Patrician Barnacle (Scale) 1981

Robert Rauschenberg made Patrician Barnacle (Scale) using found materials, collage, and paint, building up something that is both painting and sculpture. This process of accumulation is really central to his way of working. The ladder in front of this vertical collage is doing so much. It’s an invitation, but to what? To climb into the work, into the process of artmaking itself? I love the way the ladder is so obviously itself - a real object, worn and used. The collage behind has this similar sense of history, of being made of fragments of the world. It reminds me of Kurt Schwitters, but with more of a Pop sensibility. Rauschenberg is really good at taking the everyday, the discarded, and turning it into something poetic. It’s not about answers; it's about the questions, the looking, and the constant reimagining of what art can be.