Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts

by Trisha Brown (Author), Mimi Thompson (Author), Susan Davidson (Editor), Philip Rylands (Preface), Robert Rauschenberg (Artist) In the mid-1980s, Robert Rauschenberg's creative attentions turned toward the visual and plastic properties of junk metal when he began to assemble found metal objects and screenprint his photographic images onto aluminum, bronze, brass and copper. His first body of work in this vein was Gluts, a series begun in 1986 and continued intermittently until 1995, in which ornate metalwork seemingly derived from a bedpost might attach to a slice of mesh wire, or twisted petals of yellow metal might sprout from the remains of an eviscerated toaster. Asked to comment on his novel use of the word "gluts," Rauschenberg said, "It's a time of glut. Greed is rampant... I simply want to present people with their ruins... I think of the Gluts as souvenirs without nostalgia." Published to accompany the Peggy Guggenheim Collection's exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts (the