Robert Rauschenberg
Untitled [glossy black painting], ca. 1951

Untitled [glossy black painting] (ca. 1951) is part of a body of work known as the Black paintings that Robert Rauschenberg began in 1951, while he was a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and developed intermittently over the next two years. Although the Black paintings are not a discrete series in the same sense as the artist’s White Paintings (1951) or Red Paintings (1953–54), they are all composed of layers of newspaper and dense black paint, and together they represent Rauschenberg’s extended study of the boundary between painting and collage. One the most lustrous of his Black paintings, Untitled [glossy black painting] is believed to date from the earliest phase of Rauschenberg’s involvement with this group of works, but the chronology of his production in the years 1951 to 1953 remains somewhat loosely defined. The painting reveals its complex construction and texture as light reflects off of the collaged, dipped, and painted newspaper fragments teeming on its highly articulated surface. The individual curls and ripples of paper echo the contours of traditional brushstrokes, in some passages even taking on the gestural quality of abstract expressionist paintings.

Spots of red-orange and pink visible along the work’s tacking margins indicate that Untitled [glossy black painting] was created on top of another work, possibly one of his own or that of a friend. Rauschenberg frequently painted over previous efforts, both out of economic necessity and because he considered his artworks to be living, changing entities. This highly unconventional belief led him to substantially repaint Untitled [glossy black painting] sometime in the 1980s, adding a fresh coat of black over much of the left side in order to cover up some drips of white paint that had accidentally marred the work’s surface.   

In a 1963 interview Rauschenberg noted that he wanted his Black paintings to have “complexity without their revealing anything.” Although the dark surface of Untitled [glossy black painting] has been associated with destruction or burning, the color black did not carry such negative connotations for the artist. The use of dark pigment was simply an ideal means of highlighting the texture of the newspaper while concealing its text. Here Rauschenberg’s skillful use of black resulted in an austere, inky surface that plays with notions of expression and gesture, challenging the very idea of what makes a painting a painting.

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Untitled [glossy black painting] (ca. 1951) is part of a body of work known as the Black paintings that Robert Rauschenberg began in 1951, while he was a student at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and developed intermittently over the next two years. Although the Black paintings are not a discrete series in the same sense as the artist’s White Paintings (1951) or Red Paintings (1953–54), they are all composed of layers of newspaper and dense black paint, and together they represent Rauschenberg’s extended study of the boundary between painting and collage. One the most lustrous of his Black paintings, Untitled [glossy black painting] is believed to date from the earliest phase of Rauschenberg’s involvement with this group of works, but the chronology of his production in the years 1951 to 1953 remains somewhat loosely defined. The painting reveals its complex construction and texture as light reflects off of the collaged, dipped, and painted newspaper fragments teeming on its highly articulated surface. The individual curls and ripples of paper echo the contours of traditional brushstrokes, in some passages even taking on the gestural quality of abstract expressionist paintings.

Spots of red-orange and pink visible along the work’s tacking margins indicate that Untitled [glossy black painting] was created on top of another work, possibly one of his own or that of a friend. Rauschenberg frequently painted over previous efforts, both out of economic necessity and because he considered his artworks to be living, changing entities. This highly unconventional belief led him to substantially repaint Untitled [glossy black painting] sometime in the 1980s, adding a fresh coat of black over much of the left side in order to cover up some drips of white paint that had accidentally marred the work’s surface.

In a 1963 interview Rauschenberg noted that he wanted his Black paintings to have “complexity without their revealing anything.” Although the dark surface of Untitled [glossy black painting] has been associated with destruction or burning, the color black did not carry such negative connotations for the artist. The use of dark pigment was simply an ideal means of highlighting the texture of the newspaper while concealing its text. Here Rauschenberg’s skillful use of black resulted in an austere, inky surface that plays with notions of expression and gesture, challenging the very idea of what makes a painting a painting.

Ownership, Exhibition, and Publication Histories

Marks and Inscriptions

Audio Stories

Turning accident into art

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transcripts

NARRATOR: SFMOMA Curators Sarah Roberts and Gary Garrels— 

 

SARAH ROBERTS:  

This was made at a time that Rauschenberg was really thinking in a very deep way about what makes a painting a painting. What qualifies as a painting? What are the edges of that definition?  

The surface is covered with torn strips of newspaper that are dipped in a shiny black enamel and then stuck to the surface individually just by the stickiness of the shiny black paint. If you’re standing in front of the painting, there’s an area of really strong drippiness on the left hand side. It turns out that there’s a little accident with the painting at one point the 1970s. A house painter came and spilled some white paint on the left hand side, and Rauschenberg decided you know rather than consider it ruined he essentially took a cupful of black paint and tossed it on that half of the painting and let it run down. Kind of adding a layer of paint, adding a layer of history and really not taking the original surface too seriously.  

 

GARY GARRELS:  

He didn’t want to make art that expressed his personality. It wasn’t about his emotions or feelings — he wanted the viewer to have their own experiences. Newspapers are about information, about daily life. And so the use of crumpled up newspaper completely obliterated, so that news, that information, is no longer there — You are going to be telling your own story in the experience of this painting.  

 

NARRATOR: Rauschenberg’s son, Christopher— 

 

CHRISTOPHER RAUSCHENBERG: 

When people come up to a painting of my dad’s, there’s not a meaning in there that they’re supposed to get. There’s a whole series of conversational openings based on what is your experience, what is your mood today. If the artwork is just sitting in a warehouse, it’s incomplete. It’s completed by you coming and looking at it and going into conversation with it. 

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Artwork Info

Artwork title
Untitled [glossy black painting]
Date created
ca. 1951
Classification
painting
Medium
enamel and newspaper on canvas
Dimensions
71 15/16 × 53 in. (182.6 × 134.6 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/98.306
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

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