Robert Rauschenberg: Rookery Mounds

In 1979, Robert Rauschenberg produced a series of eleven lithographs using a selection of thousands of photographs he took near his Captiva Island, Florida residence and studio, marking the artist’s rediscovery of photography. “I became addicted to photography again…The camera heightened my desire to look,” proclaimed the artist. Mundane and familiar images of water and boats, plants, wheels and tires, and draped fabrics gently overlap and weave together in muted violets, browns, grays, pinks and oranges. The images in the Rookery Mounds series were used as the projected backdrop for collaborator and choreographer Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy (1979), the first of many formal collaborations between the artist and choreographer, and would appear in many of Rauschenberg’s paintings throughout the 1980s. These historically important new acquisitions to the Gund Gallery Collection were recently made possible through the generosity of Ann and Graham Gund ’63.

The Gund Gallery exhibitions and programs are made possible, in part, by the Gund Gallery Board of Directors and the Ohio Arts Council.

Image credit: Robert Rauschenberg (American 1925-2008), Grape Levee (from Rookery Mounds), 1979. 3-color lithograph. 41 x 31 inches. Gund Gallery Collection; Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Graham Gund ’63.