ART GALLERY
Photograph by Robert McKeever, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
©Estate of Robert Rauschenberg / VAGA, N. Y. & JASPAR, Tokyo, 2013 E0434
- Broadcast
- In the roughly 10 years starting from 1954, Rauschenberg produced his unique series of what he called 'combine paintings', or Combines. The term is closely associated with Rauschenberg's canvases that incorporate affixed items such as bits of newspaper, posters, photos, wallpaper, furniture, clothing, clocks, and stuffed objects with scattered heavy brush strokes of paint. As the literal meaning of term suggests, Combines are a combination of painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg's Combines, with their bold use of actual mundane objects and images expressing the chaos of everyday life, represented both a rejection of and departure from the generation of Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock, who came before him in the 1940s and 1950s. They also pointed a way forward for the new generation of Pop artists who followed. Broadcast is a 'combine painting' featuring radios embedded in the canvas. Two radio knobs protrude on the surface to allow the viewer to hear the blaring of radios.