- Museum number
- 2011,7077.1
- Title
-
Object: Cardbird III
-
Series: Cardbirds
- Description
-
Pieces of cardboard stuck together to form a bird-like shape; from 'Cardbirds', a series of eight collage prints. 1971
Collage print comprising offset lithograph, screenprint, tape and polythene on corrugated cardboard
- Production date
- 1971
- Dimensions
-
Height: 900 millimetres
-
Width: 900 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Produced with the master printer Ken Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles. The Gemini inventory number is RR71-2018.
Text from Coppel, Daunt and Tallman, 'The American Dream: pop to the present', London: Thames and Hudson in association with the British Museum, 2017, cat. no. 47 ( with cat. 46, 'Cardbird Door', 1971):
In 1970 Rauschenberg moved to Captiva Island off the coast of Florida and his work took on a new tenor. The 1960s had been a time of open, sometimes frenetic experimentation for Rauschenberg – exploded art forms, cutting-edge technologies and political activism that left him exhausted. (To act on behalf of social justice, Rauschenberg wrote, ‘I have had to concentrate almost exclusively on gloom and filter joy, investigate cruelty and suspect all changes. This is my responsibility, but it is exhausting.’ Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Note: Cardbirds’, in 'Rauschenberg: Cardbirds', Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1971, n.p.) He began the new decade with a series of works that carried no overt social message and were made from the lowliest of contemporary jetsam: scavenged cardboard boxes, cut open and arranged with minimal interventions. The 'Cardbirds' produced at Gemini are painstaking facsimiles of found-material constructions, down to the last torn edge and smudge of dirt. Rauschenberg viewed cardboard as ‘a material of waste and softness’, a source of happy engagement. (Ibid.) The 'Cardbirds' ask to be considered as integral things, rather than blank slates for receiving images. 'Cardbird Door', designed to fit a standard jamb and function as a door, is perhaps the ultimate statement of Rauschenberg’s desire ‘to act in the gap’ (Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Artist’s Statement: Robert Rauschenberg’, in Dorothy Miller, ed., 'Sixteen Americans', New York: MoMA, 1959, p. 58) between art and life: a print/sculpture/installation you can walk into, through, and out the other side.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2017 9 Mar-18 Jun, London, BM, G30, The American Dream
2018 2 Jun-2 Sept, Paris, Fondation Custodia, The American Dream: pop to the present
2020-21 8 Oct-31 Jan, Madrid, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
- Acquisition date
- 2011
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2011,7077.1
