding (eds.), Picasso in Retrospect, 1881 – 1973, Praeger, New York, 1973 14 Brian O’Doherty, ‘Robert Rauschenberg: The Sixties,’ American Masters: The Voice and the Myth, Random House, New York, p201 15 G R Swenson, ‘Rauschenberg Paints a Picture,’ Art News 62, April 1963, p67 16 Notes from an interview with Calvin Tomkins, ‘Late 1950s,’ Tomkins Papers IV.C.19, (2 recto), Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, speaking of images taken from magazines.

Plates

A-Muse 1958 solvent transfer with watercolour and graphite on buff wove paper 23 ½ x 35 ½ inches / 59.7 x 90.2 cm signed and dated verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 58.D017 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-17

Complete Relaxation 1958 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, graphite and black crayon on Strathmore paper mounted on board 22 ¾ x 28 ¾ inches / 57.8 x 73 cm signed and dated verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 58.D032 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-29

Untitledâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1961 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, graphite and coloured pencil on paper 14 Â˝ x 23 inches / 36.8 x 58.4 cm Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 61.D004 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-45

Untitled (de Gaulle) 1961 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on paper 22 ½ x 29 ½ inches / 57.1 x 74.9 cm signed and dated verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 61.D011

January First 1962 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Strathmore paper 22 ¾ x 28 ¾ inches / 57.8 x 73 cm Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 62.D001 Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, Registry# I.S.2

Snow Call 1962 solvent transfer with watercolour and graphite on Strathmore paper 22 ⅞ x 28 ¾ inches / 58.1 x 73 cm Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 62.D005 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-51

Headline 1962 solvent transfer with watercolour and graphite on paper 37 ¼ x 45 ¼ inches / 94.6 x 114.9 cm signed, dated and titled Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 62.D015 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-61

Umpire 1965 solvent transfer with coloured ink, silkscreen, collage and tape on paper 35 ½ x 31 ½ inches / 90.2 x 80 cm titled verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 65.D010 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-83

Paragraph IIâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1966 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on paper mounted on board 15 x 20 inches / 38.1 x 50.8 cm signed, titled and dated verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 66.D008 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-102

Untitled 1968 solvent transfer with gouache and watercolour on Arches paper 22 ⅜ x 29 ⅞ inches / 56.8 x 75.9 cm signed and dated Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D014 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-133

Untitledâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on paper 22 Âź x 30 inches / 56.5 x 76.2 cm signed and dated Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D020 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-139

Political Follyâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1968 solvent transfer with gouache and watercolour on paper 22 Â˝ x 30 inches / 57.1 x 76.2 cm signed and dated; signed verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D030

Co-op 1968 solvent transfer with coloured indian ink on Arches paper 22 ⅝ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.4 x 75.8 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D031

Volt 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil and graphite on Arches paper 22 ⅝ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.5 x 75.9 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D032 Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, Registry# I.S.24

Cabinet 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Arches paper 22 ⅝ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.4 x 75.8 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D033

Funnelâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Arches paper 22 Âž x 30 inches / 57.7 x 76.2 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D035

Shake 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and coloured pencil on Arches paper 22 ⅝ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.5 x 75.9 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D036

Porch 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Arches paper 22 ¾ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.7 x 75.8 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D040

Stroke 1968 solvent transfer with coloured indian ink and graphite on Arches paper 22 ¾ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.8 x 75.9 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive number RRF 68.D042 Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, Registry# I.S.21

Play-Off 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, coloured pencil, graphite and ink on Arches paper 22 ⅝ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.5 x 75.9 cm signed and dated; titled verso* Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D045 Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Paris, Registry# I.S.28

Untitled 1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil and graphite on Arches paper 22 ½ x 29 ⅞ inches / 57.1 x 75.9 cm signed and dated Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D060

Untitledâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil and graphite on Arches paper 22 x 29 Â˝ inches / 55.9 x 74.9 cm signed and dated Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D064

Apologyâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;1968 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Arches paper 22 Â˝ x 30 inches / 57.2 x 76.2 cm signed and dated Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 68.D073

Allocation I 1969 solvent transfer with gouache and graphite on Arches paper in two parts 22 ½ x 29 ¾ inches / 57.1 x 75.6 cm, each sheet Top sheet: titled and inscribed ‘(in 2 parts)’ verso Bottom sheet: signed, dated, titled and inscribed ‘(in 2 parts)’ verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 69.D001 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-141

Untitled 1969 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour and graphite on Arches paper in two parts 22 ½ x 29 ¾ inches / 57.1 x 75.6 cm, each sheet Top sheet: inscribed ‘drawing in 2 parts, part 1’ verso Bottom sheet: signed, dated and inscribed ‘drawing in 2 parts, part II’ verso Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 69.D003 Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, Registry# LCD-143

Orange Body 1969 solvent transfer with gouache, watercolour, coloured pencil and graphite on Arches paper 22 ½ x 29 ½ inches / 57.2 x 75.6 cm signed, dated and titled Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archive no. RRF 69.D019

Plural Energies: Rauschenberg’s impact on British Pop Marco Livingstone

Robert Rauschenberg’s immense influence on the early history of American Pop Art is well known. His openness to found imagery, particularly photographic imagery derived directly from the mass media, his determinedly urban aesthetic, his bold incorporation of mass-produced objects into the very fabric of his Combine paintings and sculptures, his confident appropriations of iconic motifs from art historical sources and his novel methods for replicating found images (including transfer drawings and silkscreen printing) gave permission to Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Jim Dine and other artists working in New York and elsewhere in the USA in the early 1960s. It is still open to discussion about whether it was Rauschenberg or Warhol who first introduced silkscreened photographic images into their paintings in 1962. Warhol undoubtedly found it natural to make the transition into this semi-mechanical way of creating painted images because of his explorations of blotted line ink drawings in the mid-1950s and his use of stencilling procedures in his early Pop paintings. Nevertheless, the relationship between the transfer drawing methods and the move into silkscreening in Rauschenberg’s art is so self-evidently close that one can easily accept the possibility either of his priority 72

in employing in, an art context, a medium previously deemed appropriate only for commercial purposes, or the independence of his move into this previously unexplored territory. Either way, the use of silkscreening in painting by both artists had an undoubted international influence for years to come. Equally, the appending by Rauschenberg of functioning mechanical objects including clocks and radios to the painted surface, completely in tune with his oftquoted 1959 statement about working in the gap between art and life, proved irresistible to younger artists as a way of bringing real time into the art work and of suggesting the eradication of a boundary between the art work and the ‘real’ world in which it is displayed. Some of the great Wesselmann works of the 1960s, such as Interior #2, 1964 – which includes not only a photographic image of the city skyline behind a real window screen, but also a working fan, clock and neon light – would be unthinkable without Rauschenberg’s groundbreaking example. 1 Less well documented but no less important than Rauschenberg’s influence on his fellow Americans was the way in which the first sightings of his work in Britain (initially in the form of magazine reproductions) were instrumental for setting in motion the development of Pop

Art on this side of the Atlantic. The delectable painterliness of Rauschenberg’s proto-Pop works of the mid-1950s, and the instinctive and spontaneous way in which he manipulated collage in his early Combine paintings – and, at one remove, in the transfer drawings and silkscreened paintings – struck a particular chord with British artists, who remained more attuned to a European painterly sensibility than the American Pop artists, who gravitated to a harsher, ‘cleaner’ and more graphic style closer to their commercial sources. A group of painters who arrived as MA students at the Royal College of Art in autumn 1959 were soon labelled the pioneers of British Pop Art, despite the resistance some displayed to this tag. These artists – including one American, R.B. Kitaj, along with David Hockney, Allen Jones, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips – were all seen to have broken ranks both with abstraction and the more conservative and traditional approaches to representational painting that had preceded them. In an essay titled ‘Prototypes of Pop’, published in 1988, I enumerated their shared characteristics: ‘Between 1960 and 1962 […] the links uniting the work of the 1959 generation were strong, encompassing within single pictures contrasting styles and images plucked from disparate sources (a form of representation at once immediately legible but anti-illusionistic), and an openness to a wide range of sources including, but not limited to, mass-produced objects, diagrams, advertisements, photographs and other material previously considered outside the realm of fine art. Among the appropriated stylistic elements were devices from abstract painting, although admiration for their rigorous design was often tempered by an examination of their potential as agents of communication when used in a more accessible, representational context.’ 2 What strikes me now on re-reading this description is how accurately those words could also be used for the paintings and drawings that Robert Rauschenberg had

begun making in New York over half a decade earlier, news of which had already begun to filter through to London, in those slow-moving, pre-internet days, through the pages of art magazines. It was only in 1964, when Bryan Robertson presented a stunning retrospective of Rauschenberg’s work at the Whitechapel Gallery, that the work of this highly original and influential American artist was finally seen in force in London. By then, the impact of his freewheeling, ground-breaking aesthetic – with its appropriation of found images, its interweaving of high art and popular culture, its deft transitions from painterliness to photographicallyderived imagery – had so permeated the new directions loosely but conveniently classed together as Pop Art that his influence did not even need to be remarked upon. However important his example, and notwithstanding the great respect that younger artists on this side of the Atlantic had for his work, Rauschenberg was by no means the sole progenitor of Pop Art in Britain. Jasper Johns, who was Rauschenberg’s equally inventive and influential comradein-arms, friend, one-time lover and studio neighbour in the mid-1950s, was a huge source of inspiration, too. Another American painter, Larry Rivers, also helped open the door to a new kind of figuration, particularly for the more painterly and autobiographical early work of such artists as Hockney and Jones. Closer to home, Richard Hamilton, whose cerebral proto-Pop works were something of a secret even to London artists until they were shown together in an important solo show in 1964; the sculptor, collagist and printmaker Eduardo Paolozzi, a leading light with Hamilton in the Independent Group during the early 1950s; and Peter Blake, who had completed his studies at the Royal College in 1956, had all played a part, too, in preparing the ground for the emergence of Pop Art as a vibrant international movement in the early 1960s. But even for those slightly older artists, and particularly for Blake, Rauschenberg was a thrilling innovator whose very openness of attitude made possible any number of new directions – to such an extent that his influence can be said to have conditioned the future of British art for years to come in often intangible ways. 73

The impact of Rauschenberg’s work on other artists, in Britain as well as in the USA and elsewhere, has thankfully rarely taken the form of stylistic imitation. Where the vision of Picasso, to take the most obvious example, was often so overwhelming to acolytes that their work struggled to rise above the level of mimicry, Rauschenberg’s art served more as a prompt for each artist to consider the discovery of any number of unconventional approaches through which to establish their own personal artistic identities. In this respect, he was one of the most marvellous liberators in the history of late 20th-century art. He helped pave the way not only for Pop Art, from which he was always careful to maintain a certain distance, but also for Conceptual Art, Process Art, Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, Performance Art and photography, in every area stubbornly maintaining his individuality and separateness.

Fig. 10 Peter Phillips, For Men Only – Starring MM and BB, 1961, oil and collage on canvas, 108 ⅛ x 60 ⅛ ins / 274.5 x 152.5 cm. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.

There are, to be sure, some concrete ways, some of them even stylistic, in which Rauschenberg’s art and, in particular, the methods employed in the transfer drawings with which he first experimented in the mid1950s, infiltrated the work of British artists associated with Pop. In the early 1960s, some of the Royal College artists, for instance, played with incorporating the direct imprint of texts and images from newspapers by rubbing their pages onto the still-wet surfaces of their painted canvases. The term they used for this technique, ‘tonking’, came from the British surgeon, painter and teacher Henry Tonks (1862 – 1937), who impressed newsprint onto his canvases as a way of speeding up the drying of the oil paint. The deliberateness with which the Pop artists chose either words or images to be ‘etched’ into the paint, often as a witty way of punning on or augmenting the contemporary visual subject matter of their pictures, was very much closer to Rauschenberg. In paintings such as Phillips’ For Men Only – Starring MM and BB, 1961 (fig. 10) and Boshier’s England’s Glory, 1962, (fig. 11), the procedure serves moreover as a way of drawing us in to scrutinise the surface. Phillips recalled that his formative interest in the work of such early modernists as Fernand Léger and Max Ernst prepared him to be receptive to

Johns and Rauschenberg when, as a student, he first saw reproductions of their work in magazines brought back by a girlfriend from a visit to New York: ‘Obviously I was incredibly impressed by their way of working.’ 3 In Burlesque Baby Throw, 1961, presented in the guise of a funfair game, Phillips produced his own playful twist on Rauschenberg’s Combines, fixing metal rings to the work’s surface to imply the possibility of removing them and throwing them onto the hooks painted within the image in the hope of winning a prize. Rauschenberg’s influence wasn’t only felt at the Royal College. A slightly younger and equally gifted artist who studied at the Slade, Colin Self, and who focused his energies primarily on drawings, devised his own take on transfer procedures – for example, in a group of watercolours made in the late 1960s depicting the interiors of Art Deco cinemas: he simply co-opted transfer images given free with chewing gum to stand in for the films being projected on his imaginary cinema screens. Earlier, in some of his mid-1960s Fall-out Shelter drawings, he had combined motifs drawn with detailed intensity in pencil with photographic images transferred in Rauschenberg’s manner. 4

Fig. 11 Derek Boshier, England’s Glory, 1962, oil on canvas, 49 ⅝ x 39 ¾ ins / 126 x 101 cm. Museum Sztuki, Lodzi.

London Pop artists often had collage as the basis of their work, giving them a more natural kinship with Rauschenberg than with those American Pop or proto-Pop artists for whom collage was not a central working tool. The Royal College artist who perhaps learned most from him, Kitaj, though resistant to the Pop label and to popular culture, was generous in acknowledging his work, which he remembers seeing as early as 1950 – 51, when he was studying in New York at the Cooper Union Institute. 5 The debt to Rauschenberg can be seen in paintings by Kitaj such as Reflections on Violence, 1962, 6 a vivid instance of a compositional technique that Kitaj used to term ‘plural energies’, very closely attuned to Rauschenberg’s earlier adaptation of the ‘all-over painting’ concept of the Abstract Expressionists. The more clearly defined grid structure of Specimen Musings of a Democrat, 1961 (fig. 12), based on 75

an abstruse 13th-century source found in a scholarly journal, is reminiscent of Rauschenberg paintings such as Charlene, 1954 or Rebus, 1955. 7

Fig. 12 R. B. Kitaj, Specimen Musings of a Democrat, 1961, oil and collage on canvas, 39 ¾ x 50 ins / 101.6 x 127 cm. Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through the Art Fund), Chichester

Though Kitaj never employed silkscreening in his paintings, he did use it extensively from 1963 in his editioned graphic works, describing his involvement with the medium as ‘a quite feverish form of “release” for my collagist madness […].’ It was almost exclusively in these prints that he made extensive use of photographs and other images reproduced photomechanically (including illustrations, works by other artists, found texts and book covers). He once took issue with me when I described photographic images as potentially more accurate than handmade ones in their observational descriptiveness, while giving special credit to Rauschenberg in his highly personal use of photography. 8 Of all the British Pop artists it is Blake, one of the undoubted pioneers of the movement in the mid-1950s, who has most consistently drawn sustenance from Rauschenberg’s work and credited him as an influence, repeatedly citing him, with Johns, as one of his favourite artists. He was well prepared to act on the implications of the works of both of these artists when he first saw them reproduced in the late 1950s, and under their influence took one stage further the object quality of his own earlier paintings. Blake has been a lifelong devotee to collage since the age of 24, making his first works in the medium in about 1956 after being introduced to the work of Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst by fellow painter Richard Smith. A little later he became aware of the work of Joseph Cornell and Hannah Höch. 9 Given that Rauschenberg, too, seems to have been spurred by the example of the Dadaists and the Surrealists, and that Schwitters, in particular, was a point of reference for his highly evocative use of printed paper ephemera as elements within his Combine paintings of the 1950s, it is not surprising that Blake should have been immediately entranced by his discovery of Rauschenberg’s work, which gave him the stimulus to continue further in this direction.

At his 2010 solo show at Waddington Galleries, London, Homage 10 x 5: Blake’s Artists, Blake presented groups of collages in homage to Ernst, Höch, Rauschenberg (fig. 13) and others. In a statement published online at the time of the publication of a set of limited-edition screenprints translated from these collages, Blake acknowledged Rauschenberg as ‘an enormous influence’ on him since the 1950s, describing ‘his’ ‘Rauschenbergs’ as ‘a very formalised version of his work’: ‘I made no attempt to assimilate his beautiful, almost abstract “Abstract Expressionistic” use of paint.’ The five works dedicated to Rauschenberg less than two years after his death in 2008 are particularly touching and sincere in their acknowledgment of his example as a constant inspiration, not just to him, but also to many of his fellow artists.

1 Tom Wesselman, Interior #2, 1964, acrylic, assemblage, fan, clock and fluorescent light, 60 x 48 x 5 inches / 152.4 × 121.9 × 12.7 cm. The Estate of Tom Wesselmann, New York. 2 Marco Livingstone, ‘Prototypes of Pop’, Exhibition Road: Painters at the Royal College of Art, exhibition catalogue, Paul Huxley (ed.), Phaidon Christie’s Ltd, Oxford, 1988, p49. 3 Peter Phillips, taped interview with the author, 4 March 1976, quoted in Marco Livingstone, Peter Phillips retroVISION: Paintings 1960 – 1982, exhibition catalogue, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1982, p17.

Fig. 13 Peter Blake, Children's Games: Mickey Game (in homage to Robert Rauschenberg), 2010, collage with found objects, 31 ½ x 16 ¾ ins / 80 x 42.5 cm. Waddington Custot Galleries

4 Colin Self, Fall-out Shelter. No. 8 (Woman in a Basket Chair and Woolworths, Times Square, Infra-Red Frankfurter Roast), 1965 and 1967, collage, pencil, coloured pencil with newspaper photo transfer, on white and fluorescent paper, 22 ⅞ x 15 ⅜ inches / 58 x 39 cm. Private collection. Reproduced in Marco Livingstone, British Pop, exhibition catalogue, Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, 2005, p293, cat no.95. 5 ‘Rauschenberg had derived from De Kooning, Cornell, Duchamp and Surrealism, and that context was very interesting in my youth.’ Kitaj, interviewed by the author on 11 April 1976, revised by Kitaj in December 1979, quoted in Marco Livingstone, Kitaj, Phaidon, London, revised and expanded fourth edition, 2010, p256, note 29. 6 R. B. Kitaj, Reflections on Violence, 1962, oil and collage on canvas, 60 x 60 inches / 152.4 x 152.4 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Reproduced in Marco Livingstone, Kitaj, Phaidon, London, revised and expanded fourth edition, 2010, pl.13. 7 See Livingstone, Kitaj, ibid., pp.18 – 19. 8 Kitaj, letter to the author delivered by hand on 2 February 1984. 9 See ‘Peter Blake in conversation with Marco Livingstone’, in Peter Blake, Venice Fantasies, London: Enitharmon Editions, 2009, p7.

List of Works

1 A-Muse 1958 Available work 2 Complete Relaxation 1958 Available work Exhibited Rome, Galleria La Tartaruga, Rauschenberg, 30 May – 1 June 1959 Paris, Galerie Daniel Cordier, Robert Rauschenberg, 27 April – 8 June 1961 New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings, 1958 – 1969, 1 November – 17 December 2011 3 Untitled 1961 Available work Exhibited New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, American Drawings, 17 September – 27 October 1964, cat no.108, illus b/w, unpaginated, touring to; Michigan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, 11 November – 13 December 1964 Michigan, Grand Rapids Art Museum, 10 January – 7 February 1965 Minneapolis, University Gallery, University of Minnesota, 24 February – 21 March 1965 Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, 8 April – 2 May 1965 Denver, Denver Art Museum, 6 June – 4 July 1965 Dallas, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 25 July – 22 August 1965 Ohio, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, 12 September – 10 October 1965 Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum, 14 November – 5 December 1965 New York, Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, Robert Rauschenberg: Drawings, 24 February – 2 April 1975 78

5 January First 1962 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Museum, Twentieth Century American Collection Foundation Drawings Three Avant-Garde Generations, 23 January – 23 March 1976, Exhibited cat no.156, illus b/w, p93, Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, touring to; Robert Rauschenberg: Des Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Zeichnerische Werk, 1949 – 1979, 27 May – 11 July 1976 5 May – 24 June 1979, cat no.55, Bremen, Kunsthalle Bremen, illus b/w, p108, touring to; 18 July – 29 August 1976 Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, mit Sammlung Sprengel, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950–1980, 19 August – 23 September 1979 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.238, Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, illus colour, p74, touring to; Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, Dusseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.137, 6 June – 13 July 1980 touring to; Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, of Modern Art, 6 June – 13 July 1980 20 September – 25 November 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum Frankfurt, Städel Museum, of Modern Art, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 20 September – 25 November 1980 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Frankfurt, Städel Museum, Lenbachhaus, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 4 February – 5 April 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 Rauschenberg, London, Tate Gallery, as Robert 29 April – 14 June 1981, illus b/w Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981, Madrid, Fundación Juan March, New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Collection Leo Castelli, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer 7 October 1988 – 8 January 1989, Drawings from the 1960s, cat no.37, illus colour, p34 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.1, illus colour, p 18 4 Untitled (de Gaulle) 1961 New York, Craig F. Starr Associates, Available work To Ileana, From Bob: Rauschenberg Drawings from the Sonnabend Exhibited Collection, 10 April – 29 May 2009, illus Hannover, Kunstverein Hannover, colour, unpaginated Robert Rauschenberg (Graphics), 29 August – 27 September 1970, p166, 6 Snow Call 1962 illus b/w, p13, touring to; Available work Texas, Fort Worth Art Center Museum, as Robert Rauschenberg: Stoned Exhibited Moon Series, Los Angeles, Newspace Gallery, 29 September – 25 October 1970 L.A. Finest: Early Kienholz, Hockney, Basel, Kunstmuseum, as Robert Berland, Rauschenberg, 15 December Rauschenberg, 1992 – 16 January 1993 30 October – 6 December 1970 New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Robert

Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings, 1958 – 1969, 1 November – 17 December 2011 7 Headline 1962 Private Collection

Paper, 6 November – 16 December 1966 Seattle, University of Washington, The Henry Gallery, Drawings by Americans: Recent Works by Thirteen Contemporary Artists, 12 February – 16 March 1967, cat no.3

10 Untitled 1968 Exhibited Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend New York, Whitney Museum of Collection Foundation American Art, Annual Exhibition 1962: Contemporary American Sculpture Exhibited and Drawings, Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Robert 12 December 1962 – 3 February 1963, Rauschenberg: Des Zeichnerische cat no.168, exhibited as Letterhead Werk, 1949 – 1979, 5 May – 24 June 1979, New York, The Jewish Museum, Robert cat no.75, illus b/w, p134, exhibited Rauschenberg: Retrospective of Works as 1968, touring to; from 1949 – 1963, 31 March – 12 May 1963, Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover cat no.55, exhibited as Letterhead mit Sammlung Sprengel, New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Group 19 August – 23 September 1979 Drawing Exhibition, Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, 20 May – 30 June 1963 Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, New York, Acquavella Galleries, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.153, Off Canvas Drawing, touring to; 15 April – 12 June 2015, illus colour, pl28 Dusseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 8 Umpire 1965 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum Private Collection of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Literature Frankfurt, Städel Museum, Neo-Graf (ed.), Predilezioni, Tre 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 decenni di avanguardia dalla raccolta Munich, Städtische Galerie im di Riccardo Tettamanti, 1988, Milan, Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 illus colour, unpaginated London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 Exhibited New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Los Angeles, Dwan Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Rauschenberg at Dwan: Drawings, Drawings from the 1960s, 13 April – 8 May 1965 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.17, Milan, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, illus colour, p36 Gli Anni ‘60. Le Immagini al Potere, Lisbon, Árpád Szenes-Vieira da Silva 21 June – 22 September 1996 Foundation, Sonnabend, Paris – New Ridgefield, The Aldrich Contemporary York, in collaboration with the Art Museum, Standing in the Shadows Sonnabend Collection Foundation, of Love: The Aldrich Collection New York and the Fondazione Musei 1964 – 1974, 6 April – 21 September 2014, Civici di Venezia, Venice, illus colour, unpaginated 5 February – 3 May 2015 9 Paragraph II 1966 11 Untitled 1968 AVAILABLE WORK Private Collection Exhibited Greensboro, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina, Art on

12 Political Folly 1968 AVAILABLE WORK Literature Robert R. Mattison, Robert Rauschenberg Breaking Boundaries, Yale University Press, United States, 2003, p156 Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Robert Rauschenberg: Des Zeichnerische Werk, 1949 – 1979, 5 May – 24 June 1979, cat no.76, illus b/w, p134, touring to; Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover mit Sammlung Sprengel, 19 August – 23 September 1979 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.154, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Frankfurt, Städel Museum, 4 December 1980 – 18 January, 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 New Jersey, Princeton University, The Art Museum, Selections from the Ileana and Michael Sonnabend Collection: Works from the 1950s and 1960s, 3 February – 9 June 1985, p112, illus colour, p84, touring to; Austin, University of Texas, Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, 8 September – 27 October 1985 Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 23 November 1985 – 9 March 1986 East Hampton, NY, Guild Hall Museum, A View from the Sixties: Selections from the Leo Castelli Collection and the Michael and Ileana Sonnabend Collection, 11 August – 22 September 1991 New York, Craig F. Starr Associates, 79

To Ileana, From Bob: Rauschenberg Drawings from the Sonnabend Collection, 10 April – 29 May 2009, illus colour, unpaginated 13 Co-op 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 Kassel, Orangerie, Documenta 6, 24 June – 2 October 1977, cat no.9 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950–1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.158, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Frankfurt, Städel Museum, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.22, illus colour, p41 14 Volt 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages, 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 New York, Jonathan O’ Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.23, illus colour, p42

15 Cabinet 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation

touring to; Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover mit Sammlung Sprengel, 19 August – 23 September 1979 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950–1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.150, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Frankfurt, Städel Museum, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.26, illus colour, p45

Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottage 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 Kassel, Orangerie, Documenta 6, 24 June – 2 October 1977, cat no.1, Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Robert Rauschenberg: Des Zeichnerische Werk, 1949 – 1979, 5 May – 24 June 1979, cat no.69, illus b/w, p130, touring to; Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover mit Sammlung Sprengel, 19 August – 23 September 1979 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.148, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 17 Shake 1968 20 September – 25 November 1980 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Frankfurt, Städel Museum, Collection Foundation 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Exhibited Lenbachhaus, Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, 4 February – 5 April 1981 Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages London, Tate Gallery, as Robert 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 Kassel, Orangerie, Documenta 6, New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, 24 June – 2 October 1977, cat no.3 Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Robert Drawings from the 1960s, Rauschenberg: Des Zeichnerische Werk, 8 February – 17 March 2007, 1949 – 1979, 5 May – 24 June 1979, cat no.24, illus colour, p43 cat no.73, illus b/w, p132, touring to; 16 Funnel 1968 Hannover, Kunstmuseum Hannover Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend mit Sammlung Sprengel, Collection Foundation 19 August – 23 September 1979 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Exhibited Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.151, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages touring to; 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Kassel, Orangerie, Documenta 6, 6 June – 13 July 1980 24 June – 2 October 1977, cat no.5, p202 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Robert of Modern Art, Rauschenberg: Des Zeichnerische Werk, 20 September – 25 November 1980 1949 – 1979, 5 May – 24 June 1979, Frankfurt, Städel Museum, cat no.72, illus b/w, p132

4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June 1981 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.29, illus colour, p50 18 Porch 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages, 10 October – 1 November 1968 New York, Visual Arts Museum, School of Visual Arts, Robert Rauschenberg: Drawings, 24 February – 2 April 1975 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.156, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Frankfurt, Städel Museum, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June, 1981 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.32, illus colour, p53 19 Stroke 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages 1968, 10 October – 1 November 1968 New York, Visual Arts Museum, School of Visual Arts Museum,

Robert Rauschenberg, Drawings, 24 February – 2 April 1975 Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Rauschenberg: Werke 1950 – 1980, 23 March – 4 May 1980, cat no.157, touring to; Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 6 June – 13 July 1980 Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 20 September – 25 November 1980 Frankfurt, Städel Museum, 4 December 1980 – 18 January 1981 Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 4 February – 5 April 1981 London, Tate Gallery, as Robert Rauschenberg, 29 April – 14 June, 1981 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.33, illus colour, p54 20 Play-Off 1968 Antonio Homem and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages 1968, 10 October – 1 November 1968 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.35, illus colour, p56 Lisbon, Fundação Árpád SzenesVieira da Silva Museum, Sonnabend Paris – New York, in collaboration with the Sonnabend Collection Foundation, New York and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 5 February 2015 – 3 May 2015 21 Untitled 1968 AVAILABLE WORK Exhibited Copenhagen, Faurschou Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg: Works from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2005, p36, illus colour, pl.30 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery,

Robert Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.27, illus colour, p48 New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg: Transfer Drawings 1958 – 1969, 1 November 2011 – 1 January 2012 22 Untitled 1968 AVAILABLE WORK Exhibited New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.28, illus colour, p49 23 Apology 1968 AVAILABLE WORK Exhibited Paris, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Rauschenberg, 25 Dessins – Frottages 1968, 3 October – 1 November 1968 New York, Stellan Holm Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg: Transfer Drawings 1958 – 1969, 1 November 2011 – 1 January 2012 New York, Sandra Gering Inc, 1990/2014 Strategies of Non- Intention: John Cage and the Artists He Collected, 12 June – 5 September 2014, illus colour, unpaginated 24 Allocation I 1969 AVAILABLE WORK Exhibited New York, Whitney Museum of Art, American Drawings 1963 – 1973, 25 May – 22 June 1973, illus b/w, p43 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March 2007, cat no.39, illus colour, p61

25 Untitled 1969 AVAILABLE WORK Exhibited San Francisco, John Berggruen Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg – Paintings, Drawings & Prints, 5 August – 13 September 1971 New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Words, 21 January – 18 February 1989 New York, Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Robert Rauschenberg, Transfer Drawings from the 1960s, 8 February – 17 March, 2007, cat no.40, illus colour, p63 26 Orange Body 1969 Private Collection Exhibited New York, Dominique Lévy, Drawing Then: The Innovation and Influence in American Drawing of the Sixties, 27 January – 26 March 2016, illus colour, pp153 – 155

*signature not in the artist’s hand

On the occasion of the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings from the 1950s and 1960s 2 December 2016 – 13 January 2017

17 St George Street, London W1S 1FJ +44 (0)20 7042 3233 www.waterman.co.uk In association with Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, New York Please contact the gallery for further information on available works.

Image credits Plate 1, Charles Kaufman Photography; 2, 4, 7, 11, 12, 21 – 23, 25, Prudence Cuming Associates, London 2016; 3, Camerarts, NY 2016; 5, 10, 13 – 20, Lawrence Beck, NY 2016; 9, Adam Reich, NY; 24, Kerry Ryan McFate, courtesy Pace Gallery, NY. Figs. 1 – 3, 9, Shunk-Kender; Figs. 5 – 8 Prudence Cuming Associates, London 2016; Fig. 10, DACS, London; Fig. 11, akg. images, London; Fig. 12, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Fig. 13, Waddington Custot Galleries, London. Copyright credits Page 4, © Jasper Johns / VAGA, New York / DACS, London 2016 / © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / DACS, London / VAGA, New York 2016. Figs. 1 – 3, 9, © J.Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20); Figs. 5 – 8, Plates 1 – 26, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / DACS, London / VAGA, New York 2016; Fig. 10, © Peter Phillips. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2016; Fig. 11, © Derek Boshier. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2016; Fig. 12, © R.B. Kitaj Estate; Fig. 13, © Peter Blake. All rights reserved, DACS 2016. 'Five Rauschenberg Transfer Drawings and Their Times' text, © Lewis Kachur. Lewis Kachur thanks Catherine Craft, Charles Stuckey, Jonathan O’Hara and the Rauschenberg Foundation, in particular, Francine Snyder, Kayla Jenkins and Helen Hsu. ‘Plural Energies: Rauschenberg’s Impact on British Pop Art’ text, © Marco Livingstone.

Published by Offer Waterman, London Exhibition Curator: Jonathan O'Hara Exhibition Director: Polly Checker Press: Paget PR Design: Richard Ardagh Studio Pre-press: DawkinsColour Printing: Pureprint ISBN: 978-0-9574188-5-1