Signs

Rauschenberg's iconic work Signs, created in 1970, was originally created as a cover for Time magazine, however Time ultimately decided not to use the work. So, Leo Castelli, one of the leading gallerists in the Pop movement issued the print through Castelli Graphics. In the exhibition announcement, Rauschenberg wrote that Signs was 'conceived to remind us of love, terror, violence of the last ten years. Danger lies in forgetting.'

Using Rauschenbergs favoured collage style or Combines as it is often referred to, this screenprint depicts many of the iconic people and images that are associated with 1960s America: astronaut Buzz Aldrin; President John F. Kennedy; singer Janis Joplin; the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., lying in state in the U.S. Capitol in 1968; stills from a film by Abraham Zapruder that captured JFK's assassination in Dallas in 1963; an urban race riot; Bobby Kennedy; soldiers on patrol in Vietnam; and war protesters.

Screenprint in colours, 1970, on wove paper, signed and dated in pencil, one of 13 artist's proofs aside from the edition of 250, published by Castelli Graphics, New York, sheet: 1092 x 864 mm (43 x 34 in.)

Foster 155