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Plain Salt (Cardboards)

Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008)
1971

Medium/Technique Cardboard assemblage mounted to plywood
Dimensions Overall: 204.5 x 94 x 26.7 cm (80 1/2 x 37 x 10 1/2 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Martin Peretz
Accession Number1992.396
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsCollages
Deciding to focus on a single material for a year, Rauschenberg chose the cardboard box—easily obtainable and discarded after fulfilling its mission to contain something. Rauschenberg relished the chance to work directly with "a material of waste and softness. Something yielding with its only message a collection of lines and imprinted like a friendly joke. A silent discussion of their history exposed by their new shapes." These inventive reliefs elevate the ordinary and acknowledge an unglamorous material that commonly sheathes something more precious as it travels across various spatial thresholds.

InscriptionsSigned on reverse side in Rauschenberg's own script:
Rauschenberg 1971
ProvenanceThe artist; with Castelli Gallery, New York; to Martin Peretz, Cambridge, MA, 1972; to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1992
CopyrightArt © Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY