Black painting (with Asheville citizen)

Abstract

This essay examines the early 'black paintings' worked on by the artist Robert Rauschenberg between 1951 and 1953. These paintings are examined in relation to their initial place of making, in the Southern states of the USA, at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Examining this semi-rural, non-urban, setting for the creation of the works provides a contrast to earlier readings, which saw the works as exclusively urban in character. By looking in particular at rural poverty in relation to the paintings, they can also be seen as a critique of the prevalence of idealized images of country living in the work and self-fashioning of Rauschenberg's artist contemporaries, and the broader culture industry of the post-war period in the United States. The essay also examines some of the artist's earliest 'combine' works, suggesting that they represent ideas of American regional identity and attempt to insert neglected regional stories into museums' history of the nation. © Association of Art Historians 2011.