Signs 1970

Robert Rauschenberg's 'Signs', is a mixed media collage on board, the date it was made is unknown. Look at it! You can really see the traces of the artist's hand: ripped paper edges, layers of images bleeding into each other, the ghost of ideas and their uncertain realisation. I can only imagine Rauschenberg piecing all this together; astronauts juxtaposed with scenes of war, public figures against crowds. The texture of the overlapping photographs creates a kind of chaotic surface, each image vying for attention, pushing up against the others. There is something really tactile about the way these images have been physically combined, almost as if Rauschenberg wants us to really feel the weight and texture of these cultural signs. Painters are always in conversation with one another, even across time, borrowing ideas and approaches, and re-imagining them for their own context. Robert Rauschenberg's art offers so much for artists to think about. By embracing contradiction, uncertainty, and fragmentation, he allows for different, unexpected interpretations.