Ballad, from the Hoarfrost series

This diaphanous work comes from a series that Rauschenberg developed while travelling in Israel and India. Inspired by the unconventional ways craftspeople used paper and fabric, Rauschenberg began transferring texts and images, such as the lamb in this work, directly onto unstretched fabric using a solvent process. He added paper bags, cardboard, and other found elements. The vertical red stripes on the charcoal bag at the center of this composition contrast with the fabric’s horizontal red stripes. The play between vertical and horizontal, and between art and utilitarian objects, was central to Rauschenberg’s conception of painting as a representation of an object and the object itself.