Signs Robert Rauschenberg

Signs Robert Rauschenberg 

The piece ‘Signs’ is a collage by Robert Rauschenberg in 1970. Born in 1925 at the time of this piece Rauschenberg was 45 years old at the time, and would have been heavily influenced by the prominent issues of 1960-70’s America. At the time of the Space race, the Peace movement, troubles within the Race Relations and nearing the end of the Vietnam war, America was a turbulent place to live in. Signs makes a broad and controversial statement about the American government and the way that many people saw it but didn’t want to say, many of the people depicted within the piece are now dead, multiple subjects in the picture including John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated and their deaths seen as a conspiracy.

The piece is a flat 2d portrait composed of smaller individual images, some with white borders to make the separation apparent. The collaged images within are iconic photographs of the time probably taken from magazines, each depict the significant social make-up of the time. With a busy composition, the image is then balanced by a heavy base to the image with the largest individual pictures at the bottom, the largest of which being the image of the astronaut. At the time of the image there were many things that the American Government didn’t want to disclose and if they did, things were often put into place to take away from the severity here the joyous occasion of winning the pace race. Here Rauschenberg has fabricated that idea by depicting a lot of images with negative connotations, such as the dying man crawling out of the centre of the piece, or Martin Luther king being shown in a coffin and disguising them with an American victory putting a man onto the moon. The second largest individual section of this composition is the use of JFK’s head. Rauschenberg was friends with the Kennedys due to his powerful influence in pop culture, several years before this piece Kennedy was assassinated, being an obviously upsetting and personal time to Rauschenberg he chose to make a statement by using Kennedy as a focal point in the collage. In turn drawing the audience’s attention to what was really happening in society and the fact that even though it was trying to be covered up by the government, much like the overlap of the astronaut in the piece it was a real and emotional event.

Formal elements of both colour and line is also heavily used throughout the piece, Janis Joplin Is placed at the very top of the image in red, being the only section of an individual hue the eye is drawn to this part of the piece. The Peace movement, and the heavy use of hallucinogens was something very prominent in the sixties and this aspect of society was portrayed through the influential presence of Janis Joplin. The complementary pair of colours green and red are used in this piece to fabricate a diagonal line through the centre of the image. A selection of images in the secondary colour green contrast the red and shows the brutal nature of war by portraying pictures of army men, beginning with a truck at the top left hand corner, to a group of soldiers hugging in the centre to a dead solider crawling out of the image. Within the centre of the group of soldiers hugging there is a large and slightly out of focus hand maybe trying to portray the involvement that the American government has in the decisions of what happened during the Vietnam war. This hand is external from the image and looks out of place and awkward, this may be a direct comparison made by Rauschenberg about how he feels the Government’s is involvement with the troops in war. These create a separation between the warm harmonies of colours created by the image of Janis Joplin and Kennedy and the cool colours of the astronaut and Martin Luther king. This creates a juxtaposition, reiterated by the complementary colours, between the dark aspects of society that led to assassinations, sacrifices and deaths of innocents and the positive light that we put man on the moon. This divided within the collage creates a path for the viewer’s eye to follow, we are guided through the image by meticulously placed colours and images, telling a story of Rauschenberg’s true opinion of the state of his homeland. The collage Signs has a very flat appearance with lack of texture this has probably been chosen by Rauschenberg as the range of powerful meanings in the image and the busy composition is already quite a lot to take in on initial viewing so the addition of texture would take away from all the carefully chosen messages already there.

Upon studying work by Rauschenberg and reflection on the collages I have recently been creating, I feel that I could add a vast amount more meaning to my pieces. With each individual subject in Rauschenberg’s collage there is a specific meaning and reason to it being there. In each of my pieces I have realised I’ve just added section for the sole purpose of appearance and not to develop the meaning behind the piece.