Pilgrim 1960

Robert Rauschenberg made this piece, titled ‘Pilgrim,’ with oil paint and collage to make something that feels both familiar and strange. See how the painting has these open, airy areas of white and pale colors, but then there’s this dark, almost menacing cluster of marks on the left. It reminds me of something like Cy Twombly, with a sense of history emerging from a personal language of marks. The layering of paint gives it a really tactile surface, doesn’t it? You can almost feel the way the brush moved across the canvas. There's a kind of struggle in those marks, a push and pull between chaos and order. And then, bam! That bold red square, like a stop sign, or maybe a wound. It’s like Rauschenberg is showing us that art is a process of constant negotiation. It's like a journey, an exploration, hence the title.