“Spread and Scale” brings together eight large works (some never before exhibited) by Robert Rauschenberg from the late ’70s through 1980, each personally selected by the artist. In these pieces, Rauschenberg returns to methods used in his early collages, transferring newspaper photographs onto fabric or paper and stretching them over pieces of plywood or large plastic boards, then adding found objects or light bulbs. The “Spreads” consist of two-dimensional plates, while the “Scales” are three-dimensional folded sculptures; both series evoke his famous “Combines,” many of which are currently in a traveling retrospective now on view in Los Angeles. With the same irreverence and lack of restraint, Rauschenberg combines everyday objects—chairs, stools, tabletops, radios, and electric cables, along with truck tires, stretches of fabric, and mirrors—with two-dimensional pictures. Rauschenberg is a collector, a hunter with an eagle eye for details that often pass unnoticed. Excepting perhaps Duchamp, no other artist has so successfully appropriated everyday items for art. Rauschenberg’s work may come across as unwieldy, humorous, and at times eccentric; it is also, however, strikingly beautiful.
Translated from German by Jane Brodie.
