"Take an object / Do something to it": Things in Rauschenberg’s and Johns’s works of the 1950s

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Claudio Zambianchi
Publishing Year 2010 Issue 2010/2 Language Italian
Pages 9 P. 117-125 File size 269 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2010-002009
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

In the 1950s some New York artists begin to react against Abstract Expressionism prevailing at the time. Rauschenberg and Johns, the main protagonists in this process, are led to include everyday objects in their works. Rauschenberg uses their montage to transform the notion of pictorial surface peculiar to previous generation and to convey hidden personal meanings in the work of art. Johns’ deconstruction of the rhetoric of modernism is subtler, being based on a parody of the Abstract Expressionist spontaneous brushwork, which is now used to render images of anonymous things. The use of common objects will prove to be very influential on the art of the following decades.

Keywords: Collage, Combine-painting, Johns, New Dada, Object, Rauschenberg.

Claudio Zambianchi, "Prendi un oggetto / Facci qualcosa". Le cose nel lavoro di Rauschenberg e Johns degli anni Cinquanta in "PARADIGMI" 2/2010, pp 117-125, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2010-002009