Art Spark #11

Look

Look is about collecting material that inspires you.
Robert Rauschenberg was phoned by a friend who offered him a taxidermied eagle found in a pile of discarded belongings. Rauschenberg incorporated it into his canvas among other materials (the cuff of a man’s shirt sleeve, a metal canister and a pillow), collaged together with fabric, photographs, and other printed matter and then covered with paint influenced by the abstract expressionists. Rauschenberg's juxtaposition of everyday objects—including an image of the artist's son—with the eagle may suggest the Greek myth of Ganymede, the young boy that Zeus abducted while in the form of an eagle.

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959. It is an example of his ‘Combines’, a mixture of painting and sculpture