Signs 1970

This is Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Signs’, made as a screenprint. He was interested in the poetics of chaos, and ‘Signs’ is a great example of this. The screen printing process allows him to layer image on top of image, so that the work becomes a kind of archeological dig, or maybe a game of exquisite corpse. The physical surface is flat, almost like a poster, which lends it an air of democratic accessibility, appropriate because it is full of icons of American culture and political life: politicians, singers, soldiers, astronauts. The way Rauschenberg layers these images creates a kind of non-hierarchical space, collapsing distinctions between high and low art and culture, so that we are left with the feeling that everything exists on the same plane. It reminds me of the collages of Hannah Hoch, but where Hoch was interested in the political power of photomontage, Rauschenberg seems more interested in what these techniques reveal about the way we process information and make meaning.