Robert Rauschenberg - Horsefeathers Thirteen
Created in 1972 Horsefeathers Thirteen, which incorporate various printed elements, are collages of sorts. The printed elements were made using lithography, screenprinting, pochoir, embossing and debossing. No one impression in the edition duplicates another—that is, each impression is different and thus unique. The method employed in making these prints was complex and never before attempted by Rauschenberg prior to his collaboration with Gemini.
In paintings, sculptures, and works on paper made prior to the early 1970s, Rauschenberg largely used found imagery culled from magazines, newspapers and other types of ephemera. He was interested in investigating how mass-produced images could provide random compositions, unrelated to the gestural self-expression practiced by the Abstract Expressionists. In his prints, Rauschenberg broke down traditional boundaries, questioning the norms of printmaking and the very notion of what defines a multiple. His interest in collage, in particular, led to his opening up new methods of artistic exploration, which served as a foundation for hundreds of subsequent works.
Horsefeathers Thirteen demonstrates another aspect of the artist’s experimental and even scientific side, using the print medium to survey different ways of seeing and unearth new narratives by combining images. By applying both unchanging and varying images to the paper, Rauschenberg probed the psychological and visual effects of a range of combinations. Photographs of animals, fruits, and people, or just abstract shapes, are juxtaposed with images from magazines. Eliciting free association in an exciting and random clash of distinct visual elements, works in this series often pair dynamic action-oriented images (runners, sports imagery) with banal or everyday subjects (a swath of fabric, a pile of pennies, a cropped image from a television program). In Horsefeathers Thirteen - XIV, for example, the ostriches, mechanical gears and clocks are repeated in all of the 83 impressions in the edition, but in other areas, different magazine clippings in a range of color and content appear on each print in the same spot to invent new variations. In this and other scenarios, the natural world provokes an interplay with the man-made.
Rauschenberg invites the viewer to consider how his or her own feelings and conclusions evince a different emotional or conceptual effect from each Horsefeathers print. The results can be heartbreaking or humorous, awe-inspiring or simple and abstract. Our own personal associations, memories, and thought process inform our interpretation of each print. It is interesting to consider how these images of popular culture from the early 1970s resonate in the 21st century. Visual codes have changed in the past 50 years resulting in their having a different meaning or charge today (e.g. a Hollywood movie star, the moon landing, police in formation, a smiling woman from an advertisement). In this sense, the artist has presented us with infinite possibilities of interpretation.
The series is best understood when different prints are placed side by side, as they are in Gemini’s presentation, a more comprehensive understanding of the artist’s intentions. The exhibition is on view through November 10.
