Collection in Focus Robert Rauschenberg

Life Can't Be Stopped.

Come celebrate Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday!

This special exhibition brings together over a dozen key works from the Guggenheim’s collection and major loans from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Together, they show off the artist’s bold experiments with materials and his fearless approach to making art that still inspires us today.

The star of the show is Barge (1962–63), a massive 32-foot-long painting that Rauschenberg incredibly created in just 24 hours. It is the largest of nearly 80 silkscreen paintings he made during a busy two-year stretch, and this is its first time back in New York in almost 25 years.

In 1962, Rauschenberg started using commercial silkscreens to create large-scale paintings. He used a technique he learned from Andy Warhol to blend his own photography with images found in the media. This process was a big step up from his earlier drawings where he hand-transferred newspaper clippings onto paper; with silkscreens, he could blow up his images to any size and reuse them whenever he liked.

Even though Barge features many things that move—like trucks, freeways, and spacecraft—the painting itself is as big and steady as its namesake. If you look closely, you’ll find a whirlwind of everyday life: athletes, keys, construction sites, and even nods to famous Old Master paintings. Rauschenberg loved things to be a bit messy and complicated, and this work captures that wonderful, busy energy perfectly.