Oracle 1965

Robert Rauschenberg made this artwork, titled "Oracle", from found objects. It’s a real mix of stuff: metal pipes, a car door, part of an engine, a window frame, all arranged in a line. I imagine Rauschenberg rummaging around, picking up these bits and pieces, thinking about how they could fit together, what stories they could tell. You know, each object has its own history, its own life before it became art. He must have been thinking about how to give these objects a new life, a new meaning. The surfaces are worn, weathered, and industrial. I am very curious about the relationships, both spatial and material, between them all. Look how he has transformed these discarded fragments into something that speaks to the relationship between form and content, and technology and nature. Rauschenberg, like many of us artists, was in an ongoing conversation with the world around him, finding inspiration in the everyday, the discarded, the overlooked. It reminds us that art can be found anywhere, in anything, if we're open to seeing it.