Overcast III
Robert Rauschenberg
American, 1925–2008

Details
Title
Overcast III
Artist/Maker
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008)
Date
1963
Medium
Oil on canvas and screenprinted Plexiglas
Dimensions
71 x 105 x 11 inches
Credit
Purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable
Accession #
1986.141
Robert Rauschenberg adopted the gestural technique and heroic scale of Abstract Expressionism but rejected abstract painting as too removed from everyday life. By incorporating popular images into his art and using commercial techniques, Rauschenberg prefigured the widespread use of commercial imagery and references by Pop artists of the late 1960s. Here Rauschenberg conveys the simultaneity and multiplicity of events in our media-saturated world with a dense profusion of images. The overlapping juxtaposition of these images evokes the rapid barrage of information, while specifically referring to space exploration in the early 1960s.
Image Copyright
© Estate of Robert Rauschenberg/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York