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The Brain of the City

By

The Print Series

Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled, 1965, lithograph, 25″ x 21″.

I once heard Jasper Johns say that Rauschenberg was the man who in this century had invented the most since Picasso. What he invented above all was, I think, a pictorial surface that let the world in again. Not the world of the Renaissance man who looked for his weather clues out of the window; but the world of men who turn knobs to hear a taped message … electronically transmitted from some windowless booth. Rauschenberg’s picture plane is for the consciousness immersed in the brain of the city.
—Leo Steinberg, “Reflections on the State of Criticism,” Artforum, March 1972

Since 1964 The Paris Review has commissioned a series of prints and posters by major contemporary artists. Contributing artists have included Andy Warhol, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, Ed Ruscha, and William Bailey. Each print is published in an edition of sixty to two hundred, most of them signed and numbered by the artist. All have been made especially and exclusively for The Paris Review. Many are still available for purchase. Proceeds go to The Paris Review Foundation, established in 2000 to support The Paris Review.

This print is by Robert Rauschenberg, who died in 2008; he would be eighty-nine today. His print came in an edition of 150 that has, alas, sold out, but there are many others available here.