The surreal aspect of abstract art has been (in many cases) ignored. Artists like Rauschenberg and Richard Hamilton have exploited the absurdities of Marcel Duchamp and created something new – a combination of artistic and painterly ideas that has a foot in every camp.
Capitalizing on the visual freedom of expression that the Abstract Expressionists gave artists, Rauschenberg incorporated their processes of mark making into his vision of (Pop) Art. The meshing together of gestural marks and the printed image or ‘objets trouvé’ further complicated the visual dialogue – by laying over a print or combining an object somehow makes the process of untangling the visual image simpler.
‘Bed’ is executed in a technique he called ‘combine painting’.
Robert Rauschenberg was a massive influence on my painting, printing and music. Images (and sounds) that are arbitrarily spliced together in an apparent random manner will, when juxtaposed against each other, create a narrative. This meshing together of unrelated imagery may appear to be arbitrary but the intellectual decision making that goes with the process is absolutely phenomenal. It is therefore unrealistic to expect the uneducated masses to view these images as ‘real art’. The birth of Photoshop has enabled everybody to create ‘non-intellectual’ versions of Rauchenberg (and Warhol).
