If art history were a cocktail party, Robert Rauschenberg would rank among the most interesting conversationalists. He is witty and daring, though sometimes veering toward the obscure. His ace card of engagement is tantalizing the viewer into sussing out the connections between his references. There are plenty in the works on view in “Global Matters: Rauschenberg Print Media 1968-1975,” curated by students in the UW-Milwaukee Art History Graduate Program.
Climate change is a timely subject and this exhibition underscores the artist’s concern for environmental matters in the heady activist days of the 1960s and ’70s. Deposit, from the “America: The Third Century” series, perhaps ironically commissioned by the Mobil Oil Corporation, is analyzed by Marin Kniskern as an amalgamation of technology and humanity, underpinned by the traditional iconography of the serpent and the apple. It is an uneasy relationship, with nature as an Edenic ideal threatened by the destructive juggernaut of industry. This motif occurs in many of these works.
Poster for Peace directly appeals for interaction. Telephones as modern communication—now charmingly nostalgic with their handsets and dials—are juxtaposed with a dead, twisted bird, sodden with oil. A human skull, a line of light bulbs and a close-up view of fingers holding a lit match further insinuate death and destruction. Even the glowing flame of the match is disquieting. It will take only a moment to burn and scorch the hand that holds it. A rallying cry is offered through open rectangles in the composition with instructions like “Cut the word ‘Peace’ from any front page headline and glue it into this space RR.” This entreaty is all the more poignant for the artist’s initials at the end of the sentence.
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More challenging are Rauschenberg’s Cardbirds. At a glance, these are ordinary boxes, flattened into seemingly random forms. Big deal. However, the most subtle and clever of gestures are made through collage and screen printing. The ordinary is duplicated by the duplicity of the artist’s hand. Their weirdly biomorphic forms and deadpan text like “Perishable—Keep Frozen” are the driest of ironies from a most erudite artist.
“Global Matters: Rauschenberg Print Media 1968-1975” continues through May 7 in the UWM Art History Gallery, Mitchell Hall 154, 3203 N. Downer Ave.
