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Robert Rauschenberg
Automobile Tire Print, 1953

Automobile Tire Print (1953) records one of Robert Rauschenberg’s most intriguing collaborative efforts. In 1953, the artist directed composer John Cage (1912–1992) to drive his Model A Ford in a straight line over twenty sheets of paper that Rauschenberg had glued together and laid in the road outside his Fulton Street studio in Lower Manhattan. The car’s front tire left a faint embossed impression, while the rear tire, which had passed through a pool of paint Rauschenberg had poured in the street, deposited a juicy black tread mark that stretches in a diminishing line along the twenty-two-foot length of paper. Over the years, Automobile Tire Print has been interpreted as a monoprint, a drawing, a performance, a process piece, and a distinctive exploration of indexical mark making. In its serial imagery (it records nearly three revolutions of Cage’s wheel) and its exceptional length, the tire print is one of the earliest examples of Rauschenberg’s interest in the visual and psychological dimensions of temporal experience, themes he revisited in works such as Hiccups (1978) and The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981–98).

Like Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, which was also created in fall 1953, Automobile Tire Print challenges traditional understandings of art and authorship. As such, it must be understood as a response to the aesthetics and practices of Abstract Expressionism, the movement then dominating the New York art world. Although the black line of paint made by the tire print held to the abstract expressionist ideal of capturing direct artistic expression, the fact that the mark was created not by Rauschenberg’s hand but through the action of an automobile driven by a friend proposed a new definition of what it meant to be an artist. Cage executed Rauschenberg’s concept much as a master printer collaborates with an artist by operating a printing press. Yet there was a particular history and connection underlying Rauschenberg’s choice of partner. At the time the tire print was made, the two artists were deeply engaged in a heated exchange of ideas that would continue to energize their respective work into the mid-1960s.

In its connection to the streets of New York, Automobile Tire Print relates to Rauschenberg’s Elemental Sculptures, a series dating from 1953 that incorporates rocks, wood, and scrap metal the artist gathered from the neighborhood around his studio. Such scavenging and reuse of found materials lent Rauschenberg’s art a sense of place and came to define the aesthetic of his Combines (1953–64), a group of works that blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and collage. With Automobile Tire Print, Rauschenberg picked up a trace of the city streets in another way, creating an artwork that strikes an irreverent balance between abstract gesture and deadpan humor.

Overview

Automobile Tire Print (1953) records one of Robert Rauschenberg’s most intriguing collaborative efforts. In 1953, the artist directed composer John Cage (1912–1992) to drive his Model A Ford in a straight line over twenty sheets of paper that Rauschenberg had glued together and laid in the road outside his Fulton Street studio in Lower Manhattan. The car’s front tire left a faint embossed impression, while the rear tire, which had passed through a pool of paint Rauschenberg had poured in the street, deposited a juicy black tread mark that stretches in a diminishing line along the twenty-two-foot length of paper. Over the years, Automobile Tire Print has been interpreted as a monoprint, a drawing, a performance, a process piece, and a distinctive exploration of indexical mark making. In its serial imagery (it records nearly three revolutions of Cage’s wheel) and its exceptional length, the tire print is one of the earliest examples of Rauschenberg’s interest in the visual and psychological dimensions of temporal experience, themes he revisited in works such as Hiccups (1978) and The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981–98).

Like Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, which was also created in fall 1953, Automobile Tire Print challenges traditional understandings of art and authorship. As such, it must be understood as a response to the aesthetics and practices of Abstract Expressionism, the movement then dominating the New York art world. Although the black line of paint made by the tire print held to the abstract expressionist ideal of capturing direct artistic expression, the fact that the mark was created not by Rauschenberg’s hand but through the action of an automobile driven by a friend proposed a new definition of what it meant to be an artist. Cage executed Rauschenberg’s concept much as a master printer collaborates with an artist by operating a printing press. Yet there was a particular history and connection underlying Rauschenberg’s choice of partner. At the time the tire print was made, the two artists were deeply engaged in a heated exchange of ideas that would continue to energize their respective work into the mid-1960s.

In its connection to the streets of New York, Automobile Tire Print relates to Rauschenberg’s Elemental Sculptures, a series dating from 1953 that incorporates rocks, wood, and scrap metal the artist gathered from the neighborhood around his studio. Such scavenging and reuse of found materials lent Rauschenberg’s art a sense of place and came to define the aesthetic of his Combines (1953–64), a group of works that blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and collage. With Automobile Tire Print, Rauschenberg picked up a trace of the city streets in another way, creating an artwork that strikes an irreverent balance between abstract gesture and deadpan humor.

Ownership, Exhibition, and Publication Histories

Ownership History

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase through a gift of Phyllis Wattis, 1998

Exhibition History

Rauschenberg: Graphic Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, April 1–May 10, 1970. Did not travel to: Art Gallery, State University of New York, Albany, July 1–August 14, 1970; Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas, August 30–October 4, 1970. Traveled to: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, October 31–December 13, 1970.

Robert Rauschenberg: Prints 1948/1970, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, August 6–September 27, 1970.

Robert Rauschenberg, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 30, 1976–January 2, 1977. Traveled to: Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 25–May 17, 1977; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 24–August 21, 1977; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, September 25–October 30, 1977; Art Institute of Chicago, December 3, 1977–January 15, 1978.

Rauschenberg: Werke 1950–1980, Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, March 23–May 4, 1980. Traveled to: Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany, June 6–July 13, 1980; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, September 20–November 25, 1980; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany, December 4, 1980–January 18, 1981; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, February 4–April 5, 1981; Tate Gallery, London (as Robert Rauschenberg), April 29–June 14, 1981.

Automobile and Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, July 21, 1984–January 6, 1985. Traveled to: Detroit Institute of Arts (as Automobile and Culture—Detroit Style), June 12–September 8, 1985.

Rauschenberg: The White and Black Paintings 1949–1952, Larry Gagosian Gallery, New York, April 18–May 31, 1986.

Automobile Tire Print was on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., from June 12, 1986, through May 28, 1991.

Seven American Masters (special installation), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., July 4–November 12, 1986.

Special installation, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., November 13, 1986–March 2, 1987.

Twentieth-Century Art: Selections for the Tenth Anniversary of the East Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., December 13, 1988–December 31, 1990. (Also presented in the museum’s galleries in the months surrounding the exhibition. On view September 10, 1988–April 4, 1991.)

Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 15–August 11, 1991. Traveled to: The Menil Collection, Houston, September 27, 1991–January 5, 1992; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, February 8–April 19, 1992; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 14–August 16, 1992; Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, October 24, 1992–January 24, 1993.

Rolywholyover a Circus, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, September 12–November 28, 1993. Traveled to: The Menil Collection, Houston, January 14–April 2, 1994; Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York, April 23–July 31, 1994. Did not travel to remaining venues.

Duchamp’s Leg, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, November 5, 1994–March 26, 1995. Did not travel to the Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, Florida.

Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 19, 1997–January 7, 1998. Did not travel to remaining venues.

Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–1979, Museum of Contemporary Art at the Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles, February 8–May 10, 1998. Traveled to: MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, June 17–September 6, 1998; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, October 16, 1998–January 6, 1999; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, February 11–April 11, 1999.

Robert Rauschenberg, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 7–September 7, 1999.

Quotidiana: Immagini della vita di ogni giorno nell’arte del XX secolo, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporeanea, Rivoli-Torino, Italy, February 5–May 21, 2000.

Points of Departure II: Connecting with Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 17, 2001–June 9, 2002.

Robert Rauschenberg at SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 27–September 8, 2002.

Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, January 30–June 24, 2003.

Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance, Tate Liverpool, England, November 14, 2003–January 25, 2004.

Traces—Body and Idea in Contemporary Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, November 9–December 19, 2004. Traveled to: National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, January 12–February 27, 2005.

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, January 30–April 19, 2009. Did not travel to Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, October 23, 2009–January 10, 2010. Did not travel to remaining venues.

On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 21, 2010–February 7, 2011.

Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 30, 2012–January 21, 2013. Traveled to: Barbican Art Centre, London (as The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns), February 14–June 9, 2013.

In addition to appearing in the special exhibitions listed above, Automobile Tire Print was shown in SFMOMA’s galleries in 2016 as part of a series of rotating presentations of the permanent collection.

This listing has been updated since the launch of the Rauschenberg Research Project and is complete as of August 31, 2016.

Publication History

John Cage, “On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work” Metro 2 (May 1961): 37.

———, “Om Robert Rauschenberg, konstnär, och hans arbete,” Konstrevy 37, no. 5–6 (1961): 166.

———, Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 98.

Bryan Robertson, Henry Geldzahler, and John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg: Paintings, Drawings and Combines, 1949–1964 (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 1964), 8.

Oral history interview with Robert Rauschenberg conducted by Dorothy Gees Seckler, December 21, 1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-….

Lawrence Alloway, “The Graphic Art of Robert Rauschenberg,” in Rauschenberg: Graphic Art (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1970), 5, 11 (ill.).

Edward A. Foster, Robert Rauschenberg: Prints 1948/1970 (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1970), n.p. (ill.).

Tire Print,” Minneapolis Star, August 13, 1970, (ill.).

Mike Steele, “Rauschenberg—The Artist Is Daring,” Minneapolis Tribune, August 30, 1970.

Lawrence Alloway, “Rauschenberg’s Graphics,” Art and Artists 5, no. 6 (September 1970): 19.

Joseph E. Young, “Pages and Fuses: An Extended View of Robert Rauschenberg,” Print Collector’s Newsletter 5, no. 2 (May–June 1974): 26.

Rosalind Krauss, “Rauschenberg and the Materialized Image,” Artforum 13, no. 4 (December 1974): 42–43 (ill.).

Walter Hopps, ed., Robert Rauschenberg (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1976), 31, 65 (ill.).

Charles F. Stuckey, “Reading Rauschenberg,” Art in America 65, no. 2 (March–April 1977), 79.

Walter Blum, “A One-Man Mainstream,” California Living, June 19, 1977, 22.

Julia Cheever, “Looking Back on a Giant of Modern Art,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, July 14, 1977.

Dieter Ruckhaberle, ed., Rauschenberg: Werke 1950–1980, trans. Janni Müller-Hauck and Vincent Thomas (Berlin: Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, 1980), 58, 59 (ill.), 390, 392.

Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 59.

Patricia Burnstein, “In His Art and Life, Robert Rauschenberg Is a Man Who Steers His Own Daring Course,” People, May 19, 1980, 104.

Gabriele Nicol, “Mit dem Auto fuhr der Freund übers Papier,” Frankfurter Neue Presse, December 5, 1980.

Klaus Colberg, “Klassiker der Pop Art: Robert Rauschenberg im Frankfurter Städel,” Südkurier Konstanz, December 8, 1980.

Robert Rauschenberg (London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1981), n.p.

Roger Cranshaw and Adrian Lewis, “Re-Reading Rauschenberg,” Artscribe 29 (June 1981): 44 (ill.), 45 (shown as Automobile Tyre Print).

Gerard Silk, Automobile and Culture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984), 130 (ill.), 157.

William Wilson, “Ars Longa, Automobile Even Longer,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1984.

David Lewinson, “All Tuned Up, but Where Is It Going?,” San Diego Union-Tribune, July 29, 1984.

Rauschenberg: The White and Black Paintings 1949–1952 (New York: Larry Gagosian Gallery, 1986), n.p.

Roni Feinstein, “The Early Work of Robert Rauschenberg: The White Paintings, the Black Paintings, and the Elemental Sculptures,” Arts Magazine 61, no. 1 (September 1986): 30–31.

Elizabeth Armstrong and Sheila McGuire, First Impressions: Early Prints by Forty-Six Contemporary Artists (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1989), 42.

Roni Feinstein, “Random Order: The First Fifteen Years of Robert Rauschenberg’s Art, 1949–1964” (PhD diss., New York University, 1990), ii–iii, 45, 76–77, 97, 281, 488.

Mary Lynn Kotz, Rauschenberg, Art and Life (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 72–73 (ill.), 74, 207.

———, “Quiet House,” Museum & Arts Washington 6, no. 6 (November/December 1990): 50.

Ruth E. Fine and Mary Lee Corlett, Graphicstudio: Contemporary Art from the Collaborative Workshop at the University of South Florida (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 255n11.

Walter Hopps, Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s (Houston: Menil Foundation and Houston Fine Art Press, 1991), 23, 160, 161, 198–99 (ill.), 200 (ill.).

———, Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s (Houston: Menil Foundation, 1991), 26–27, 37. Exhibition booklet produced for the Menil presentation only.

Paul Richard, “Silk Sheets and Neon Bicycles; At the National Gallery, the Extravagant ‘Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange,’” Washington Post, May 12, 1991.

Yve-Alain Bois, Ellsworth Kelly: The Years in France, 1948–1954 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 22.

Fred Camper, “The Unordered Universe,” Chicago Reader, March 26–April 1, 1992, 30.

Roger Bevan, “San Francisco: Salvaging 1950s Rauschenberg,” Art Newspaper 3, no. 18 (May 1992): 7 (as Automobile Tyre Print).

Lynne Cooke, “Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s,” Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1070 (May 1992): 336 (ill.).

David Bonetti, “Rauschenberg: ’50s Fervor at SFMOMA,” San Francisco Examiner, May 14, 1992.

Ruthie Stein, “The Restless Painter,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 14, 1992.

Jerome Tarshis, “Creativity Knew No Limits,” Christian Science Monitor, September 14, 1992, 16.

Michael Kimmelman, “Before Rauschenberg Was Infamous,” New York Times, October 23, 1992.

Helen L. Kohen, “Matisse Leads Packed Museum Season,” Miami Herald (Florida), November 8, 1992.

Peinture: Emblèmes et références (Bordeaux: CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, 1993), 138, 139.

ラウシェンバーグ [Rauschenberg], Gendai bijutsu 1414 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993), n.p. (ill.).

Sidra Stich, Yves Klein (London: Hayward Gallery, 1994), 187.

Seiji Oshima, Marjorie Welish, Takeshi Yoshizumi, et al., The Second Hiroshima Art Prize: Robert Rauschenberg (Hiroshima: Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993), 24 (ill.), 31.

Jill Johnston, Jasper Johns: Privileged Information (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 135.

Joan Retallack, Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 121–22, 123 (ill.).

Susan Tallman, The Contemporary Print: From Pre-Pop to Postmodern (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 33.

Robert Rauschenberg: Man at Work, directed by Chris Granlund (London: BBC and RM ARTS, 1997), DVD, 57 min.

Cornelia Faist, Catherine Craft, Billy Klüver, et al., Robert Rauschenberg: Haywire: Major Technological Works of the 1960s (Ostfildern-Ruit: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1997), 29, 94 (shown as Automobile Tire Track).

Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson, eds., Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1997), 44, 90–91 (ill.), 208, 221n18, 227, 229, 378–79 (ill.).

Roberta J. M. Olson, “Rauschenberg, the Extraordinary Ragpicker,” SoHo Weekly News, March 31, 1997.

Yve-Alain Bois, “Early Lead,” Artforum 36, no. 1 (September 1997): 97.

Dave Hickey, “Open Charms,” Artforum 36, no. 1 (September 1997): 101.

Michael Kimmelman, “Clowning Inventively with Stuff of Beauty,” New York Times, September 19, 1997.

Francine Prose, “Artifacts of the Age of Anxiety,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 1997.

James Fenton, “The Voracious Eye,” New York Review of Books, November 6, 1997, 10.

Paul Schimmel, ed., Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–1979 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998), 44 (ill.), 46, 103, 387.

John Perreault, “Don’t Tread on Me: The Meanings of Rauschenberg’s Glass Tires,” GLASS Quarterly 70 (Spring 1998): 24.

Kenneth Baker, “Rauschenberg’s Reality,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 1998.

Sam Hunter, Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), 14–15 (ill.), 70, 113, 125.

Joachim Jäger, Das zivilisiert Bild: Robert Rauschenberg und seine Combine-Paintings der Jahre 1960–1962 (Klagenfurt, Austria: Ritter Verlag, 1999), 80, 189 (ill.), 190.

Lisa Phillips, ed., The American Century: Art and Culture 1950–2000 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1999), 86 (ill.).

Michael Rush, “A Noisy Silence,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 21 (January 1999): 6.

Robert Rauschenberg, video interview by David A. Ross, Walter Hopps, Gary Garrels, and Peter Samis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 6, 1999. Unpublished transcript, SFMOMA Research Library and Archives, N 6537 .R27 A35 1999a, 25–29.

Kenneth Baker, “Rauschenberg Coup at SFMOMA: ‘Port of Entry’ a Major New Work,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 1999.

David Bonetti, “Rauschenberg Coup Cements SFMOMA’s Ascendance,” San Francisco Examiner, May 28, 1999.

Sylvia Tan, “Tracks of Time,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 25, 1999.

Gary Garrels, ed., Celebrating Modern Art: The Anderson Collection (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000), 54.

David A. Ross, Nicholas Serota, Ida Gianelli, et al., Quotidiana: Immagini della vita di ogni giorno nell’arte del XX secolo, trans. Fausto Galuzzi and Marguerite Shore (Milan: Edizioni Charta; Rivoli-Torino: Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, 2000), 202–3 (ill.), 244.

Birgit Stallmann, “Bloß kein formaler Schwindel,” Der Spiegel, August 14, 2000. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/bauhaus-ausstellung-bloss-kein-formaler-schwindel-a-89087.html.

Michael Kimmelman, “The Irrepressible Ragman of Art,” New York Times, August 27, 2000.

Russell Ferguson, ed., Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955–62 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002), 97.

Branden W. Joseph, ed., Robert Rauschenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 53, 54 (ill.), 127n17.

Adrian George, ed., Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance (Liverpool, England: Tate Liverpool, 2003), 22 (ill.), 95.

Branden W. Joseph, Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 89, 90 (ill.), 91.

Robert Saltonstall Mattison, Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 26, 46, 56 (ill.), 57, 75.

Jack Fischer, “SFMOMA’s Best Friend,” San Jose Mercury News, February 9, 2003.

Traces—Body and Idea in Contemporary Art (Kyoto, Japan: National Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 20, 214 (ill.), 215 (ill.), 321.

Susan Davidson and David White, eds., Rauschenberg (Ferrara, Italy: Ferrara Arte, 2004), 30, 45n15.

Matthew Larking, “‘Traces’ Exhibition: The Heyday of Body Art,” Japan Times, November 24, 2004.

Paul B. Franklin, “Marcelamuse: L’oeuvre plastique de John Cage,” trans. Monique Fong, Etant donné Marcel Duchamp 6 (2005): 92–93 (ill.), 95, 99n39.

Paul Schimmel, ed., Robert Rauschenberg: Combines (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2005), 224 (ill.), 225, 248.

Sam Hunter, Robert Rauschenberg: Works, Writings and Interviews (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2006), 20–21 (ill.), 62, 96.

Mark Swed, “Performing Rauschenberg,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 2006.

Yve-Alain Bois, Josef Helfenstein, and Clare Elliott, Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces (Houston: The Menil Collection, 2007), 24 (ill.).

Mirta D’Argenzio, ed., Robert Rauschenberg: Travelling ’70 |’76 (Milan: Electa, 2008), 147, 150.

Bruno Marchand, ed., Robert Rauschenberg: Crítica e obra de 1949 a 1974 (Porto, Portugal: Fundação de Serralves, 2008), 20–21 (ill.), 99, 183–84.

Thomas Crow, “Social Register,” Artforum 47, no. 1 (September 2008): 428, 429 (ill.).

“SFMOMA 75th Anniversary: Peter Samis,” interview conducted by Jess Rigelhaupt, 2008, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2009, 8. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/sfmoma/interviews.html.

The Anarchy of Silence: John Cage and Experimental Art (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2009), 186–87 (ill.), 293.

Janet Bishop, Corey Keller, and Sarah Roberts, eds., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 147, 148 (ill.), 176.

Susan Davidson, “Robert Rauschenberg,” Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection (Bilbao: Guggenheim Bilbao, 2009), 97n42.

Susan Davidson and David White, eds., Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009), 111 (ill.).

Fred Kaplan, 1959: The Year Everything Changed (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 289n174.

Carolyn Lanchner, Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), 38 (ill.), 39.

Alexandra Munroe, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009), 205, 220–21 (ill.).

Yve-Alain Bois, “Pause,” Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, no. 108 (Summer 2009): 60, 61 (ill.).

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Drawing Blanks: Notes on Andy Warhol’s Late Works,” October 127 (Winter 2009): 23.

Michael Horne, “Elephants Painting? Selfness and the Emergence of Self States as Illustrated in Conceptual Art,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 54, no. 9 (November 2009): 624.

Every Day Is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (London: Hayward Publishing, 2010), 8–9, (ill.).

SFMOMA 75th Anniversary: David White,” interview conducted by Richard Cándida Smith, Sarah Roberts, Peter Samis, and Jill Sterrett, 2009, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2010, 34, 75, 76. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/sfmoma/interviews.html.

Cornelia H. Butler and Catherine de Zegher, On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 62–63 (ill.), 223.

Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 144.

Nicholas Cullinan, Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949–1962, ed. Susan Davidson and David White (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2011), 23, 24–25 (ill.), 32.

Ray Kass, The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors (Roanoke, VA: Taubman Museum of Art, 2011), 6, 62 (ill.).

Barbara Buhler Lynes and Jonathan Weinberg, eds., Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 124, 126 (ill.).

Phong Bui, “Rochelle Feinstein with Phong Bui,” The Brooklyn Rail, April 2011. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://brooklynrail.org/2011/04/art/rochelle–feinstein–with–phong–bui.

David Mahoney, “Collection Rotation: David Mahoney,” Open Space (SFMOMA blog), April 11, 2011. Accessed June 23, 2013. https://blog.sfmoma.org/2011/04/collection-rotation28/.

Jau-lan Guo, “Moderate and Closeted Opposition: Rauschenberg’s Authorship in His Early 1950s Work,” Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum 21 (May 2011), 33 (ill.).

Faye Hirsch, “Passport, Please,” Art in America 99, no. 6 (June 2011): 82.

Carlos Basualdo and Erica F. Battle, eds., Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012), 207, 314, 329, 388–89 (ill.).

Branden W. Joseph, Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg et la néo-avant-garde, trans. Anaël Lejeune, Olivier Mignon, and Raphaël Pirenne (Brussels: Continental Rift, 2012), 121, 122 (ill.), 123.

Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 307, 392.

Robert Storr, Selections from the Private Collection of Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2012), 94.

“Bay Area Arts Picks, May 31,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 2012.

Catherine Craft, Robert Rauschenberg (London: Phaidon, 2013), 27, 34–35 (ill.), 75.

Jonathan Jones, “Robert Rauschenberg: Love and Loss in America,” Guardian, February 8, 2013 (as Automobile Tyre Print).

Hannah W. Blunt, Bernard Langlais (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2014), 88 (ill.).

Kristine Stiles, “Rauschenberg, Looking Long and Thinking Hard,” in Rauschenberg: Collecting & Connecting, ed. Stiles (Durham, NC: Nasher Museum of Art, 2014), online edition. Accessed February 9, 2015. https://shuffle.rauschenbergfoundation.org/exhibitions/nasher/essays/Stiles_introduction.

Craig Staff, Monochrome (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., Ltd, 2015), 84.

Tamara Trodd, The Art of Mechanical Reproduction: Technology and Aesthetics from Duchamp to the Digital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 121–22, 124.

Charlotte Healy, “A Radical Disregard for the Preservation of Art: Robert Rauschenberg’s Elemental Paintings,” Interventions 4, January 2015. Accessed April 2, 2015. https://interventionsjournal.net/2015/01/23/a-radical-disregard-for-the-preservation-of-art-robert-rauschenbergs-elemental-paintings/.

Kristine Stiles, Concerning Consequences: Studies in Art, Destruction, and Trauma (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 433n84.

Michael Lobel, “Lost and Found: Susan Weil and Robert Rauschenberg’s Blueprints,” Artforum 54, no. 6 (February 2016): 188 (ill.).

This listing has been updated since the launch of the Rauschenberg Research Project and is complete as of August 31, 2016.

Marks and Inscriptions

Recto: None

Verso: None

Audio Stories

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transcripts

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: 

I love collaborating, because art can be a really lonely business, if you’re really just working from your ego. When you have two people thinking at the same time about a single outcome, or object, well then, it’s just like— it’s multiplied and mirrored back and forth, and that’s why I like collaborating. 

 

NARRATOR:  

Robert Rauschenberg enlisted the help of his close friend, composer John Cage, in making this printed work. It all started one afternoon in New York in 1953, with a can of paint, typing paper, and a Model A Ford.  

 

RAUSCHENBERG:  

I was living on Fulton Street. And Fulton Street is almost empty of any kind of traffic on the weekends. So I got some typewriter paper and glued ‘em all together, and some black house paint. And then I called John, and asked him if he could come down on the weekend. He drove down in his Model A. And I just poured the paint in front, and told him to drive just as straight as he could. You know, “Be careful,” I said, “Keep going straight,” ya know? And— and John was fascinated by the fact that we were doing this. And he did a good job. He was the printer. And the press. [Laughs] 

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Artwork Info

Artwork title
Automobile Tire Print
Date created
1953
Classification
print
Medium
paint on 20 sheets of paper mounted on fabric
Dimensions
16 1/2 × 286 in. (41.9 × 726.4 cm)
Date acquired
1998
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Purchase through a gift of Phyllis C. Wattis
Copyright
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.296
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

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