Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Paintings
Global Loft (Spread)
Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas, where, he said, “it was very easy to grow up without ever seeing a painting.” After briefly studying pharmacology, he served in the United States Navy (1943–46). While stationed in San Diego, he visited The Huntington and, inspired by the paintings he encountered, realized that art was something a person could do for a living.
A versatile and prolific artist, Rauschenberg is credited with moving the American art scene beyond Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement of the post-war years, and beyond the established mediums of painting and sculpture with his “Combines,” his term for objects that blur the two. After an interlude in performance and dance during the 1960s, Rauschenberg returned to paintings that utilized appropriated images and found objects. Global Loft (Spread) is part of Rauschenberg’s Spread series from the late 1970s and early 1980s, which shows him reflecting on his own career as well as art history broadly.
In Global Loft, Rauschenberg employs a traditional compositional device by dividing the surface into thirds. Various elements, such as the glue brushes and images of the earth from space, appear in triplicate. While an aesthetic resonance is created among the recognizable images and materials, together they do not suggest a clear linear narrative. Rauschenberg elicits a feeling that the parts are understood without conveying a single, specific meaning for the whole.
A versatile and prolific artist, Rauschenberg is credited with moving the American art scene beyond Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement of the post-war years, and beyond the established mediums of painting and sculpture with his “Combines,” his term for objects that blur the two. After an interlude in performance and dance during the 1960s, Rauschenberg returned to paintings that utilized appropriated images and found objects. Global Loft (Spread) is part of Rauschenberg’s Spread series from the late 1970s and early 1980s, which shows him reflecting on his own career as well as art history broadly.
In Global Loft, Rauschenberg employs a traditional compositional device by dividing the surface into thirds. Various elements, such as the glue brushes and images of the earth from space, appear in triplicate. While an aesthetic resonance is created among the recognizable images and materials, together they do not suggest a clear linear narrative. Rauschenberg elicits a feeling that the parts are understood without conveying a single, specific meaning for the whole.
