painting

Combine painting

Photograph by MagicToDooron Flickr.

In the early 1960s, Rauschenberg s Combines sold from $400 to $7,500. . A combine painting is an artwork that incorporates Combine painting various objects into a painted canvas surface, creating a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg and his artist friend painting Jasper Johns used to design window displays together for upscale Combine painting retailers such as Tiffany s and Bonwit Teller in Manhattan before they became better established as artists.

Jasper Johns, as well, used similar techniques; in Roman art at least one painting, Johns attached a paintbrush right inside his painting. Examples of Rauschenberg s Combine paintings include Bed (1955), Canyon (1959), and Combine painting the free-standing Monogram (1955–1959). The prevailing theme of Rauschenberg s combine paintings is nonmeaning, the absurd, or antiart. In this regard the combine paintings relate to Pop art and their much earlier predecessor Dada.