Storyline I (Reels [B+C]) 1968

Robert Rauschenberg made this print, Storyline I, and it's a jumble of images and colors that feels both chaotic and deliberate, like a visual poem pieced together from scraps of everyday life. You can see how Rauschenberg layers these images – a woman, a couple, a figure lying down – over fields of yellow, green, and purple. The colors aren't neat, they bleed and overlap, creating this sense of movement and change. And the textures! Some areas are smooth and flat, while others have these rough, scratchy marks, like he was attacking the surface with his tools. Look at the way the purple ink pools around the figure lying down at the bottom, it's dark, almost ominous. But then you have these bright pops of pink and yellow that lift the whole thing up. It reminds me of what Picabia was doing, always messing with your expectations, never letting you get too comfortable. Rauschenberg, like Picabia, invites us to embrace the messy, contradictory nature of art – and life.