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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Hotel Bilbao) ca. 1952 paper collage and fabric collage on board Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Red Painting) ca. 1953 oil paint and fabric collage on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Gold Painting) ca. 1953 gold leaf and fabric collage on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Yoicks 1954 oil paint, enamel and fabric collage on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Satellite 1955 oil paint and paper collage on canvas, with stuffed pheasant Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Summer Rental + 2 1960 oil paint and paper collage on linen Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Reservoir 1961 oil paint and found objects on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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Robert Rauschenberg Wooden Gallop 1962 assemblage of mixed materials mounted on panel Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled 1963 oil paint and screenprint on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg St Louis Symphony Orchestra 1968 lithograph (poster) Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Robert Rauschenberg Untitled 1968 lithograph Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Robert Rauschenberg Yellow Body 1968 solvent transfer on paper, with added watercolor and gouache Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg Signs 1970 screenprint Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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Robert Rauschenberg New York Collection for Stockholm 1973 lithograph (poster) Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Robert Rauschenberg Link 1974 pressed paper pulp with paper collage Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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Robert Rauschenberg Treaty 1974 lithograph Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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Robert Rauschenberg Fusion 1996 solvent transfer on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
Voices from the Other World
Presently at our touch the teacup stirred,
Then circled lazily about
From A to Z. The first voice heard
(If they are voices, these mute spellers-out)
(If they are voices, these mute spellers-out)
Was that of an engineer
Originally from Cologne
Dead in his 22nd year
Of cholera in Cairo, he had KNOWN
NO HAPPINESS. He once met Goethe, though.
Goethe had told him: PERSEVERE.
Our blind hound whined. With that, a horde
Of voices gathered above the Ouija board,
Some childish, and, you might say, blurred
By sleep; one little boy
Named Will, reluctant possibly in a ruff
Like a large-lidded page out of El Greco, pulled
Back the arras for that next voice,
Cold and portentous: ALL IS LOST.
FLEE THIS HOUSE. OTTO VON THURN UND TAXIS.
OBEY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.
Frightened, we stopped; but tossed
Till sunrise striped the rumpled sheets with gold.
Each night since then, the moon waxes,
Small insects flit round a cold torch
We light, that sends them pattering to the porch . . .
But no real Sign. New voices come,
Dictate addresses, begging us to write;
Some warn of lives misspent, and all of doom
In ways that so exhilarate
We are sleeping sound of late.
Last night the teacup shattered in a rage.
Indeed, we have grown nonchalant
Towards the other world. In the gloom here,
Our elbows on the cleared
Table, we talk and smoke, pleased to be stirred
Rather by buzzings in the jasmine, by the drone
Of our own voices and poor blind Rover's wheeze,
Than by those clamoring overhead,
Obsessed or piteous, for a commitment
We still have wit to postpone
Because, once looked at lit
By the cold reflections of the dead
Risen extinct but irresistible,
Our lives have never seemed more full, more real,
Nor the full moon more quick to chill.
– James Merrill (1959)