Art © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Gemini G.E.L./Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
On view
Theodora Walton William Walton III Pavilion
Booster,
1967
Printed by Kenneth Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
More Context
Handbook Entry
In 1967, Robert Rauschenberg, already internationally recognized as an innovative printmaker, tested the traditional limits of the medium by creating a technically brilliant life-sized self-portrait that was, at the time, the largest lithograph ever pulled from a hand-operated press.<em> Booster</em> is an essay on the artist’s fascination with space exploration and on the representation of the human body as an elaborate machine for movement, two themes that run throughout much of Rauschenberg’s work. The artist first made a series of composite X-rays of his nude body, and then transferred the negatives photographically onto lithographic plates to provide a contemporary <em>memento mori </em>that is the central core of the image. Surrounding it is a group of smaller motifs rubbed directly from magazine illustrations collected by Rauschenberg. These include several from a 1962 issue of <em>Life</em> containing an article on the Mercury space program and one comparing the human skeletal structure to the workings of machines. Screenprinted over all is a celestial chart for the year 1967.
Information
1967
Printed by Kenneth Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
North America, United States, California, Los Angeles
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2006," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 66 (2007): p. 41-74., p. 60
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 263 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 279
