Monogram

The Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm (Sweden).

Installation.

In his works from the Combination series, Robert Rauschenberg resorted to volumetric objects, which he fastened to a flat base. But in the work “Monogram” he went even further, making this object completely voluminous. Despite its three-dimensionality, the composition cannot be called a sculpture, as it was made of several ready-made objects, such as a stuffed goat, a car tire, a tennis ball, newspaper clippings and more. The artist found these unrelated objects during his walks in New York, which he often made to acquire something interesting for his work. He accidentally discovered a scarecrow of a goat in an office supply store, and simply took a tire from a landfill. Combining these two large objects, he supplemented them with several smaller details and decorated them with spontaneous spots and drips of paint. As usual, Robert Rauschenberg did not explain the meaning of this work, allowing viewers to build logical chains and seek out associations themselves.