What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

The two Robert Rauschenberg lots (115 and 116) on offer in this auction likely appealed to Sid Rothberg on two levels: one, because of Rauschenberg’s role as a trailblazer who pioneered the use of non-traditional materials and methods; and two, because of Rauschenberg’s belief that art could help to foster positive social change. Letter Head II directly relates to other Rauschenberg mixed media collage works also created in 1970. That same year he created Signs, a screen print made up of a hybrid of images including Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. That work was submitted as a cover design for Newsweek magazine, and its somewhat arbitrary placement of images was described as a “flatbed picture plane” by historian Leo Steinberg. Importantly, it reflected many of the social concerns so prevalent by the end of the 1960s. While not as socio-politically charged in its messaging as Signs, Letter Head II is replete with varied subject matter that Rauschenberg found interesting and topical to usher in the beginning of the new decade. As Lot 116, from the Bleachers Series was included in “The Indomitable Spirit” exhibition of 1990, it can arguably be seen as part of a larger response to the then-prevalent AIDS epidemic. Mounted to aluminum and created with an oversize Polaroid camera and large Polapan 400 film sheets, these images were selectively bleached with a coater on purpose, so as to alter the final image. Rauschenberg’s selective bleaching method as applied to photographs was, by the end of the 1980s, as groundbreaking and inventive as the “flatbed picture” collages that he perfected by the start of the 1970s. Along with his restless experimentation, Rauschenberg sought to make social change through his art, as summed up in his own words: “I feel very guilty about being in a position of influence and not using it to do something important.”