Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms, 1991

Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms 1991 emerged from a groundbreaking collaboration between the Hunter College MA Program Curatorial Practicum and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, marking the first time outside curators were invited to organize an exhibition at the Foundation’s headquarters in the artist’s former home and studio. The exhibition, the first to focus exclusively on these two series of “metal paintings” from 1991, explored how Rauschenberg transferred photographic images onto brushed or mirrored aluminum supports, creating works that both engaged with and subverted traditional pictorial conventions.

Working closely with the Foundation’s experts and conservators, Hunter College MA students conducted extensive research into Rauschenberg’s innovative technical processes and artistic intentions. The exhibition revealed how these works, based on the artist’s own photographs taken between 1979 and 1991, achieved distinct visual effects through various experimental techniques: the Night Shades employed corrosive tarnishes on aluminum to create dramatic contrasts, while the Phantoms, produced on mirrored anodized aluminum that repelled the tarnish, achieved an ethereal, ghostlike quality. Through detailed technical analysis and careful study of archival materials, the student curators illuminated how these series fulfilled Rauschenberg’s goal of creating surfaces that invite “constant change of focus and examination of detail.”

Published by the Rauschenberg Foundation, 2020

Essays by Julia Blaut, Emily Braun, Daniela Mayer, Chris Murtha, Lucy Riley, Joseph Shaikewitz, and Melissa Waldvogel

Designed by Natalie Wedeking

Edited by Julia Blaut and Emily Braun

Fully illustrated, 136 pages

_{All images © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York}