united states of americaconcept:era contemporary
Monogram
Combine painting (1955–1959) by Robert Rauschenberg: a taxidermied Angora goat with a rubber tire around its girth stands on a collaged, painted horizontal base. A seminal Neo-Dada work that dissolves the boundary between painting, sculpture, and found object.
Scholarly Significance
Rauschenberg's Monogram is the defining Combine Painting — a stuffed Angora goat with a tire around its girth standing on a painted base. Anchors Neo-Dada, breaks the picture plane, and bridges painting and sculpture.
Notes
- ·Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) worked on Monogram over four years (1955–1959), reconfiguring the basic arrangement multiple times.
- ·He purchased the taxidermied Angora goat in a used-furniture store on Seventh Avenue, New York, and spent years finding the right form for it.
- ·The work belongs to Rauschenberg's 'Combine' series — works that incorporate both painted surfaces and three-dimensional found objects.
- ·The tire encircling the goat's girth has been interpreted in numerous ways: as a wedding ring, a halo, a symbol of penetration, or simply a formal device unifying goat and platform.
- ·The horizontal orientation (the goat stands on a painted canvas lying flat) refuses the conventional vertical format of painting and the traditional plinth of sculpture.
- ·Acquired by Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 1965 — it has been there ever since and has rarely travelled.