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  Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection > Highlights of the Exhibition > Robert Rauschenberg (American, born 1925) Paper Clip, 1968
 
 
Robert Rauschenberg (American, born 1925)
Paper Clip, 1968
Colored wash, ink transfer
31 x 21-1/2 inches

Robert Rauschenberg (American, born 1925)
Paper Clip, 1968

In Paper Clip, Robert Rauschenberg used a unique drawing process he first developed ten years earlier in 1958. Wetting printed illustrations from magazines or newspapers with a solvent such as lighter fluid or turpentine, he placed them face down on his sheet and rubbed the backs with an empty ballpoint pen, pencil (leaving graphite traces), or other implement. The transfer process reproduced the images reversed and rendered them in what has aptly been described as “a kind of linear sfumato.”

A bold example occurs in this example at the lower left. Here, sweeping striations of rubbing take precedence over the transferred imagery. The solvent transfer drawings constituted a shift of the collage and assemblage elements of his previous combine paintings to the two-dimensional field, serving as a critical bridge to the silkscreened paintings he began to produce in 1962. Rauschenberg used his transfer method to join disparate images in a free manner, resulting in compositions with frequently elusive meanings.

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Valley Curtain, Project for Colorado, 1972