Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008)
Holdings (Vydock)
silkscreen ink, acrylic, and graphite on bonded aluminum
97 by 60 ¾ by 1 ⅝ in.
246.4 by 154.3 by 4.2 cm.
Executed in 1995.
On loan from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
When presenting his design for 945 Madison Avenue to the Whitney Museum of American Art trustees in 1963, Marcel Breuer asserted that the structure "should have a visual connection to the street... [to] transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art." This sentiment was undoubtedly shared by Robert Rauschenberg who drew from a visual urban lexicon, comprised of images and found materials, to bridge the gap between art and life across his oeuvre.
In Holdings (Vydock), one of twelve metal paintings that form Rauschenberg’s Vydock series executed in 1995, a spectral passage of color cuts through silkscreened vignettes of scattered cardboard, decaying walls, and trodden pavements. Vydock possibly draws its name from a mis-pronunciation of or play on the word viaduct suggested by the bright multi-color vertical channel that extends the full length of all paintings in this series.
By using his own black-and-white photographs of New York and Venetian urban landscapes as silkscreen imagery, Rauschenberg inserts direct fragments of quotidian life into his painting, echoing Breuer’s addition of windowpanes to the building's stairwell which provide framed vistas of the Madison Avenue streetscape. Resembling the vibrant oscillations of a spectrogram, the hot-cold color contrast of the painted strip in Holdings (Vydock) amplifies the dynamism in Rauschenberg’s frenetic brushwork and photographic compositions, mirroring the movement of the city. Conversely, a large swath of iridescent paint on the right side of the composition lends the painting an ethereal quality, as its surface shifts in relation to the viewer's vantage point.
The current loan of Holdings (Vydock) to Marcel at Sotheby’s Breuer from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation marks a continuation of Rauschenberg’s long history with the site. Commencing in 1966 with the Whitney's inaugural exhibition in the Breuer, “Art of the United States: 1670-1966,” to one of the most significant solo shows in 1990-1991 “Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings, 1962-1964,” and through to the building’s various institutional iterations, Rauschenberg’s work has been repeatedly featured in the space, demonstrating an enduring dialogue between his practice and the architecture that housed it.
