Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings, 1962-64

In the early 1960s, Rauschenberg made an abrupt change from the Combines and Assemblages that had earned him the reputation of "enfant terrible" of the art world. The result was a number of canvases, many of enormous size, that were created by using silkscreened images from magazines and his own photographs. Whether black and white or in vibrant colours, these works brought into play the artist's penchant for an intermingling of very personal imagery that could be at once sensual, political, theatrical or erotic. Roni Feinstein, curator of the major exhibition of these works at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art (December 1990 to March 1991), has written a text which is complemented by an essay by "New Yorker" art writer Calvin Tomkins.