ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG | Sin Yen 11 [Anagram (A Pun)]

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, St. Louis
Acquired from the above by the present owner in July 1999

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals some very light lifting to the extreme lower right corner tip. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Part of Robert Rauschenberg’s renown series Anagrams (A Pun), the present work effortlessly synthesises instantly recognizable quotidian symbols, with superbly esoteric visual references. In Sin Yen 11, Rauschenberg offers the instantly recognisable ‘stop’ traffic sign, a symbol ubiquitous to American culture and imbued with mass cultural legibility, mirrored by another street sign, an arrow of direction to Sin Yin, this second street sign of unknown significance, opaque importance. Further ambiguity is lent to the work with much of the composition shrouded in a veil of deep red pigment surrounding a lone figure stumbling towards the edge of the piece. Each recognisable visual nod, is countered with an image of vagueness, decontextualised and hazy. The result is a lyrical juxtaposition of the cryptic with the familiar. In the present work, Rauschenberg’s poetic assortment of visual clues forms a loose grid, comprised of four seemingly haphazard quadrants partitioning the composition. While the viewer grapples to find a discernable conventional narrative in Rauschenberg’s choice of imagery, and this highly structured composition refuses pictorial narration, and recalls instead the immediacy of the picture surface in Abstract Expressionist’s canvases. The Anagrams (A Pun) series offers an eloquent extension of Rauschenberg’s earlier forays into collaged and silkscreened canvases. First exhibited at PaceWildenstein in 1996, the series was described by writer Bernice Rose; “[Rauschenberg’s] newest group of works is one of his more extraordinary visual reenactments of that exploration into the world of the sensate: the Anagrams are the poetic ciphers of his self’s self-discovery as it travels among the objects of the material world and inserts itself into the chaotic, arbitrary world of nature” (Bernice Rose, Exh. Cat., New York, PaceWildenstein (and travelling), Robert Rauschenberg: Anagrams, 1996, p. 7). Rendered here on polylaminate, the artist furthers his infamous layering collage technique with a then cutting-edge method of image making, allowing for greater depth of imagery. Rauschenberg’s technical innovation falls perfectly in line with decades spent fervently experimenting with image transfer techniques as a means of challenging hierarchies of the image world. In both technique and imagery, his refusal to recognise distinctions between the visual spheres of contemporary culture and art history lead to an iconoclastic integration of life and objects into his artistic practice.