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Lot Essay
"[The collages] were, quite important in the sense of his exploration, and his life journey, as it went on from there." - Susan Weil (Susan Weil Interviewed by Laurie Marshall Files 44-47).
Using a shirt board support, Untitled (X-form) and Untitled (Elongated X-form) are rendered in sheer layers of translucent paper. The multiple layers revel printed foley imagery submerged below. Walter Hopps notes these works as particularly unique, writing, "Two collages mounted on typical shirt board support... conspicuously evince drawing. These two abstract, minimalist works suggest elongated, informal sculptural diagrams or X-forms" (W. Hopps, Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s, p. 112).
Here, glue, the essential adhesive component, reaches beyond its innate properties to function as the primary fluid staining material. Intentionally commissioned along the outer edge of the central component, the glue not only fastens the engraving to the paper backing, but creates a highly calculated gradient along the bottom of the track, subtly revealing an abstracted, almost surreal imagery. While the works recall Kurt Schwitters material and scale, or the Surrealist collages of Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell, the restraint and minimalist abstraction of Rauschenberg's collages set both apart from his predecessors' imagist and narrative assemblages.
Using a shirt board support, Untitled (X-form) and Untitled (Elongated X-form) are rendered in sheer layers of translucent paper. The multiple layers revel printed foley imagery submerged below. Walter Hopps notes these works as particularly unique, writing, "Two collages mounted on typical shirt board support... conspicuously evince drawing. These two abstract, minimalist works suggest elongated, informal sculptural diagrams or X-forms" (W. Hopps, Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s, p. 112).
Here, glue, the essential adhesive component, reaches beyond its innate properties to function as the primary fluid staining material. Intentionally commissioned along the outer edge of the central component, the glue not only fastens the engraving to the paper backing, but creates a highly calculated gradient along the bottom of the track, subtly revealing an abstracted, almost surreal imagery. While the works recall Kurt Schwitters material and scale, or the Surrealist collages of Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell, the restraint and minimalist abstraction of Rauschenberg's collages set both apart from his predecessors' imagist and narrative assemblages.