Retroactive II 1963

Robert Rauschenberg made "Retroactive II" using screen printing, probably sometime in the 1960s, and it's a real mash-up of images and techniques. The surface is alive with printed photographs, almost like a newspaper collage. There's Kennedy looking pensive, an astronaut floating in space, and other fragments of mid-century Americana, all layered with a kind of casual intensity. What really grabs me is the physicality of the medium. The colors are bold, but somewhat muted, like old posters weathered by the sun. Check out the hand pointing. It's so deliberately placed, a gesture of instruction or invitation, but to what, exactly? It's classic Rauschenberg, taking images from different contexts and letting them collide. Think of him as a precursor to artists like Gerhard Richter, where painting isn’t about one clear narrative, but about letting the process of making reveal new connections. The combination is left open, but everything is there on the surface.