Harbor 1964

This is Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Harbor’ hanging here in Museum Ludwig. It is a riot, isn’t it? Like a city exploding. I imagine Rauschenberg building it up layer by layer, collage upon collage. The paint is pulled and pushed, dripped and dabbed. It’s a messy, glorious process. I can imagine him standing back, squinting, then lunging forward with another splash of color. That big blue arc, for example, looks as though it was made in one spontaneous gesture. It’s confident, bold, alive. There’s an ongoing dialogue with the ghosts of Matisse, Schwitters and Cornell here. His work is like a conversation across generations, a game of telephone where the message gets wonderfully garbled along the way. He's riffing on what came before, pushing painting into uncharted territory. It’s a reminder that art is never finished, only abandoned. It is always open to interpretation.