Yet this painting is much more than an historical snapshot of the 60s, it also marks a pivotal point in Rauschenberg’s development as an artist and bears witness to his own investigations in what it means to be an artist. A pioneer of the silkscreen technique (along with Andy Warhol who had begun using the technique just a couple of months earlier), Rauschenberg appropriates images he collected from newspapers and magazines-along with his own photographs-to produce a portrait of a country during the social and political upheaval of the 1960s. Kennedy, Rauschenberg assembles an eclectic range of motifs that, for him, define America famous politicians, the space race, the military, iconic consumer products and patriotic symbols of America are interspersed with more innocuous images of the urban landscape and more personal objects. Dominated by a large photograph of the then Senator John F.
At over eight-feet-tall this imposing canvas is filled with an ostensibly incongruent range of images ranging from the iconic to the mundane. One of the largest of Robert Rauschenberg’s iconic Silkscreen Paintings, Buffalo II is a blockbuster painting, which unites the worlds of art and politics. I bought all these products myself and received nothing from the manufacturers.The first of the season’s big estates has been announced at Christie’s where Chicago’s Mayer family will be selling $125m in Pop art led by Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II (1964) with an estimate of around $50m: Apple Barrel Multi-Surface Indoor-Outdoor Acrylic Paint.Golden Matte Medium with lilac Disperse Dye.The paints/inks were applied in the following order: Hopefully you can see where the paint/ink rubbed off or smeared. The drawback is it only comes in a handful of metallic colors.įollowing are the products I used and my test sheets. It dried in minutes and wasn’t easy to rub off. Viva Precious Metal Colours worked on all clays.
I tried Golden Matte Medium mixed with disperse dye, but it made a colored halo which seeped through to the back of the clay. It dries with a surface similar to sandpaper. Viva Ferro is very thick and grainy, so I question if it would pass through a silkscreen. Some are runny and should probably be be mixed with a thickening medium. I haven’t silkscreened with most of these yet. Some were thicker and more opaque than others. All paints/inks were water-based, which is probably why Fimo didn’t fare as well. I leached Kato clay three times because it was really soft. I was surprised that baking made no difference in whether some of them adhered.Īll clay was well-conditioned. Then I baked the clay and tried to rub off the paint/ink again. It seems to be important to let them dry for 24 hours. I tested 20 paints/inks on four different raw clays by just dabbing them on and then waiting 24 hours and trying to rub them off with my finger. If you leave your silkscreened clay basically flat and don’t touch its surface before you bake it, many more paints/inks will work. My goal with this test was to find a combination of raw clay and paint/ink that wouldn’t rub off off so I could form raw, silkscreened clay around objects. I was getting frustrated by creating a nice silkscreened image only to have it rub off.