[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":955},["ShallowReactive",2],{"globals:footer":3,"page:essay:black-painting":40},{"address":4,"info":5,"links":17,"phone":26,"socialMediaLinks":27},"381 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10003\ncr@rauschenbergfoundation.org",[6],{"_key":7,"_type":8,"children":9,"markDefs":15,"style":16},"599e2a9f6700","block",[10],{"_key":11,"_type":12,"marks":13,"text":14},"bed078f5368d","span",[],"The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation builds on the legacy of artist Robert Rauschenberg, emphasizing his belief that artists can drive social change. Rauschenberg sought to act in the “gap” between art and life, valuing chance and collaboration across disciplines. As such, the Foundation celebrates new and even untested ways of thinking.",[],"normal",[18,22],{"_key":19,"label":20,"url":21},"fa4381e0935e","Terms and Conditions","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.rauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Ffoundation\u002Fterms-and-conditions",{"_key":23,"label":24,"url":25},"9384c6a8f419","Join Mailing List","https:\u002F\u002Frauschenbergfoundation.org\u002Fjoin-our-mailing-list","212.228.5283",[28,32,36],{"_key":29,"label":30,"url":31},"a261f817c586","Facebook","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.facebook.com\u002FRauschenbergFoundation",{"_key":33,"label":34,"url":35},"7b0ed283daed","Instagram","https:\u002F\u002Finstagram.com\u002Frauschenbergfoundation",{"_key":37,"label":38,"url":39},"2a80bf504b70","Vimeo","https:\u002F\u002Fvimeo.com\u002Frauschenbergfoundation",{"_createdAt":41,"_id":42,"_rev":43,"_system":44,"_type":47,"_updatedAt":48,"author":49,"authorBio":50,"body":96,"chronologyBody":901,"citeAs":902,"essayType":926,"paragraphStyle":927,"pdfUrl":901,"subtitle":928,"title":936,"tocPreviewTitle":942,"uid":952},"2026-08-05T17:20:18Z","a92ee868-b185-4889-8a00-b17cd6e115a9","fB7dObOrBlqwGHZVHFGsx4",{"base":45},{"id":42,"rev":46},"fB7dObOrBlqwGHZVHE4V0m","essay","2026-10-21T21:31:38Z","Darby English",[51],{"_key":52,"_type":8,"children":53,"markDefs":95,"style":16},"d5bfd51211f3",[54,58,62,67,71,75,79,83,87,91],{"_key":55,"_type":12,"marks":56,"text":49},"adf16d1e391b",[57],"strong",{"_key":59,"_type":12,"marks":60,"text":61},"46de85b6b303",[]," is the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago as well as an associate faculty member in the university’s Department of Visual Arts and Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. From 2014 to 2020, he was an adjunct curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Among his published books are ",{"_key":63,"_type":12,"marks":64,"text":66},"ee154776077c",[65],"em","Charles Ray: Adam and Eve ",{"_key":68,"_type":12,"marks":69,"text":70},"ce9a9f3ae8ff",[],"(2024), ",{"_key":72,"_type":12,"marks":73,"text":74},"a18cbc035090",[65],"To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror ",{"_key":76,"_type":12,"marks":77,"text":78},"349016eb5be2",[],"(2019), ",{"_key":80,"_type":12,"marks":81,"text":82},"a52048f137b0",[65],"1971: A Year in the Life of Color ",{"_key":84,"_type":12,"marks":85,"text":86},"7cb7c53f1238",[],"(2016), and ",{"_key":88,"_type":12,"marks":89,"text":90},"67917abf8b79",[65],"How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness ",{"_key":92,"_type":12,"marks":93,"text":94},"007527769b2b",[],"(2007).",[],[97,273,603],{"_key":98,"_type":99,"content":100,"images":242},"041046ac7268","textImage",[101,168,206],{"_key":102,"_type":8,"children":103,"markDefs":138,"style":16},"df4591f269a6",[104,108,112,117,121,125,130,134],{"_key":105,"_type":12,"marks":106,"text":107},"2701889eca05",[57],"1.",{"_key":109,"_type":12,"marks":110,"text":111},"b8c40e27c284",[]," Robert Rauschen­berg didn’t hold me until a question he put initiated a reset. ",{"_key":113,"_type":12,"marks":114,"text":116},"334b2474913d",[115],"449ce013e1db","Interviewed relating one version of the mythology of his ",{"_key":118,"_type":12,"marks":119,"text":120},"7975df17fc6c",[65,115],"Erased de Kooning Drawing",{"_key":122,"_type":12,"marks":123,"text":124},"ff51bcd1bc2c",[115]," (1953; ",{"_key":126,"_type":12,"marks":127,"text":129},"db2c474ec9e0",[115,128],"c5da275e3584","105",{"_key":131,"_type":12,"marks":132,"text":133},"9101e71529ed",[115],"), Rauschen­berg asks, “Do you see how ridiculously you have to think?”",{"_key":135,"_type":12,"marks":136,"text":137},"d8fe20f2d902",[]," No one can see thinking, you notice, especially one’s own. Just listening to him, you’re sharing the frank disdain for ordinary reasoning that makes his art go. The same jocular mockery accompanies his serious implication that anyone capable of ridiculous thinking could do the same things he has done. Such mordancy may be hard to square with an artist seen as one of the most affable figures in modern art.",[139,165],{"_key":115,"_type":140,"text":141},"footnote",[142],{"_key":143,"_type":8,"children":144,"markDefs":162,"style":16},"4f9db5664618",[145,149,153,158],{"_key":146,"_type":12,"marks":147,"text":148},"8c22cb54a694",[65],"Robert Rauschen­berg: Man at Work",{"_key":150,"_type":12,"marks":151,"text":152},"63333177fd10",[],", directed by Chris Granlund (BBC\u002FRM Arts with Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1997), video, at 28:06, ",{"_key":154,"_type":12,"marks":155,"text":157},"48e1c04b1009",[156],"72834114f63e","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.kanopy.com\u002Fen\u002Fproduct\u002F166041",{"_key":159,"_type":12,"marks":160,"text":161},"205c05f5f427",[],".",[163],{"_key":156,"_type":164,"href":157},"link",{"_key":128,"_type":166,"crNo":167},"crLink","53.D001",{"_key":169,"_type":8,"children":170,"markDefs":203,"style":16},"f39347a5ae4b",[171,175,179,183,187,192,196,199],{"_key":172,"_type":12,"marks":173,"text":174},"638c56c6be5c",[57],"2.",{"_key":176,"_type":12,"marks":177,"text":178},"666bdefc5a8a",[]," ",{"_key":180,"_type":12,"marks":181,"text":182},"ca34b5ea8a1d",[65],"Black Painting",{"_key":184,"_type":12,"marks":185,"text":186},"b23b45154c80",[]," (ca. 1953; ",{"_key":188,"_type":12,"marks":189,"text":191},"00a292555110",[190],"de8cffe5d5f4","87",{"_key":193,"_type":12,"marks":194,"text":195},"eddce3ab7704",[],"), part of the ",{"_key":197,"_type":12,"marks":198,"text":182},"f4626b513be7",[65],{"_key":200,"_type":12,"marks":201,"text":202},"0591ea953f10",[]," series, is painted on a substrate of newspapers on canvas. Yet it ridicules a viewer’s conventional orientation to the newspaper. A newspaper is a relational medium: It puts across information about contemporary events to an audience fluent in its idioms and primed to receive. Rauschen­berg, however, thwarts the newspaper’s outward rush by intensifying the inexpressionism of his abstraction and leaving the receiver naked in both jilted readiness for that idiom and inexperience in this one. Relations on, within, and among the panels enjoy priority over any we may seek to make with them. What we can do with the transpiring on offer depends, in part, on our feeling toward what isn’t transpiring. The painting thereby enters the life of its viewers differently from any image or scene.",[204],{"_key":190,"_type":166,"crNo":205},"51.019",{"_key":207,"_type":8,"children":208,"markDefs":241,"style":16},"4fe411437967",[209,213,217,221,225,229,233,237],{"_key":210,"_type":12,"marks":211,"text":212},"a66812cfa90f",[57],"3.",{"_key":214,"_type":12,"marks":215,"text":216},"2661788825c3",[]," Rauschen­berg showed this painting at Stable Gallery in fall 1953. In that situation (fig. 1), the work was flanked by two ",{"_key":218,"_type":12,"marks":219,"text":220},"4377f8480467",[65],"Elemental Sculptures",{"_key":222,"_type":12,"marks":223,"text":224},"212b7019cae5",[],", each occupying part of the viewing area in front of the painting. Rauschen­berg was, in other words, practicing integration—not so much renouncing the antipathy between one and another of art’s media as ridiculing their perceived separation, and certainly speaking to the deep fear of mixing embedded within the art culture enclosing his works. He was integrating social symbols, too, with this presentation of black and white paintings (fig. 2). Contemporary viewers extricated ",{"_key":226,"_type":12,"marks":227,"text":228},"90bbddc3a95d",[65],"Black Painting ",{"_key":230,"_type":12,"marks":231,"text":232},"24b8f2bfca9e",[],"from the situation it shared with the ",{"_key":234,"_type":12,"marks":235,"text":236},"7010bacfcdfe",[65],"Elementals",{"_key":238,"_type":12,"marks":239,"text":240},"ed4033730935",[],", but the situation was the situation. The most rigorous Rauschen­berg scholar I know warned me recently to keep this association loose: “I would not go so far as to call it an installation.” So, I won’t. But at this early stage, Rauschen­berg surely gave no quarter to the separating vision that expert beholders bring to the media of art. Moreover, he directed himself to fashioning alternatives to a modernism that attains form by unmixing the world. At times, Rauschen­berg’s protean artistic temperament is unremitting, as though it thrills at flouting the anxieties, phobias, disavowals, that keep Big Art in the separation business.",[],[243],{"_key":244,"_type":245,"alt":246,"asset":247,"caption":252,"url":272},"b85a76c47034","textImageItem","A textured black surface with varying patterns and finishes, creating a visually rich and abstract appearance.",{"_type":248,"asset":249},"image",{"_ref":250,"_type":251},"image-b196afa0ac1beafe515f11fd6259346a90fd055a-13872x7112-jpg","reference",[253],{"_key":254,"_type":8,"children":255,"markDefs":270,"style":16},"9b8fbdfa78ae",[256,260,263,266],{"_key":257,"_type":12,"marks":258,"text":191},"db50d64f2c92",[259],"35f4160d09f1",{"_key":261,"_type":12,"marks":262,"text":178},"916031331161",[],{"_key":264,"_type":12,"marks":265,"text":182},"3174a9ff8097",[65],{"_key":267,"_type":12,"marks":268,"text":269},"763086cdf88d",[],", ca. 1953. Enamel, bitumen, oil, and newspaper on canvas, four panels; 7 ft. 3 in. × 14 ft. 2½ in. (2.2 × 4.3 m). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York",[271],{"_key":259,"_type":166,"crNo":205},"https:\u002F\u002Fcdn.sanity.io\u002Fimages\u002F60h9uecp\u002Fproduction\u002Fb196afa0ac1beafe515f11fd6259346a90fd055a-13872x7112.jpg",{"_key":274,"_type":99,"content":275,"images":486},"f818378d7581",[276,288,377,437,467],{"_key":277,"_type":8,"children":278,"markDefs":287,"style":16},"5a251702e438",[279,283],{"_key":280,"_type":12,"marks":281,"text":282},"4bacc16ab1f3",[57],"4.",{"_key":284,"_type":12,"marks":285,"text":286},"e7138cfbbe8c",[]," Imagining the painting’s interactions with the stones, beams, and metal plating of the Stable environs, I wonder if the setup projected a certain coldness, tactilely speaking. Distancing, too, is the way the painting involves available light, the same way glazing in front of a canvas can make you cross at whoever—­in this case, Rauschen­berg—decided to make looking so hard. He deposited such reflectivity on the painting’s surface that only moving about can compensate. We see the picture only by abdicating the stationary throne of viewing and taking to transit along multiple lines of sight.",[],{"_key":289,"_type":8,"children":290,"markDefs":332,"style":16},"3be6d6a61b81",[291,295,299,302,306,311,315,320,324,328],{"_key":292,"_type":12,"marks":293,"text":294},"3632c31a1d1e",[57],"5.",{"_key":296,"_type":12,"marks":297,"text":298},"3cb293116634",[]," On this basis alone we might feel as though we’re not in a fixed, person-to-­painting relationship. A difficult place to be, but not a no-­place. What seemed a moment ago like an undifferentiated whole won’t go back together now. The irregular rhythm of the seams, the unique proportions their placements impart to each member, those members’ markedly varied characters as set members, their actual (early) and (later) implied exchangeability … is there such a thing as too much indeterminism? However well known ",{"_key":300,"_type":12,"marks":301,"text":182},"683de879e938",[65],{"_key":303,"_type":12,"marks":304,"text":305},"dc7950cb6bc4",[]," may be as a whole, it consists of four individually proportioned members, each approximately 87 inches tall but varying in width—­they measure, respectively, 27⅛, 50⅛, 47⅛, and 46⅛ inches wide. ",{"_key":307,"_type":12,"marks":308,"text":310},"f638a65afb0c",[309],"5e85c25dc1e9","A fifth panel was destroyed, making the current work no more of a whole than are a year’s seasons.",{"_key":312,"_type":12,"marks":313,"text":314},"cf29a74b4964",[]," Nothing is one thing—­not even this equivocal touchstone in the histories of modernism and the monochrome. ",{"_key":316,"_type":12,"marks":317,"text":319},"bcae790e6dd0",[318],"f722bff0821d","Rauschen­berg considered his ",{"_key":321,"_type":12,"marks":322,"text":323},"73a726fe46c0",[318,65],"Black Paintings",{"_key":325,"_type":12,"marks":326,"text":327},"2423ca809cbe",[318]," “too full or too empty to be thought,”",{"_key":329,"_type":12,"marks":330,"text":331},"4266a702a75e",[]," owing, I think, to their glut of trackable indeterminism, which calls for ongoing thinking—­thinking that’s in no hurry to assume a shape. Anyway, I’ve always taken Rauschen­berg to mean that these paintings are too involved with emergence to be congenial, or even available, to appropriation by a single thought.",[333,359],{"_key":309,"_type":140,"text":334},[335],{"_key":336,"_type":8,"children":337,"markDefs":358,"style":16},"486cd0867068",[338,342,346,350,354],{"_key":339,"_type":12,"marks":340,"text":341},"aed8e9b8e1a4",[],"The work has since been displayed with four panels except in 1964, when a single panel was shown in the exhibition ",{"_key":343,"_type":12,"marks":344,"text":345},"17dac9cd011b",[65],"Black, White and Grey",{"_key":347,"_type":12,"marks":348,"text":349},"c923f604f045",[]," at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. On the fate of the fifth panel, the artist said, “I was looking at this black panel and wondering what was under it, because I always painted over and over my work. … So I got a putty knife and scraped off one of the panels.” Rauschen­berg, quoted in Barbara Rose, ",{"_key":351,"_type":12,"marks":352,"text":353},"d3ec5a018247",[65],"Rauschen­berg ",{"_key":355,"_type":12,"marks":356,"text":357},"66f0e0607b87",[],"(New York: Vintage Books, 1987), p. 62.",[],{"_key":318,"_type":140,"text":360},[361],{"_key":362,"_type":8,"children":363,"markDefs":376,"style":16},"57d794e2e0d2",[364,368,372],{"_key":365,"_type":12,"marks":366,"text":367},"3d1855667084",[],"“My black paintings and my white paintings are either too full or too empty to be thought—­thereby they remain visual experiences. These pictures are not Art.” Rauschenberg, quoted in Hubert Crehan, “The See Change: Raw Duck,” ",{"_key":369,"_type":12,"marks":370,"text":371},"092ba9f742a2",[65],"Art Digest ",{"_key":373,"_type":12,"marks":374,"text":375},"7604bb1246bf",[],"27, no. 20 (Sept. 15, 1953), p. 25.",[],{"_key":378,"_type":8,"children":379,"markDefs":418,"style":16},"d047ba06d145",[380,384,388,391,395,400,404,407,411,415],{"_key":381,"_type":12,"marks":382,"text":383},"a720a45c631d",[57],"6.",{"_key":385,"_type":12,"marks":386,"text":387},"48a22df0ed1b",[]," Nowadays, no ",{"_key":389,"_type":12,"marks":390,"text":220},"4f6feecc548d",[65],{"_key":392,"_type":12,"marks":393,"text":394},"abe67ab932ad",[]," accompany this work. Should it appear to be one thing all the way through, such as a form, that’s merely temporary. Questions attack and break that form: What do its members’ differences represent? What does this arrangement have, or do, that another would not? And so on. The work is especially difficult to think given the partitioning (aforementioned), the emphatic a-symbolism of many exactly placed and articulated material stresses. For the work to exist in its own right, I need to do without the internal consistency—­the formalism—­that clarifies much other art despite serious bouts of disharmony. One good thing about formalism: It manages well future run-­ins with chaos. Not so here. ",{"_key":396,"_type":12,"marks":397,"text":399},"86aa0c6e852c",[398],"c5a21d9a7017","“The art audience’s stare,” as Brian O’Doherty memorably called it, differs sharply from the successive, darting looks needed to take in an entity as spread out and spatially irregular as this one.",{"_key":401,"_type":12,"marks":402,"text":403},"410ec9df344a",[]," Distributed, heterogeneous facture—textures and irregularities that yield a blackness which expresses and withdraws, amplifying and nullifying light—­abjures any notion that ",{"_key":405,"_type":12,"marks":406,"text":182},"4048b7f977a4",[65],{"_key":408,"_type":12,"marks":409,"text":410},"e317bdef7e6a",[]," is one kind of thing. Its subject comes as assorted varieties. Maybe there is news here: ",{"_key":412,"_type":12,"marks":413,"text":414},"385494c0eacf",[65],"Findings Show Blackness Too Full to Be Thought. Clear Thinking Rarely Fair to Facts",{"_key":416,"_type":12,"marks":417,"text":161},"784cc3eaed66",[],[419],{"_key":398,"_type":140,"text":420},[421],{"_key":422,"_type":8,"children":423,"markDefs":436,"style":16},"4b488d2f4611",[424,428,432],{"_key":425,"_type":12,"marks":426,"text":427},"0b3b6fa37861",[],"Brian O’Doherty, ",{"_key":429,"_type":12,"marks":430,"text":431},"e461aab8933e",[65],"American Masters: The Voice and the Myth",{"_key":433,"_type":12,"marks":434,"text":435},"d8449a29cfbd",[]," (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 198.",[],{"_key":438,"_type":8,"children":439,"markDefs":456,"style":16},"1a168aa6606b",[440,444,447,452],{"_key":441,"_type":12,"marks":442,"text":443},"ff3a277f0124",[57],"7.",{"_key":445,"_type":12,"marks":446,"text":178},"10686e7af184",[],{"_key":448,"_type":12,"marks":449,"text":451},"ffb628e502f9",[450],"44a210a8b3b2","While writing or thinking about writing, I often contemplate a definition of “equanimity” readily available on my computer: “mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.”",{"_key":453,"_type":12,"marks":454,"text":455},"bc6f60e57c5f",[]," I regard equanimity as a core practice in intellectual work with art, work with art that yields representations about art. To appreciate the scarceness of equanimity, you need to stay a while with something hard. Keep to a thing, person, or place that one would instinctively flee; keep to the thinking (and even being) it needs from you now. Do not domesticate, do not escape. Flight from this difficulty—­repudiating or abandoning the dignity of a puzzling situation—­only reaffirms the integrity of self and same. In this scene, flight would represent our inattention or antipathy to what Rauschen­berg painstakingly exacerbates: the unknown in a known; that unknown’s not-­yet-fathomed density, untouched surface variety, erratic ways of showing up, advancing, and keeping to itself; and the questions of that unknown’s interior.",[457],{"_key":450,"_type":140,"text":458},[459],{"_key":460,"_type":8,"children":461,"markDefs":466,"style":16},"33cc38415468",[462],{"_key":463,"_type":12,"marks":464,"text":465},"abedf87a0249",[],"This definition is a commonplace in online discussions of, among other things, mindfulness, leadership development, and parenting.",[],{"_key":468,"_type":8,"children":469,"markDefs":485,"style":16},"6f4d5655ef8b",[470,474,478,481],{"_key":471,"_type":12,"marks":472,"text":473},"fbc4fb39507e",[57],"8. ",{"_key":475,"_type":12,"marks":476,"text":477},"1b3c2f03c01b",[],"Good luck forgetting that there’s news you’re not getting; the urge to mistake background for foreground can be intense. But here, art supersedes information, and art is an immixture of Rauschen­berg’s operational processes with, well, everything else. What matters, then, is what all that supplanting yields which is not reducible to strikethroughs. The yellowed newspapers slightly warm the black. If they pull vision past the point at hand, rather than deepening it, as conventional pentimenti or underpainting would, then that’s vision’s loss. The point being: a slightly warm, black realm between what we know—­an idiom at our disposal—and ourselves. A something-­else right here, with qualities and contradictions immediately inviting surveyal. Elements present are handmade and machined; edges, prominently featured, are straight, serrated, crimped, and torn; canvas, sporadically forthright, supports papers that appear alternately slick, wavy, apparently saturated (some were), and maybe singed (none were); undulant and flat smoothness commingles arrhythmically with rough and still rougher regions. This is a riotously textured realm with an interior, to boot: I refer to voids where the artist’s technique dictates that the black-­painted paper never touches the underlying, black-painted canvas. Upon this ",{"_key":479,"_type":12,"marks":480,"text":182},"3a5ac424b194",[65],{"_key":482,"_type":12,"marks":483,"text":484},"60b3f8aee1b4",[],", Rauschen­berg advanced a concretion of work—­selections, attempts, attachments, decisions, amendments, and adjustments, none of it evidently dictated by a foreseen work product.",[],[487],{"_key":488,"_type":245,"alt":489,"asset":490,"caption":493,"url":602},"91c122a567a2","A black and white photograph of an art gallery featuring large black abstract paintings on the walls, wooden flooring, and a minimalist installation with a string and a small object on the ground.",{"_type":248,"asset":491},{"_ref":492,"_type":251},"image-969b19db0306eb8be74b08b92f919672b300587d-2330x2400-jpg",[494],{"_key":495,"_type":8,"children":496,"markDefs":594,"style":16},"1b8be79bb805",[497,501,505,509,512,516,520,524,528,532,535,539,543,547,550,554,559,562,567,570,574,577,582,586,590],{"_key":498,"_type":12,"marks":499,"text":500},"4f8b225d7752",[],"Fig. 1. Installation view of ",{"_key":502,"_type":12,"marks":503,"text":504},"4654904cfb69",[65],"Rauschenberg: Paintings and Sculpture",{"_key":506,"_type":12,"marks":507,"text":508},"802b6abbbc0a",[]," (Stable Gallery, New York, September 15–October 3, 1953). 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",{"_key":618,"_type":12,"marks":619,"text":621},"47ef9eca6e9c",[620],"9cb02485034b","Figures of accompaniment proliferated on its debut: Painting accompanied sculpture; traveling friends and lovers accompanied each other’s works in a two-­man show; a new art gallery fitted itself into a renovated equine architecture.",[623],{"_key":620,"_type":140,"text":624},[625],{"_key":626,"_type":8,"children":627,"markDefs":648,"style":16},"28feedabb29c",[628,632,636,640,644],{"_key":629,"_type":12,"marks":630,"text":631},"665e7f8f321a",[],"[",{"_key":633,"_type":12,"marks":634,"text":635},"2dfe1a7f9911",[65],"Rauschen­berg: Paintings and Sculpture",{"_key":637,"_type":12,"marks":638,"text":639},"46c9a2e83ca2",[],", Stable Gallery, New York, Sept. 15–Oct. 3, 1953, is catalogued in this publication as a solo show, concurrent with ",{"_key":641,"_type":12,"marks":642,"text":643},"867cf7facff6",[65],"Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings",{"_key":645,"_type":12,"marks":646,"text":647},"16aa8891cf33",[],". —RRF]",[],{"_key":650,"_type":8,"children":651,"markDefs":660,"style":16},"ac8db5ee4229",[652,656],{"_key":653,"_type":12,"marks":654,"text":655},"756a208bb12d",[57],"10.",{"_key":657,"_type":12,"marks":658,"text":659},"07122a373896",[]," Given how occupied the painting is with self-­differing, a strong feeling of rest or relief is hard to find before it. This is one way the things and beings of the world resist closure within concepts. Those that manage as long as this one has prove that felicitous effects stem even from theories that bring very little by way of understanding what they try to explain. It’s marvelous how readings slide off this work—­how it terrorizes its writing. The work’s satisfactions are not those characteristic of understanding but rather of change, aliveness, fresh perception, and survivable meetings with intolerable uncertainty.",[],{"_key":662,"_type":8,"children":663,"markDefs":704,"style":16},"78d496dcc5a2",[664,668,672,677,680,684,688,693,697,700],{"_key":665,"_type":12,"marks":666,"text":667},"264e87da31f7",[57],"11.",{"_key":669,"_type":12,"marks":670,"text":671},"b9ebee36df73",[]," A perfectly fluent course of thought about this artwork would have to pass it by. As substantial a thing as it is, sometimes I feel more present to my furious ego’s desire to interpret this phantasmagoria into significance than to accept it as a proper object of knowledge. ",{"_key":673,"_type":12,"marks":674,"text":676},"dcbcd5872057",[675],"675f7101bba8","Dore Ashton wrote in 1953, of Rauschen­berg’s Stable Gallery show, that his ",{"_key":678,"_type":12,"marks":679,"text":323},"2f4fa3e2ca2e",[65,675],{"_key":681,"_type":12,"marks":682,"text":683},"8ebc85e04ce7",[675]," “come as black beasts.”",{"_key":685,"_type":12,"marks":686,"text":687},"66f8f83747da",[]," Far be it from me to question the earnestness, but it’s hard to dissociate Ashton’s comment from antiblack racism, from its refusals to think in situations calling, above all else, for reflection (not projection). “Others come as black beasts,” goes the full clause. Also: not news. Surely this was more blackness than the public for whom Ashton wrote had ever confronted in visual art. ",{"_key":689,"_type":12,"marks":690,"text":692},"26be3c9b050c",[691],"6c27593d575e","Just as surely, racism, in its incomparable figurative fecundity, provided Ashton with the means that felt needed to make an improper object proper.",{"_key":694,"_type":12,"marks":695,"text":696},"d2810c1912b4",[]," Her grossly inapt cliché corroborates my suggestion that what’s being thought in the ",{"_key":698,"_type":12,"marks":699,"text":323},"8b4036e78ea2",[65],{"_key":701,"_type":12,"marks":702,"text":703},"de6358da7166",[]," isn’t for thinking in signs. The real scandal, which never was one, inheres in Ashton’s having deserted the blindingly obvious question: How—­by what means—do we locate another when thinking becomes impossible? When art is new and different to us, we must be willing to analogize the situation to the interhuman situation. Amid so much sense data about black, the Western, post-­Enlightenment intellect rarely admits defeat. It falls to intellectuals, though not them alone, to admit and enter into these failures, modifying knowledge—­our understanding of what understanding means—­accordingly.",[705,723],{"_key":675,"_type":140,"text":706},[707],{"_key":708,"_type":8,"children":709,"markDefs":722,"style":16},"a1ab3cf0b63a",[710,714,718],{"_key":711,"_type":12,"marks":712,"text":713},"7725d92d6dd7",[],"Dore Ashton, “57th Street: Bob Rauschen­berg,” ",{"_key":715,"_type":12,"marks":716,"text":717},"332624c569fa",[65],"Art Digest",{"_key":719,"_type":12,"marks":720,"text":721},"8d7714a1d117",[]," 27, no. 20 (Sept. 15, 1953), p. 21.",[],{"_key":691,"_type":140,"text":724},[725],{"_key":726,"_type":8,"children":727,"markDefs":740,"style":16},"87c80fc7e035",[728,732,736],{"_key":729,"_type":12,"marks":730,"text":731},"9d01915a1117",[],"Another reviewer, Hubert Crehan, described Rauschen­berg’s ",{"_key":733,"_type":12,"marks":734,"text":735},"bd357fe14ac7",[65],"White Paintings",{"_key":737,"_type":12,"marks":738,"text":739},"eea529489a03",[]," as “albinos,” building skin pigmentation into the pictures as manifest content. Crehan, “The See Change,” p. 25.",[],{"_key":742,"_type":8,"children":743,"markDefs":768,"style":16},"7891fd5798e9",[744,748,752,755,759,764],{"_key":745,"_type":12,"marks":746,"text":747},"a75f35472f19",[57],"12.",{"_key":749,"_type":12,"marks":750,"text":751},"d938568a2d44",[]," When my blackness and ",{"_key":753,"_type":12,"marks":754,"text":182},"73f724c8f90d",[65],{"_key":756,"_type":12,"marks":757,"text":758},"b36e55c32179",[]," dance, what dance do we do? I admit to wanting a lot for, and from, blackness. Much momentous blackness resides here. It’s got weight and history. It’s irregular, and always shifting in its vividness. ",{"_key":760,"_type":12,"marks":761,"text":763},"faf044c5a7b8",[762],"028ab8b4a749","Sometimes it’s yellow: old papers plus Whitney lighting; Ashton correctly perceived “amber overtones.”",{"_key":765,"_type":12,"marks":766,"text":767},"0cb790c20986",[]," Too, though, it’s full of racial difference, being the work of a Southern white man. And it’s regionally ambivalent, part South, part North, Rauschen­berg having painted at least one of the panels at Black Mountain College in North Carolina before completing and assembling the work in his Manhattan studio. These are textural qualities, too. I could still take it my own way, make from it the art that I need to satisfy ends determined by my emotional and practical subjectivity. My framework’s survival, though, feels far less important than seeking a writing that honors the quiddity of this versatile, irresolute thing. No adeptness in the pertinent vocabularies, no degree of investment in topical ones, excuses pretending that it doesn’t abhor clear thinking.",[769],{"_key":762,"_type":140,"text":770},[771],{"_key":772,"_type":8,"children":773,"markDefs":785,"style":16},"019109309c27",[774,778,781],{"_key":775,"_type":12,"marks":776,"text":777},"c7789b74f101",[],"Ashton, “57th Street,” p. 21. 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To follow the glide, crinkle, and pucker of objectless thinking.",[],[806],{"_key":807,"_type":245,"alt":808,"asset":809,"caption":812,"url":900},"f52c73d5bf66","A man stands in a dimly lit basement gallery surrounded by abstract sculptures and large canvases on the walls.",{"_type":248,"asset":810},{"_ref":811,"_type":251},"image-800cfed8ec3c405e4822ea7ed2ef991dbe53f08f-2539x2400-jpg",[813],{"_key":814,"_type":8,"children":815,"markDefs":889,"style":16},"62d6ed1a1013",[816,820,823,827,831,834,839,842,847,851,854,857,862,865,870,873,878,882,885],{"_key":817,"_type":12,"marks":818,"text":819},"34f853be102d",[],"Fig. 2. 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