Combine painting

also: Combines

technique 1954-1964 United States North America

Combine painting names Robert Rauschenberg's hybrids of the 1950s and early 1960s: works that incorporate real objects - a quilted pillow, a stuffed goat, a tire, a Coca-Cola bottle - so that the result hangs between painting and sculpture, art and the everyday. Made between roughly 1954 and 1964, the combines extend the logic of Dada collage and Schwitters' Merz into three dimensions while keeping the paint-stroked, silkscreened surface of a picture. Works like Monogram and Bed set street detritus against expressive paint, refusing to say where art stops and the world begins. The combines opened terrain later claimed by assemblage, Pop art and installation.

Example work related to "Combine painting".
Example work related to "Combine painting".CC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Bjørn Krogstad) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Real objects attached to or protruding from the painted surface
  • Hybrid status: neither pure painting nor free-standing sculpture
  • Everyday and street materials: bedding, tires, bottles, printed matter
  • Expressive paint and silkscreen layered over and around the objects
  • Chance juxtaposition and refusal of a single reading

Key figures

  • Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) — Inventor of the combines, fusing painting with found objects

Example works

  • Monogram — Robert Rauschenberg (1955-1959)
  • Bed — Robert Rauschenberg (1955)
  • Coca-Cola Plan — Robert Rauschenberg (1958)

Sources

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