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Grey Wing Painting Essay

American Abstraction at MOCA

Robert Rauschenberg’s Painting with gray wing

For my paper topic, I decided to visit the Museum of Contemporary Arts recently opened exhibition, A Room of Their Own: Rothko to Rauschenberg.  I selected Robert Rauschenberg’s Painting with gray wing, from 1958.  This painting is among Rauschenberg’s “combine” paintings, in which he experimented with making art from objects such as Coca-Cola bottles, traffic barricades, and of course, stuffed birds.  From the late 1950s Rauschenberg experimented with the use of newspaper and magazine photographs in his paintings, devising a process using solvent to transfer images directly onto the canvas.[1]  Rauschenberg’s work promoted an unfocused openness to external events.  His creation of “combine paintings” in the 1950’s is a prime example.  This is the artist’s alternative to the term “assemblage,��� which he first introduced at an Egan Gallery exhibition.  He did not set out to find objects by going to a junkyard because this would imply a predetermined theme.  He would, instead, use objects that presented themselves while in the midst of his projects.[2]

The painting itself is smaller than most of the other works in the room, roughly about two feet wide and almost 3 feet tall, and is encased in a simple brown wooden frame.  The painting’s background consists mostly of earthy colors of brown, tan, and some gray.  It has patches of white, with streaks and splatters of red green, orange and yellow; as well as blue or turquoise colored cloth on the left side.

        The main feature of the painting was a gray bird wing, a little bit longer than 1 foot long, secured with brown string and hooked into the canvas; it almost appeared like the wing was trapped and displayed as a sort of trophy.  The feather has some red paint on and around it, with drip streaks going down, almost like blood from the dead bird.  On the top left there is a piece of paper with typed letters, numbers and punctuation, all randomly mixed up with one another, making no logical sense.  It looks like it’s from an old typewriter, using blue and light red inks.  The piece also has a gibberish title as well.

        There is an old picture of a cityscape, possibly of New York or Chicago, which I assumed from the high-rise buildings that would be found in their downtown districts.  The picture was taken near sunset or dusk, and is covered by a thin, gauzy fabric that you can still see through.  Near the picture there is an old penny from 1942 glued onto the canvas, which almost blends into the background because of the color.  There are two black and white pictures of an old man and a young boy, who looks like he is practicing martial arts techniques as the old man looks on and instructs him.  These two pictures are also covered by a thin material and are barely visible.  There is also a picture of a woman, who is possibly pregnant, in an odd pose, with her hands over her shoulders and head, wearing a loose gown or sleeping clothes, with stripes.  This picture is underneath its surrounding sections.

Near the bottom, there is a small brown drawing or picture; it’s difficult to distinguish, because it’s barely visible.  It’s nearly entirely covered in white paint, but you can make out a picture of a man, who looks like he is either falling down from building, or chained up against a wall.  Although the picture is virtually covered in white paint, it is one of the few elements in the entire artwork that is not covered in some sort of fabric.  There is a black and white sketch drawing of two tigers out in the jungle, surrounded by plants.  The drawing looks like it was taken out of a children’s coloring book, because the tigers and plants and surroundings are separated into small sections with numbers in them, as if to indicate what color to use, and where.

 On the very bottom, there is loosely connected fabric, painted over with white and brown, with dark red dividing them.  After I had begun to stare at the image for a while, I started to see things; the splatters and blotches of paint didn’t seem so random anymore.  I could make out animal shapes from them after looking intently at them.  The red paint dividing the white and brown looked like an image of a giraffe’s head and neck, with distinguishable ears, a nose and mouth.  There is also very dark red above the giraffe, which looks like a lion or another similar animal pouncing forward to attack its prey.  While the white paint around the giraffe head resembles a horse bending over to take a drink of water.  The final animal shape that came to mind was a rather strange one.  To the right of the bird feather, there is some light green paint, and after staring at it for a long while, trying to make some sense out of it, an image of an ancient Pterodactyl dinosaur in flight came to mind.

There is a section below the bird feather that is gray with white scribble; it looks a lot like graffiti art.  The final section was on the right edge, in the middle vertically.  It had a dark blue background, with yellow paint, and you could make out several distorted human figures in dancing positions.

I selected this piece of art over the other exhibits because from a distance when I walked into the room, it looked mysterious.  Overall, it was a dark brown, but had splotches of color all over, and I wanted to study them more closely.  Plus having a bird wing in a picture always adds interest as well.  I was reminded of a few things from my childhood while I was viewing the picture.  I remembered how my own parents had forced me to take Karate classes when I was a young child, even though I hated going, and they knew it.  I am also a huge history fan, which is the main reason I took this course in the first place.  Having an old penny from 1942 glued on to the canvas was very interesting in unique, since my father and I collect old coins from different countries and time periods.  There is a huge difference between seeing a picture of a work in a book, and actually experiencing the real thing in a museum.  The biggest difference for me was being able to see the pictures up close, in their full size.  Often, it’s impossible to discover the intricate details of a painting when its been reduced in size to fit into a textbook; and of course, many of the images found in textbooks are not in color, which definitely doesn’t help.

        The reason I chose this assignment over the other two choices is because I have always thought of abstract art as kind of a lesser art form.  I never had much respect or enthusiasm for paintings that I felt consisted of just random paint splatters and lines that any child with a brush and paint could create.  It didn’t seem to require much talent or even time and dedication.  But I had never studied abstract painters or their works in any detail, to have the knowledge required to make such observations, so I felt that perhaps I finally should.  And now, I would have to admit that my philosophy on abstract art has completely been changed.  In fact I was so impressed by the artworks I saw, that I decided to visit the other exhibit, which was related to contemporary artists as well, which only reinforced the fact that my previous judgments about abstract art had been incorrect.  I don’t think I’m ever going to be a huge fan of this type of art to the point that I would buy paintings for my home, but I most definitely no longer see abstraction as a lesser type of artwork.