98
RICHARD KOSTElANETZ
lot more mysterious. The exotic has a tendency to be immediately
strange. With common or familiar objects, you are a lot freer; they
take my thoughts a lot further. Not only for content was the goat a
difficult object to work with, but also because Angora goats are beauti–
ful animals anyway. I did three versions of that painting. For the first
one, it was still on the wall; I got him up there safely attached to
the flat surface. To make him appear light - and this is the way my
mind tends to work - I put light-bulbs under him, which erased the
shadow of the enormous shelf that supported him. When I finished it,
I was happy with it for about four days; but it kept bothering me that
the goat's other side was not exposed; that it was wasted. I was
abusing the material. So, I did a piece where he was free-standing on
a narrow seven-foot canvas that was attached to the base that he was
on. I couldn't have him facing the canvas, because it looked like some
kind of still life, like oranges in the bowl. So I had him turned around,
which gave me another image which didn't occur to me until, this
time, only two days after I had finished it - a kind of beast and
vehicle.
It
looked as though he had some responsibility for supporting
the upright canvas or that pulling a canvas or cart was his job. So, the
last solution stuck, which was simply to put him right in the middle–
to make an environment with him simply being present in it.
INTERVIEWER:
How dominant is he?
RAUSCHENBERG:
He is dominant but I wouldn't worry about that as
much as how dependent is everything else on him. I think that the
painted surface and the other objects were equally interesting, once
you see what the goat is doing there.
INTERVIEWER:
But doesn't this presume that you forget about the goat
to a certain extent?
RAUSCHENBERG:
You forget about how arbitrary a goat is in the picture;
that was never the point.
It
was one of many challenges, but it wasn't
a function of the work to exhibit an exotic animal interestingly. Also,
the tire around the goat brings him back into the canvas and keeps
him from being an object in himself. You don't say, "What is that
goat doing in that painting?" but "Why the tire around the goat?"
And you're already involved.
INTERVIEWER:
This, like so much of your other work, reflects a decided
interest in working with unusual and challenging materials. What was
your painting
Pantomime
[1961] about?
RAUSCHENBERG:
I thought of it as making a surface which would invite
one to move in closer; and when you move in closer, you discover it
has two electric fans which then join you. I thought of it as kind of
an air relief. Any physical situation is an influence on not only how
