The paintings Runts on exhibit each measure approximately 5' x 6' and are the smallest works the artist has produced in many years.  These channel surfing montages are assembled from Rauschenberg’s archive of photographs, which he then transfers onto polylaminate synthetic material mounted on aluminum panels. Runts represents a decades-long involvement in transfer images that began over 50 years ago transferring the medium of photography into painting. “Mine is the need to be where it will always never be the same again; a kind of archaeology in time only, forcing one to see whatever the light or the darkness touches, and care. My concern is the move at the speed within which to act. Photography is the most direct communication in nonviolent contacts,” wrote Rauschenberg in a 1981 essay. This and other related statements are reprinted in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

Rauschenberg’s voracious experimentation with materials in the 1950s led to the creation of his celebrated Combine series. In the next decade he continued to make paintings, drawings, and sculpture and his interests also extended into the theater where he designed sets, costumes, and lighting and collaborated with leading choreographers such as Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham.

A turning point occurred in 1962; Rauschenberg began a serious investigation of printmaking which led to his silkscreen paintings. Applying the solvent transfer technique he discovered and used earlier in drawings to this new body of work, Rauschenberg’s approach allowed for a new use of photography in contemporary art. His silkscreen transfers included iconic American images: J.F.K., the bald eagle, and space missions, capturing an era, setting, and sentiment. Referring to the period Rauschenberg remarked, “I was bombarded with TV sets and magazines, by the excess of the world. I thought an honest work should incorporate all of these elements, which were and are a reality.” 

In the 1970s Rauschenberg continued the transfer technique using various fabrics in lieu of the traditional canvas support in a series called Hoarfrosts. Rauschenberg’s more recent investigations of the photographic transfer method in his 1990s Anagrams series, as well as the newer Scenarios and the current Runts reveal the use of more personal, although no less enigmatic, images.  Runts however offer no discernable narrative and any perceived narrative is in the perception of the viewer’s associations.  Now drawn from his own archive of photographs taken all over the world since the 1980s, Rauschenberg has replaced the eye of mass media with his own.

Robert Rauschenberg’s work has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide for nearly sixty years. Recently, The Menil Collection organized Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces, the first large-scale museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s cardboard series created in 1971 and 1972. The exhibition, organized by Josef Helfenstein and the late Walter Hopps, coincided with the 20th anniversary of The Menil Collection. Part of a larger exhibition entitled Traveling 1970-1976 at the Museu Serralves, Porto, the exhibition is on view through March 30, 2008 when it will then travel to Haus der Kunst, Munich from May 9 through September 7, 2008 and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina (MADRE), Naples from October 18, 2008 to January 19, 2009.