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RICHARD KOSTELANETZ
it against the wall, then I finally sawed it in half and made two
paintings out of it. I wrecked one of them.
I didn't know what to do when Rudy Burckhardt came up and
said, "How far did you get today? Can I take the picture tomor–
row? Why did you do that? What do you have on your mind?" It
just didn't work out. I knew I was compromising at the time; and
when the article went in, I insisted that they photograph what I was
not doing too.
If
those things are going to mean anything, they some–
how ought to be the truth. In those days, it seemed like that would be
your only chance for the next twenty years to get your picture repro–
duced in color. Now I have this lousy painting.
INTERVIEWER:
In looking at your career, critics customarily tote up all
the forms you have used: blueprint paper, white painting, black
painting, collage, assemblage . . .
RAUSCHENBERG:
I call those things "combines," because it was before
the museum show of assemblages. Earlier I had this problem with the
paintings that would be free-standing - not against the wall. I didn't
think of them as sculpture. I actually made them as a realistic objec–
tion; it was unnatural for these to be hung on a wall. So when the
sculptural or collage elements got so three-dimensional, then the most
natural thing in the world was to put wheels on it and put it out into
the middle of the room. That gave two more sets of surfaces to work
on. It was an economical thing. I think I've been very practical.
Sometimes the underneath surface is also a painting surface, because
that would be viewed. In that one there is a mirror on the side so
that you can see what is underneath there without bending down, or
you're invited to.
I thought of them as paintings, but what to call them
~
painting
or sculpture - got for some people to be a very interesting point,
which I did not find interesting at all. Almost as a joke I thought I'd
call them something, as Calder was supposed to have done with
"mobiles," and it worked beautifully. Once I called them "combines,"
people were confronted with the work itself, not what it wasn't. Some–
times you can choke on these things ; people have called my drawings
"combine drawings." The word does really have a use - it's a free–
standing picture.
INTERVIEWER:
Just in passing, let me say there is one work of yours I
can't deduce. That is the set
Factum I
and
II [1957].
RAUSCHENBERG:
There I was interested in the role that accident played
in my work; so I did two paintings as much alike as they could be
alike, using identical materials - as much as they could be alike with–
out getting scientific about it. Although I was imitating on one paint-
