combine painting

combine painting. A term coined by Robert Rauschenberg for a type of work he created—a very radical form of collage—in which a painted surface is ‘combined’ with various real objects, or sometimes photographic images, attached to it. Rauschenberg first showed such works at a one-man exhibition at the Charles Egan Gallery, New York, in 1955. Most of them used fairly modest collage elements, but there was one notable exception, Bed (MOMA, New York), which featured a real pillow, sheet, and quilt splashed with paint in an Abstract Expressionist manner. He is said to have spontaneously decided to use the bedding when he ran out of canvas. Bed was hung on the wall like a picture, but Rauschenberg later created ‘freestanding combines', in which the painted surface rests on the floor with objects superimposed on it. The most famous example is Monogram (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1955–9), featuring a stuffed goat with a tyre around its middle.