Robert Rauschenberg : Jammers

16 Feb-28 Mar 2013

Overview

In 1975, Robert Rauschenberg worked for a month in an ashram in Ahmedabad in India, a textile production centre. After returning home, he executed a series of works in 1975 and 1976 called "Jammers," true bursts of colors. The series' name comes from the windjammer, a sailing vessel, and titles of individual works emphasize the maritime reference. The "Jammers" can refer to sails on ships, windbreaks on the beach, laundry, drying on clotheslines in southern Europe and Asia, medieval Italian banners or flags of a Tibetan monastery. The exotic is connected to everything that is close and approachable, the holy with the worldly. Rauschenberg said: "I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realized they were not so artificial."