Robert Rauschenberg

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
James Mayor Gallery, London
Alan Power, England
James Mayor Gallery, London
Denise Rene and Hans Meyer, Düsseldorf
Klaus Laver, Badenweiler
Private Collection

The work is in very good condition overall. There are pin holes in all four corners. Framed under glass.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Robert Rauschenberg's collages evolved out of the Combines he began creating in the early 1950s.  Those works were composed of found objects manufactured, consumed and discarded, then rediscovered by the artist and recycled into imaginative assemblages whose shapes, colors or content form puns or thematic reiterations. 

Assemblage has been a part of visual culture, beginning with the invention of paper in China circa 200 BC, and then entering the Modern art lexicon with Picasso and Braque's   collages in the beginning of the 20^th Century.

In the late 1950s Rauschenberg began experimenting with solvent-transfer, a process that 'lifted' printed work, such as a magazine illustration, from its page support and on to another.  This marked a subtle and important innovation in assemblage and collage.  With the solvent-transfer, images of objects (including the torn edges of sheets, stains on surfaces, and other accidental features) are rendered identically and reside alongside one another on the new support, objectified by the 'remoteness' from their source the same way Warhol distances us from his sources through the intervention of the photoscreenprint technique. 

Thus they are not collages as such, rather renderings or simulations of collage.  Rauschenberg further clouds the issue by adding actual collage to the surfaces.  This does not diminish the significance of the breakthrough he achieved with the solvent-transfer, which was to enfold assemblage and collage into the ever-expanding embrace of Pop Art.