Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram is a combination of painting and sculpture. The central element of Rauschenberg’s combination is a taxidermied Angora goat with paint on its face placed in the rubber tire. A black ping pong ball is placed behind the goat, meaning that the animal is defecated on the paintings depicted on the wooden platform where it is standing. The taxidermied goat is Rauschenberg ‘s found object. The artist purchased it in a small local furniture store. Although he liked the goat for some reason, the idea for the combine did not come immediately as he saw it. Robert Rauschenberg admits that for some time, he had no clear understanding of what to do with this goat.
The meaning of this combination is not straightforward. American art critic Jerry Saltz interprets Monogram as a manifestation of Rauschenberg’s identity and calls the artist “a bull in the china shop of art history” (Rogers para.7). Saltz writes that Rauschenberg was a bisexual man (Rogers para.7). Apparently, in the 1960-s, his orientation made him a freak and did not fit into existing traditional cultural standards and norms of behavior. Hence, in this artwork, Rauschenberg challenges the cultural and sexual American values of his time.
Claus Oldenburg’s The Store is an installation comprised of sloppily painted formats that represent clothes and food – traditional items that could be found in a shop. The size of the represented forms varies from traditional. In Oldenburg’s installation, one could hardly find a specific found object used by the artist. All elements of The Store are grotesque, abstract, and manually created by the author. At the same time, Oldenburg used the same items that we see every day in reality. Therefore, it could be suggested that Oldenburg utilized not the found objects themselves but an idea of such an object.
At the same time, it should be noted that Oldenburg used ordinary food shelves, clothespins, and hangers. Even though these items are not conspicuous, they are vital for the idea of the installation. These minor details link the imaginary world of abstract objects created by Oldenburg with a real-world where the audience lives.
The critical task of giant dresses and pies is to make a viewer feel small and insignificant in the world where the central role is played by the goods. The visitors of this installation find themselves in such an environment where the items they are used to buying daily are ridiculed. The bright combination of abstract shirts and dresses, sandwiches and burgers, cakes, and ice cream packages is also considered a criticism of the American culture in which people are obsessed with possession of cheap and expensive manufactured goods, clothes, and food.
Both combine and incorporate ideas proposed by an American composer and writer John Cage who emphasized the importance of incorporating unusual items into a work. Since Cage worked with music, he used cutlery and other household utensils to change the way audience perceives music. The same could be said about Rauschenberg and Oldenburg. They used canvas and objects to give them a sense that they had not previously had. In other circumstances, a goat could hardly be regarded as an appropriate object to discuss cultural and sexual norms. However, in the context of the combination, this dead animal appears to be perfectly suitable. In Oldenburg’s case, small and insignificant details such as hangers and clothespins are a link between an abstract world and reality.