Robert Rauschenberg

PaceWildenstein, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Denver Art Museum, July - December 1999 (Extended Loan)

Bandiere di Maggio, Rauschenberg a Napoli: Tribute 21, Naples, 1999, n.p., illustrated in color

This work appears in excellent condition overall. All surface inconsistencies are inherent to the work and to the artist's working method. Framed.
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Part of the series Anagrams [A Pun], Eyes of the Beholder exemplifies the artist's career emphasis on exploring the 'gap between art and life' as seen in his seminal combines of the 60s. As with Rauschenberg's earlier collage works of the 80s and 90s, both spatially ambiguous series blend together the realistic and abstract, uniting otherwise disparate worlds and adding narrative to the space between life and art. Through a delicate process of photographic transfer using soluble vegetable dye, the polylaminate surface is filled entirely, allowing for a landscape-like image where the viewer acknowledges the world, or worlds, outside of the frame. Vertical and horizontal lines add architectural division to the various elements of the work, yet invite the viewer to absorb the juxtaposed fragments as a whole. Rauschenberg is devoted to "exploring and recording the space and function of imagination, of creativity and of perception," (Exh. Cat., New York, PaceWildenstein, Anagrams, 1996, p. 1). Eyes of the Beholder, systematic yet chaotic, begs the viewer to take into consideration all images, rearrange or decipher the layers of forms into a secret message or code - as with a verbal anagram. The work is a visual puzzle, with more than one and no definitive answer; the code found within the collection of the images reached through a distinct sense of urgency, realism and intimacy perpetuated in all of Rauschenberg's works.