Robert Rauschenberg's 1955 Bed is an example of what he called a "combine," a work of art that melds painting, sculpture, and collage. Rauschenberg was inspired both by the Cubist innovation of collage as a means to bring the materials of everyday life into works of art, and by the gestural painting techniques of Jackson Pollock, which you already discussed in section and which we will be addressing at greater length in lecture of Tuesday. What kinds of implications does Rauschenberg's Bed suggest to you? What does it mean to take a intimate object like a bed (where one sleeps, makes love, etc.) and to hang it vertically on the wall of an art museum? How is Rauschenberg's approach to both collage and painting similar or different from Picasso's and Pollock's?
In this piece, Rauschenberg is challenging the very definition of art. A bed is not a typical canvas, by using a bed as a medium for his art Rauschenberg invites us to question to what extent everyday objects can be considered to be or turned into "art." Rauschenberg seems to be directly responding to the collages of Dada artists and his Pollock-esque painting technique is a further suggestion of his interest in "chance" and abstraction. In this piece, Rauschenberg simultaneously brings an inanimate object, a bed, alive with his vivid strokes of color, and layered, dripping paint (which suggest movement), while also evacuating the bed of it's most intimate connotations by turning it into a work of art that hangs, publicly, on a museum wall. I think Rauschenberg wants us to consider how an ordinary bed and become a work of art and how it is completely different from a work of art. He invites this inquiry by creating a juxtaposition within his artwork: choosing to layer paint, heavily, on one section of the bed but leaving other sections of the bed almost completely unpainted and seemingly untouched.
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis not only of how Rauschenberg is responding to the practices of Duchamp and Pollock but also subverting notions of public/private, functional furniture/artwork!
DeleteRauschenberg's combine piece is very interesting as it seems like Rauschenberg spent so much time working on the upper half of the piece and then did almost nothing to the bottom half of the piece. This bed reminds me of Duchamp's ready-mades, yet takes this concept a step further. Like Duchamp, Rauschenberg is taking an already exsiting object, in this case a bed, and redefining it to make it into a personal piece of artwork. Rauschenberg not only defines what art is to him by turning the bed into a piece of art because of his decision to show a bed in this way, but he also adds a significant amount of color to the bed that is reminiscent of Pollack's work. The significant amount of color on the top of the bed could suggest something about the human head that would presumably lay in that area of the bed. Whether Rauschenberg is saying the head is good or bad is unknown, yet he is definitely making a distinction between the upper part of ones body and the lower part of ones body.
ReplyDeleteNice observation about the way that Rauschenberg's application of painting and graphic marks is focused on the upper portion of the work, around the region where the head would rest on the pillow. It might be interesting to think about Rauschenberg's relation to the tradition of unconscious mark-making (via the Surrealists and Pollock) and the position of the physical head (seat of the unconscious) implied by the piece.
DeleteI find it interesting that Rauschenberg displays the bed in this fashion. With the viewpoint being moved from the normal viewpoint that a figure standing beside a bed would have to one directly from above a bed, Rauschenberg is changing the viewer's status. It seems as if the new viewpoint is heavenly, almost that of God. The use of color on the upper half could emphasize the importance of what is in the bed–this is the area in which the body would be visible. The coloring of this part also emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual who resides in this bed, and also that specific body part–the head. That's the one part of the human body that really contains most of the person's personality and sense of self: where the "color" of the person is contained.
ReplyDeleteGreat point about the altered relationship that Rauschenberg implies with the viewer, the shift from horizontal furniture to vertical art object! Katrina also suggests the way the paint and drawn marks around the pillow emphasize not only the individual's unconscious mind but also their sense of selfhood and personal expression.
DeleteRobert Rauschenberg's 1955 Bed is a revolutionary thing to put in an art museum. To take an object like a bed and to put it in the context of an art museum is not only drastic but shocking. Such an intimate object that symbolizes to strongly the private sphere in a public museum is revolutionary. The fact that the bed is not made hints at the implications of what is and isn’t done in a bed, as well as point to the behaviours in a bed that are less favored in the public sphere. The bed, although a private item, is a place for activities that aren’t necessarily accepted by the public – such as expressions of sexuality that are edited in the public sphere and historically have been monitored in the private sphere as well. Forcing people to confront an object that is charged with so much commentary is abrasive and provocative – redefining what the space of an art museum should be/can be used for.
ReplyDeleteSavannah suggests another important and potentially shocking dimension of Rauschenberg's Bed in its making public of a private space for sleep and sexual intimacy. As we discussed in class, this is even more provocative in thinking about Rauschenberg as a gay artist living and working during a very closeted period in America's history.
DeleteThe bed by Rauschenberg proposes another approach to the materiality of art. We have talked about how Catholic church uses jewelry and objects from antiquity to create expensive and showy objects. However, Rauschenberg uses objects that can be easily obtained in every day life to create the provocative piece of art work. By doing so, he hints at the ubiquity of art in terms of a creating process and the people about whom art can convey a message.
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