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拍品专文
Rauschenberg began making prints in 1962 when he joined Tatyana Grosman's Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) studio. Already an established painter with a penchant for experimentation and collage, Rauschenberg admits that he approached printmaking with hesitation, "thinking that the second half of the 20th century was no time to start writing on rocks" (R. Rauschenberg, "Work Notes-1962," ULAE, West Islip, New York). Despite the artist's reluctance to embrace the traditional method of lithography, or perhaps because of it, Rauschenberg challenged the lithography process itself, adapting its materials and technological procedures to reflect his own spontaneity.
Rauschenberg's early prints relate directly to his paintings and his experimentation with the screenprinting process, to which he was introduced by Andy Warhol in the fall of 1961. Unlike Warhol, who embraced the literal connotations of screenprinted found images, Rauschenberg's juxtaposition of images and symbols created an open dialogue. Rauschenberg produced his early prints, including Breakthrough I, 1964, concurrently with his series of silkscreen paintings done between 1962-64, a time in which he fully developed his almost fanatical method of combining and manipulating photographs to create a multiplicity of contexts and perspectives. Using screenprints made after photographs culled from newspapers and magazines as well as from his own collection, Rauschenberg would transfer the images to his lithography stones, often reusing screens in different works. Where Warhol used repetition to convey banality, however, Rauschenberg reveals differences and associative idiosyncrasies. Rauschenberg also draws directly on to the stone, manipulating the appearance of images and therefore emphasizing the hand of the artist in the creative process.
The lithography stone used in Breakthrough I was previously cracked, a flaw that Rauschenberg used to its full advantage, much as he had in Accident the year before. Rauschenberg assembled the images in Breakthrough I in a patchwork manner, neatly ordering and aligning them from top to bottom to echo the vertical slash of the crack. An image of a nude odalisque, which also appears in the 1963 painting Barge (Collection of the artist), stretches horizontally across the composition, her pale form a languid horizon line bisected by the white line of the printed split. An expanse of negative space in the upper left corner functions as an integral part of the composition, boldly countering the dark textures of collaged elements. Of Rauschenberg's compositions, Breakthrough I is particularly self-referential, composed of several fine art and architectural images and brushstrokes. Rauschenberg's deference to the cracked stone signals the importance of the process in his work, as well as the balance he achieves between chance and spontaneity and reflection and deliberation.
Rauschenberg's early prints relate directly to his paintings and his experimentation with the screenprinting process, to which he was introduced by Andy Warhol in the fall of 1961. Unlike Warhol, who embraced the literal connotations of screenprinted found images, Rauschenberg's juxtaposition of images and symbols created an open dialogue. Rauschenberg produced his early prints, including Breakthrough I, 1964, concurrently with his series of silkscreen paintings done between 1962-64, a time in which he fully developed his almost fanatical method of combining and manipulating photographs to create a multiplicity of contexts and perspectives. Using screenprints made after photographs culled from newspapers and magazines as well as from his own collection, Rauschenberg would transfer the images to his lithography stones, often reusing screens in different works. Where Warhol used repetition to convey banality, however, Rauschenberg reveals differences and associative idiosyncrasies. Rauschenberg also draws directly on to the stone, manipulating the appearance of images and therefore emphasizing the hand of the artist in the creative process.
The lithography stone used in Breakthrough I was previously cracked, a flaw that Rauschenberg used to its full advantage, much as he had in Accident the year before. Rauschenberg assembled the images in Breakthrough I in a patchwork manner, neatly ordering and aligning them from top to bottom to echo the vertical slash of the crack. An image of a nude odalisque, which also appears in the 1963 painting Barge (Collection of the artist), stretches horizontally across the composition, her pale form a languid horizon line bisected by the white line of the printed split. An expanse of negative space in the upper left corner functions as an integral part of the composition, boldly countering the dark textures of collaged elements. Of Rauschenberg's compositions, Breakthrough I is particularly self-referential, composed of several fine art and architectural images and brushstrokes. Rauschenberg's deference to the cracked stone signals the importance of the process in his work, as well as the balance he achieves between chance and spontaneity and reflection and deliberation.