Winter Pool, the first painting by Rauschenberg to enter the Museum's collection, is a prime example of a very important period in this highly inventive and influential artist's work—the mid-1950s to the early 1960s—when he created bold objects that were a hybrid of painting and sculpture and a reinvention of collage. He called them Combines. In Cubist collage, pasted papers add up to a readable image, such as a still life. With Combines, there is no narrative and the interpretation is left to the viewer.

The work, in exceptionally fresh condition, consists of two separate canvases, each about the height of a man. A wooden ladder bridges the gap between them, and its legs extend to the floor, inviting the viewer to climb into the picture. The compositions of both canvases consist of syncopated grids formed by rectangles of paint and found objects: shirt cuffs, a handkerchief, poster letters, and photographic reproductions. Rauschenberg's virtuoso handling of paint both exploits and confronts the dominant painterly style of the early 1950s—Abstract Expressionism—and undermines the Renaissance notion that a painting shows an ideal world behind the canvas surface.

The artist; [Leo Castelli Gallery]; Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (until 1963; sold on May 22 through Castelli to Ganz); Victor and Sally Ganz (1963–88; their sale, Sotheby's, New York, November 10, 1988, to Brant); Mr. and Mrs. Peter M. Brant (from 1988); David Geffen; [Gagosian Gallery, New York]

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 20, 2005–April 2, 2006, Los angeles, California: The Museum of Conemporary Art, May 21-September 11, 2006,¦Robert Rauschenberg: Combines¦. Plate 111, p. 129 (Catalogue credit line
reads "Collection of David Geffen, Los Angeles; MMA purchased Winter Pool in
September, 2005).

Solomon, Alan R. Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Jewish Museum), 1963, p. 6ff, fig. 28.

Forge, Andrew, Rauschenberg (New York: Abrams), 1969, p. 90, 131, 208, illus. in color.

Steinberg, Leo, "Other Criteria," in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1972, p. 87ff.

Robert Rauschenberg, ed. by Walter Hopps (Washington D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution), 1976, p. 106, Fig. 75.

Tomkins, Calvin, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art of our Time, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday), 1980, p. 188, 209.

Feinstein, Roni, Random Order: The First Fifteen Years of Robert Rauschenberg's Art, 1949–1964 (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), 1990, p. 301, fig. 127.

A Life of Collecting: Victor and Sally Ganz, ed. by Michael Fitzgerald (New York: Christie's), 1997, p. 148, 149, illus. in color.

Hopps, Walter and Davidson, Susan, Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective, (New York: Guggenheim Museum), 1997, cat. no. 113.

Kotz, Mary Lynn, Rauschenberg: Art and Life, (New York: Harry N. Abrams), 2004, p. 25, 33, 91, 211, 214, 53, illus.

Vogel, Carol, "Inside Art," The New York Times, November 18, 2005, illus.