Still from the series Reels (B + C)
Robert Rauschenberg
American, 1925–2008
1968
A lithograph that layers smeared fields of pink, blue, and gray with grainy photographic fragments—cars, faces, and figures—as Rauschenberg collapses cinematic stills and painterly gesture into a single image.
You first notice broad, scraped swaths of color that cut across and partially obscure small halftone-like black-and-white vignettes, so the pictured faces and a battered car seem to float in and out of the smeared inks like frames from a broken film reel.
Made during his late-1960s experiments, this work helped dissolve boundaries between painting, photography, and printmaking, bringing cinematic montage and found imagery into print and influencing later pop and appropriation practices.
Medium
Lithograph
Dimensions
composition and sheet: 29 15/16 x 22 1/16" (76 x 56.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
John B. Turner Fund
Accession
914.1969.6
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
