Robert Rauschenberg
Hiccups, 1978

In Robert Rauschenberg’s Hiccups (1978), ninety-seven sheets of handmade paper zip together to present a swath of imagery that at a distance resembles a color bar, the individual panels surrendering their details in a sweeping line of vibrant squares. All of the panels must be presented when the work is shown, but that is the only restriction on their installation. Hiccups may be hung in a single line (with breaks left for doorways and windows as needed) or stacked in several parallel horizontal rows. When the nine-by-seven inch units are assembled side by side, the work extends nearly sixty-three feet.

Upon close inspection, each panel presents a unique composite of images, sometimes overlaid with sheer scrims or brightly colored snippets of ribbon and fabric. Gathered from popular magazines, sprayed with solvent, and run through a lithographic press, the transferred images—including maps, landscapes and vegetation, pictures of athletes and other celebrities, and various illustrations—reflect American popular culture of the late 1970s as well as more enduring cultural themes. Because the sheets can be displayed in any order, the recurrence of particular motifs may be emphasized or diminished. A slow walk along the work’s length offers viewers a chance to track the unfolding of an endlessly variable interwoven narrative, extending across time.

Rauschenberg often incorporated scraps of clothing in his paintings and assemblages, using them to reference the human body and the textures of everyday life. A brief stint as a self-described “zipper inspector” for a bathing suit company in 1948 familiarized him with the functional qualities of zippers, and they begin to appear in his work by 1959. In Hiccups, the zippers not only allow the panels to be rearranged in any configuration but also provide the means for mounting them on the wall: simple metal brads are inserted through the holes in the zipper pulls. The zippers also directly structure the experience of viewing the work. The interruptions formed by the alternation of zippers and printed panels visually approximate a staccato rhythm that echoes an actual case of the hiccups.

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Overview

In Robert Rauschenberg’s Hiccups (1978), ninety-seven sheets of handmade paper zip together to present a swath of imagery that at a distance resembles a color bar, the individual panels surrendering their details in a sweeping line of vibrant squares. All of the panels must be presented when the work is shown, but that is the only restriction on their installation. Hiccups may be hung in a single line (with breaks left for doorways and windows as needed) or stacked in several parallel horizontal rows. When the nine-by-seven inch units are assembled side by side, the work extends nearly sixty-three feet.

Upon close inspection, each panel presents a unique composite of images, sometimes overlaid with sheer scrims or brightly colored snippets of ribbon and fabric. Gathered from popular magazines, sprayed with solvent, and run through a lithographic press, the transferred images—including maps, landscapes and vegetation, pictures of athletes and other celebrities, and various illustrations—reflect American popular culture of the late 1970s as well as more enduring cultural themes. Because the sheets can be displayed in any order, the recurrence of particular motifs may be emphasized or diminished. A slow walk along the work’s length offers viewers a chance to track the unfolding of an endlessly variable interwoven narrative, extending across time.

Rauschenberg often incorporated scraps of clothing in his paintings and assemblages, using them to reference the human body and the textures of everyday life. A brief stint as a self-described “zipper inspector” for a bathing suit company in 1948 familiarized him with the functional qualities of zippers, and they begin to appear in his work by 1959. In Hiccups, the zippers not only allow the panels to be rearranged in any configuration but also provide the means for mounting them on the wall: simple metal brads are inserted through the holes in the zipper pulls. The zippers also directly structure the experience of viewing the work. The interruptions formed by the alternation of zippers and printed panels visually approximate a staccato rhythm that echoes an actual case of the hiccups.

Ownership, Exhibition, and Publication Histories

Marks and Inscriptions

Audio Stories

A quilt to be completed by others

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transcripts

SFX: Audio collage, subtle, punctuated by the plunking of strings — JFK speech, bicycle bell, Wimbledon coverage of a tennis game, birds chirping, wings flapping, a diver springing off a diving board and splashing into the water, a basketball bouncing and swooshing in a hoop – pull additional sounds from images 

 

SARAH ROBERTS: Hiccups is made of 97 sheets of handmade paper. Each one of which can be seen almost as a little mini Rauschenberg.  

 

SFX ding ding, bicycle rides by L-R 

 

INDIRA ALLEGRA: There’s this way in which I see Hiccups, as a kind of quilt-making. That Rauschenberg is concerned with creating an archive.  

 

ROBERTS: If you scan across the imagery that he used its things from the natural world, birds, plants animals, bicycles, other modes of transportation. sports figures including tennis star Vitus Geralitus.  

 

GARY GARRELS: It’s jumping, it’s hopping. I love the title hiccups, that you can’t quite control that. It just happens spontaneously. And with the idea that people could zip and unzip the pieces and create their own order.  

 

ALLEGRA: Like an alphabet can be moved around into any configuration to create anything that you want to say about this particular time period.  

 

ROBERTS: Rauschenberg was very unusual in his willingness to let a work go out into the world and then have its own life. He created works specifically to be messed with in a way. He didn’t like the idea of a big divide between an artwork and the person looking at it. He wanted you to participate with the work, he wanted it to be part of your world he wanted you to be part of the world of the artwork itself.  

 

SFX: Sound collage fades

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Artwork Info

Artwork title
Hiccups
Date created
1978
Classification
print
Medium
solvent transfer and fabric with metal zippers on 97 sheets of handmade paper
Dimensions
9 × 752 in. (22.9 × 1910.1 cm)
Date acquired
1999
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of the artist in honor of Phyllis C. Wattis
Copyright
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.430.A-SSSS
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

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