Plain Salt (Cardboards)

Following decades of artistic collaboration and political and social activism, Rauschenberg returned alone to the studio, focusing on a single material for a year. He chose the cardboard box, easily obtainable and discarded after fulfilling its mission to contain something. Rauschenberg relished the chance to work directly with "a material of waste and softness. Something yielding with its only message a collection of lines and imprinted like a friendly joke. A silent discussion of their history exposed by their new shapes. Labored commonly with happiness. Boxes." These inventive reliefs elevate the ordinary and acknowledge an unglamorous element of the commercial world, but can also be seen as a transition from Pop to Minimalism.