Transition Points: Notes on the Interplay between Art and Art History in the Time of Visual Culture

• Published in: Konsthistorisk tidskrift Vol. 76; no. 1-2; pp. 78 - 91
• Main Author: Hayden, Hans
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 01.01.2007
• Subjects: Aesthetic subjects; Art History; Estetiska ämnen; HUMANIORA och RELIGIONSVETENSKAP; HUMANITIES and RELIGION; Konstvetenskap
• ISSN: 0023-3609; 1651-2294; 1651-2294
• DOI: 10.1080/00233600701349777

In an issue devoted to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, the author considers Richard Hamilton's small-scale collage 'Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?' (1956; illus.), relating it to Rauschenberg's development of a strategy of involving objects, images and texts in his work and eventually to transform certain pasintings into 3 dimensional objects. The author quotes Rauschenberg's view that 'there is no poor subject' for painting, interpreting this in the context of the relationship between art and society in modern Western culture, and analyses the composition of works such as 'Monogram' (1955-59) in terms of the boundaries between different types of art and non-art, visual literacy, and the layers of meaning and interpretation implicit in modern visual culture.