Robert Rauschenberg: Minutiae 1954. A freestanding combine, something that wasn't hung on the wall but could stand on the floor. Made for Merc Cunningham's dance play. / by Mark Edwards

Researching about Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, as they continue to inform the experimental way some artist have used everyday discarded objects to attach to their paintings and sculptures that then become a completed work, I have been reading an essay by Charles Stuckey in Robert Rauschenberg combines The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Steidl 2005. What aluminates my interest is how Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Merc Cunningham and John Cage collaborated on works in the early 1950’s during there time at Black Mountain College and shortly after. Stuckey talks about examining the Minutiae 1954 looking at the collaged newspapers and how they were selected editorials, that at the day served meaning to what Rauschenberg was making. (p.199) “like Pablo Picasso, did Rauschenberg prefer newspaper items about issues connected to his art and life” I find interesting that the combines were a kind of highbred not a painting not a sculpture and in Minutiae a performance piece that has legs stands on the floor not to be hung on a wall. Possibilities I see here are endless, like my imagination all sorts of random thoughts just continue to pop in and out, the combine explores and illustrates anything can be art. Another well written about work ,that is discussed, in this essay, is the painting given to Rauschenberg by De kooning that Rauschenberg spent a month solid erasing. Again anything is possible. Is this a form of soft sculpture the eraser presumably would have been flexible and the image has been erased, what we can see or perceive, to me the illusion is in my head a form of the conscious becoming transported to an unconscious state to formulate whatever the image might have been. There is a picture taken by Rauschenberg in 1954 of Cy Twombly with his work in Rauschenberg’s studio holding a painting with a box on the floor and an ensemble of household items… funnels, round mirrors, cooking spoons, and hand fans. The emphasise here is on the power of humble objects, the everyday, these works in there explorative nature tell me to just go and try anything see what happens, be brave.