Merger
Robert Rauschenberg
American, 1925–2008
1962
A lithograph in which Rauschenberg transfers the detritus of everyday life — a bottle, labels and smudged marks — into a single flattened, collage-like image that emphasizes the material traces of making.
Your eye is held by a ghostly, sideways bottle surrounded by dark, painterly swathes, blotchy imprints and scattered typographic fragments floating in a large white field, as if studio residues were frozen on the page.
Made in 1962, the print demonstrates Rauschenberg’s move to blur painting, printmaking and collage by incorporating found imagery and chance marks, a strategy that helped collapse the boundaries between art and ordinary life and influenced Pop and conceptual practices.
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
composition: 13 7/8 x 11 1/8" (35.2 x 28.3cm); sheet: 22 1/2 x 17 1/2" (57.1 x 44.5cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the Celeste and Armand Bartos Foundation
Accession
381.1962
Palette
Exhibitions
