Robert Rauschenberg

PORTO, PORTUGAL

MUSEU DE ARTE CONTEMPOR�NEA DE SERRALVES

October 26, 2007-January 6, 2008

Curated by Mirta d'Argenzio

Relatively little attention has been paid to Robert Rauschenberg's work from the early 1970s, a period that culminated in his all but official designation as a "contemporary old master" with his 1976 retrospective at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, I)C. In the years immediately prior, however, Rauschenberg had valiantly sought ways to avoid that (already) inevitable fate. Among the approximately sixty-five works on view in Porto will be selections from his series of the time-"Cardboards," "Jammers," "Venetians," and others-many attempting to turn away from the dense semiotic fields of his Combines and silk screens of the '5Os and '60s to focus on the sculptural, the abstract, the diaphanous, and (above all) the colorful. Potentially riskier than exhibitions devoted to more well-trodden years, a systematic revisiting of this less documented period of Rauschenberg's production is all the more welcome. - Branden W. Joseph