Scenarios

Scenarios presents the paintings Robert Rauschenberg made in the final years of his life, monumental compositions that fuse his signature transfer-printed photographic imagery with passages of bare, unpainted canvas.

Published by PaceWildenstein on the occasion of the exhibition at its New York gallery, January 14 - February 5, 2005, the catalogue reproduces the Scenarios series across 47 pages alongside an essay by the novelist Oscar Hijuelos. Each work pairs Rauschenberg's characteristic layering of found photographic and printed imagery, drawn from his own extensive archive, with expanses of raw canvas that isolate and quiet the surrounding imagery, a departure in restraint from the denser collage aesthetic of his earlier combines and silkscreens.

Rauschenberg (1925-2008) had by this point spent five decades dismantling the boundary between painting and everyday material, from the Combines of the 1950s through his Cardboards, Jammers, and Anagrams series; Scenarios, made in his eighties, shows that restless experimentation continuing to the end of his career.