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Accident

1963
Not on view
Rauschenberg’s compositions have been described as evoking "a flatbed picture plane." Rather than depicting illusionistic space, the artist assembled multiple images culled from both fine art and everyday life in a nonhierarchical order. In Accident, he combined photographic reproductions of a painting by the eighteenth-century artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, a baseball player, race cars, and refugees on an inflatable raft. Linking the different sections are broad swaths of printer’s ink, which recall the sweeping brushstrokes of the Abstract Expressionists. Accident’s title reflects the process of its creation, as, during the course of printing, the lithographic stone cracked. Instead of abandoning the print, Rauschenberg worked with the fractured stone, even placing chips from the rupture at the base of　the large diagonal crack, thus reframing a flaw as a decorative flourish.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Accident
  • Artist: Robert Rauschenberg (American, Port Arthur, Texas 1925–2008 Captiva Island, Florida)
  • Date: 1963
  • Medium: Lithograph
  • Dimensions: sheet: 41 x 29 in. (104.1 x 73.7 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005
  • Object Number: 2007.49.594
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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