How Rauschenberg's Monogram effectively "destroyed painting"
By Anna Niederlander
Modernism is impossible to define, with many critics interpreting it in different ways, resulting in a debate which is still ongoing today. One critic whose ideas were omnipresent in the 1950s is Clement Greenberg. In his influential essay “Modernist Painting,” (1961) Greenberg stated: “The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.”
Greenberg argued that Modernist art should be self-critical, and should analyze its inherent qualities. In terms of painting, these qualities are flatness and color. Greenberg also believed that the artist should focus on and master one medium, and through this mastering they could showcase their “genius” to the world. According to Greenberg, a successful modernist painting first confronts the viewer with the flatness of the canvas (which he believed was unique to painting), and then with its content. Modernist paintings abandon the Renaissance illusion of space and focus on the three-dimensionality of subjects, creating a formal sense of ‘purity’ by placing more focus on how the artist uses their medium, rather than on what they are depicting. In painting, this means breaking down the essence of the medium, focusing on colours and simple forms.
Purity, in Greenberg’s eyes, meant the “acceptance of the limitations of the medium.” A work of art has to show a mastery of one medium, and in doing so conceals the medium. However, Neo-Dada artists specifically challenged Greenberg’s notion of “pure” art through the appropriation of different materials in a visible way. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two of the most renowned Neo-Dada artists, both rewrote this idea of painting-as-object, destroying the importance of “purity” by attaching objects to the canvas which stick out or protrude into the three-dimensional space.
Monogram (1955-9) by Robert Rauschenberg
https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/art-in-context/monogram
Rauschenberg’s Monogram (1955-9) effectively "destroyed painting” in significant ways. The artwork is composed of oil, fabric, printed reproductions, metal, wood, a rubber shoe-heel, and a tennis ball on two conjoined canvases, with a goat head through a rubber tire placed atop it. It is exemplary of Rauschenberg’s “Combines”— a term he coined to describe hybrid creations which combine painting, sculpture and assemblage. Through his seemingly spontaneous juxtaposing of these different materials, Rauschenberg changes the viewers perception of them. However, the materials were not applied spontaneously. It took Rauschenberg four years to decide where to place the goat. Rauschenberg was seen as the rebellious heir to Dada, and Duchamp’s exploration of the “Readymade” is central to this work. Dada, which was excluded from the Greenbergian linear history of modern art, is not only re-adopted, but pushed beyond its previous limits in Monogram.
By using numerous everyday objects in this work, Rauschenberg not only questions the genius of the artist, but also makes materiality central to his work. The goat is the most obvious feature of Monogram, and the entire work seems like a construction around the objects of which it consists—as if the objects dictated the work itself. According to Rauschenberg, "Whatever I've used and whatever I've done, the method was always closer to collaboration with material than any kind of conscious manipulation and control." In effect, Rauschenberg destroys Greenberg’s vision of the artist working with one medium as a way to express his inner genius, instead replacing it with the vision of an artist whose work is not only made, but more so ‘controlled’ by the different materials used in his work. Neo-Dada, as Rauschenberg notes, becomes “awkwardly physical." By using diverse media in his compositions, Rauschenberg destroyed the Greenbergian ideal of “pure” art.
Sketch for Monogram (1955-9) by Robert Rauschenberg
https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/artwork/sketch-monogram
The title of the work, Monogram, is a play on the way the goat and the tire interlock. However, some think there is also an underlying homoerotic theme, which is further indicated through the tennis ball behind the goat. This ambiguity again displaces the viewer as the main judge of what the work represents, again almost mocking the idea of the ‘artist genius.’
Rauschenberg in his Pearl Street studio with Satellite (1955) and the first state of Monogram (1955-59; first state 1955-56), New York, ca. 1955
Finally, Rauschenberg places Monogram on the ground for the audience to see… a simple act which counters Greenberg’s definition of Modernism in two vital ways. Firstly, it imitates Jackson Pollock’s infamous drip-painting technique, which can be read as a mockery of the idea of the genius artist, as Pollock was Greenberg’s exemplary “genius artist.” Secondly, by placing the artwork on the floor, he blurs the boundaries between sculpture and painting, thus shattering Greenberg’s concept of medium purity at its core.
Bibliography:
Dickerman, Leah. “Five Propositions.” In Robert Rauschenberg, edited by Leah Dickerman and Achim Borchardt-Hume, 394-408. New York: Tate Publishing, 2016.
Greenberg, Clement. “Towards a Newer Laocoon (1900-1994).” In Art in Theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 562-567. Oxford, Blackwell, 2002.
Hapgood, Susan. Neo-Dada: Redefining Art, 1958-62. New York: American Federation of Arts in association with Universe Publishing, 1994.
Phaidon. “The meanings in Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram.” Phaidon.com https://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2016/december/06/the-meanings-in-robert-rauschenberg-s-monogram/ (accessed October 12, 2020).
Willette, Jeanne. “Modernist Painting” by Clement Greenberg. Art History Unstuffed.com. https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/modernist-painting-by-clement-greenberg/ (accessed October 13, 2020).