The Rauschenberg Art Piece

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Rauschenberg art piece was definitely one form of art I once did not consider to be art. The artwork is not exactly a painting to me but certainly an illustration of something that is connected to real day to day objects. It was created by the artist Robert Rauschenberg in 1954. It is oil on canvas painting which is eighty by ninety six in size and the materials used are oil, paper, fabric and metal which are all on wood. It looks quite messy, with materials like newspapers, cut out fabrics, the colors’ drips and how they are splashed around. The image doesn’t look attractive but it sure does attract different ideas from the viewers on what the image itself is trying to portray.

In Rauschenberg’s art piece, the visual elements include, it’s a painting, the two thin lines within the fabrics and the whole painting right down the middle, small vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines between the fabrics the colors used just as much as the fabrics. The painting I think is abit light from the yellow, white and red colors that blend with fabrics that are the same color. There’s no design in the piece, it’s a chaotic and random composition work since the artist has all the materials blended together including the wooden frame. The elements like the colors pink, blue, orange and yellow plus the random choice and random visuals also have the viewer’s attention, maybe forcing the viewer to look deeper into the art piece.

The mixed reaction I have towards the painting is because, first off, I still wouldn’t know what is really behind it or what it’s trying to tell us without looking at it from a distance. When I looked at it from a computer desktop I could see a shoe, a mountai...

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...it is a success because it shows its own unique and permanent hidden imagery for all viewers to see. The work is well executed with the materials suitable and when I was looking at it, I visualized and what I actually could see was a clown on the top left, a black dragon down on the right and other random things. After seeing the painting, I was overwhelmed since I had all kinds of ideas coming to me and they kept coming such as saying that the background of the picture was somehow a beach.

The art piece by Rauschenberg is of great art and many appreciate the thought and process that might have gone into it even though it is of chaotic design. It is random and all materials are blended so it serves its purpose of leading us to imagine the simple life or perhaps something leading to that. The quality of the artwork is highly original and ranks high in my list.