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Spring 5-6-2021

Yankee Go Home: ROCI in Latin America

Vitoria Hadba CUNY Hunter College

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This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Yankee Go Home: ROCI in Latin America

by

Vitoria Hadba

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History, Hunter College The City University of New York

2021

May 6, 2021 Emily Braun Date Thesis Sponsor

May 6, 2021 Lynda Klich Date Second Reader

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

List of Illustrations iii

Introduction: Arrivals 1

Chapter 1: ROCI MEXICO: Mexico Gringo 20

Chapter 2: ROCI CHILE: Copper Bites Back 42

Chapter 3: ROCI VENEZUELA: “The devil’s excrement” 60

Conclusion: Departures 81

Bibliography: 86

Illustrations: 98

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Acknowledgments

I will make this brief. After all, no one seems to read the acknowledgments. First, I want to emphasize that having a master’s degree is a luxury. I am forever indebted (pun intended) to the members of my family that allowed me to continue my formal education. I am incredibly grateful for the guidance of Professor Emily Braun and Professor Lynda Klich. While Braun’s high standards allowed me to rethink and ultimately outgrow my binaries, Klich made me fall in love with Mexico with all her knowledge, excitement, and warmth. Without the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s help, this thesis would not have happened. Thank you, Julia Blaut, for opening the doors of 318 Lafayette Street. Such generosity is rare. I am particularly appreciative of Francine Snyder and Shirin Khaki, who allowed me to spend many hours researching at the Foundation archives and endured my many questions. I also want to thank Helen Hsu for clarifying issues of provenance and David White for brief but generative conversations on ROCI. To my current and former bosses, Claudia Calirman and Joan Pachner, your mentorship means the world to me.

To Asa (always)

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1: Cover of the ROCI MEXICO catalogue, 1985. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 2: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [child inside a cardboard box], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-T, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 3: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [garbage], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-M, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 4: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [dog eating garbage], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-T, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 5: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [shoe shiner’s chair], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-R, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 6: Robert Rauschenberg, Wall Pond/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and fabric collage on canvas (80 x 121 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 7: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [shoe shop window], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-D, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 8: Robert Rauschenberg, Mexican Canary/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Silkscreen ink, acrylic, fabric and graphite on canvas with metal frame (90.625 x 161.375 x 6.125 inches). Private collection.

Figure 9: Robert Rauschenberg, Casino /ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic on double-faced fabric (302.75 x 129 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 10: Robert Rauschenberg, Daydream /ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (65.5 x 80.5 inches). Collection of James and Katherine Goodman.

Figure 11: Robert Rauschenberg, Street Contract/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (110.25 x 111.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 12: Robert Rauschenberg, Park/ ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic, collage, and pencil on canvas (114 x 51.375 inches). Minneapolis Institute of Art. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the P.D. McMillan Memorial Fund.

Figure 13: Robert Rauschenberg, Market Altar/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (122 x 114 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 14: Robert Rauschenberg, Awn/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (122.75 x 115.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 15: Robert Rauschenberg, Altar Peace/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic on canvas with aluminum frame plus object of aluminum tin (installed 126 x 90 x 24 inches). National Gallery of art, Washington D.C. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Figure 16: Robert Rauschenberg, Night Post/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on cardboard (84. 25 x 156.25 x 3.875 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 17: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite VII/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48.125 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figures 18: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite IX/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 19: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite XII/ROCI CHILE. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 20: Lukas, “Rauschenberg.” Cartoon. El Mercurio (Santiago), July 11, 1985.

Figure 21: Robert Rauschenberg, Caryatid Cavalcade I/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic on canvas (138.5 x 260.75 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 22: Robert Rauschenberg, Araucan Mastaba/ROCI CHILE, 1986. Hand painting and silkscreen ink on mirrored aluminum with cast sterling silver and lapis lazuli (20 5/8 x 22 x 22 inches.). From an edition of twenty-five produced by Graphicstudio, University of South Florida, Tampa (only 12 realized).

Figure 23: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [flower], Chile, 1984. 84-11-N, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 8, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 24: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [cemetery], Chile, 1984. 84-11-EE, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 8, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 25: Robert Rauschenberg, Altar Peace/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Silkscreen ink and fabric on aluminum construction with electric light (80 x 44.75 x 15 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 26: Robert Rauschenberg, cover design for Raúl Zurita, ANTEPARADISE: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Jack Schmitt (Los Angeles: University of California, 1986).

Figure 27: Robert Rauschenberg, Poster for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 1985. Silkscreen print with varnish overlay (35.85 x 23.85 inches).

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Figure 28: Robert Rauschenberg, Earth Haunts/ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic and sand on canvas mounted plywood (49.25 x 54.75 x 2 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 29: Robert Rauschenberg, Power Stack /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Silkscreen in and acrylic on plywood (98.625 x 49.25 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 30: Robert Rauschenberg, Pemon Sunday /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985.Acrylic on canvas mounted on plywood panel (49.25 x 54.75). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 31: Robert Rauschenberg, My Panare Dream with Yutaje /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic on canvas (90.875 x 112.625 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 32: Robert Rauschenberg, Onoto Snare/ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (69.75 x 78.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 33: Robert Rauschenberg, Urban /Interior Network/ ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic and collage on plywood panel with objects. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Gift of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Figures 34 & 35: Robert Rauschenberg, ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981-1998). 190 mixed media panels and sculptural elements (approximately 15840 inches or ¼ mile). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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“The whole exhibit faintly smells of airports and hotel suites, of highly paid technicians, fax machines, and cash.”1 Paul Richard

Introduction:

Arrivals

In 1984, at an event hosted by the United Nations, American artist Robert Rauschenberg

(1925–2008) announced his most ambitious and controversial project to date: the Rauschenberg

Overseas Culture Interchange—or ROCI.2 Using his art as the vehicle, he aimed to bring peace and understanding to what he considered “sensitive areas” on the geo-political map, countries plagued by endemic poverty and restrictions on political liberty and creative freedom.3

Rauschenberg launched ROCI in Latin America; for purely logistical reasons, he began his six- year exhibition tour in Mexico (April 17 to June 23, 1985), before traveling to Chile (July 17 to

August 18, 1985) and Venezuela (September 12 to October 27, 1985). The enterprise ultimately included eleven countries.4 Some of the ROCI exhibitions had verifiable success in their good faith effort to break down cultural barriers between the “free” world and countries behind the

Iron Curtain, which had little exposure to current neo-avant-garde art. In nations south of the

1 Paul Richard, “Silk Sheets and Neon Bicycles,” Washington Post, May 12, 1991. 2 Following the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation style guide, ROCI will be italicized when part of the title of a series or an exhibition. I will not use periods in the acronym ROCI, unless it is part of a citation that spells it this way. All translations are mine unless otherwise noticed. 3 Mary Lynn Kotz, Rauschenberg, Art and Life (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 20. 4 ROCI MEXICO at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, April 17 to June 23, 1985; ROCI CHILE at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, July 17 to August 18, 1985; ROCI VENEZUELA at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, September 12 to October 27, 1985; ROCI CHINA at National Art Gallery Beijing, November 15 to December 5, 1985; ROCI TIBET at Tibet Exhibition Hall, Llasa, December 2 to December 23, 1985; ROCI JAPAN at Setagaya Museum, Tokyo, November 22 to December 28, 1986; ROCI CUBA at Museo Nacional, Casa de las Américas, and Castillo de la Fuerza, Havana, February 10 to April 3, 1988; ROCI USSR at Central House of Artists, Moscow, February 2 to March 5, 1989; ROCI GERMANY at Neue Berliner Gallerie im Alten Museum, Berlin, March 10 to April 1, 1990; ROCI MALAYSIA at National Art Gallery (Balai Seni Lukis Negara), May 21, 1990 to June 24, 1990; closing exhibition including ROCI USA at National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., May 12 to September 3, 1991.

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United States border, however, the artist faced unfavorable public and media reception because many local artists and intellectuals—the very groups he aimed to reach—saw his work as an imperialistic endeavor by a gringo artist. This often-hostile reaction reflected the cultural and political tensions between the US and the mostly left-wing Latin American cultural elite of the time.

This thesis offers a postcolonial approach to ROCI, based on previously unmined primary source accounts of the three projects in Latin America. I will look closely at the reception of

Rauschenberg’s exhibitions, examining how they were received from a local perspective, while also valorizing scholarship generated in the places which Rauschenberg intervened.5 It is important to acknowledge that the majority of the first-person accounts that I have unearthed come from members of the Latin American cultural elite, which was still, for the most part, well- off economically and largely of European descent. Blending primary source documents with social art history, I retrace the artist’s steps—and missteps—during the first leg of his tour through Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela.

Furthermore, through close visual analyses, I question to what extent Rauschenberg’s ROCI

Latin American works built on the artist’s longstanding iconographical motifs and the “random order” model of his collage-based compositions.6 Random Order was Rauschenberg’s contribution to the art journal Location. In Random Order, he collaged his own aphoristic writings with original photographs, demonstrating his interest in finding connections among disparate events and things. Rauschenberg’s collage method toggles between the deliberate and

5 Most recently, proponents of decolonial and subaltern studies have been criticized for propagating, through their affiliations with North American and European academia, the very power dynamics that they attempt to dismantle. See Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 95–109. 6 “With sound and scale and insistency trucks mobilize words, and broadside our culture by a combination of law and local motivation on which produces an extremly [sic] complex random order that cannot be described as accidental.” Robert Rauschenberg, “Random Order,” Location 1, no. 1 (Spring 1963): 22–31.

3 the indiscriminate and thus defers narrative closure and courts ambiguity of meaning. As a result, his intentions, including political commentary, leave interpretation—overreading and underreading, negative and positive—open to the viewer. Once Rauschenberg turned to source material in countries not his own, he left himself open to accusations of cultural misappropriation. To dig deeper into what the artist chose to see, I will scrutinize to what degree his photographic travelogues, assemblages, and metal paintings were inevitably shaped by pre- existing stereotypes and exoticized view of these countries. In contrast to the majority of scholarly texts about Rauschenberg’s ambitious project, which are either derogatory or laudatory, this study will reconcile these opposing perspectives and establish a more nuanced understanding of Rauschenberg’s problematic attempt at cultural diplomacy. The final goals of my research are to investigate the convoluted political implications of ROCI in Latin America during the transitional period in which binary Cold War politics were ebbing amidst the rise of a global free-market economy.7

Rauschenberg initially considered bringing ROCI to Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. After being robbed in Lima during an exploratory visit, however, Donald Saff, ROCI artistic director and founder of Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida, abandoned plans to bring the project to Peru.8 Saff and Rauschenberg were discouraged from traveling to Argentina by the art community’s seeming indifference toward US modernism and strong alignment with the French and Italian avant-gardes.9 Saff experienced this anti-US sentiment when he visited there: “The

7 For more on the ROCI and the transitional period between the Cold War and neoliberalism, see John Blakinger’s lecture, “‘The World is My Palette’: Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange,” YouTube, May 13, 2019, video, 48:11, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ9bfZHbVpA&feature=emb_logo. For a careful study of the 1980s, see Kimberly R. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, eds., The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade (Lanham, Md: Lexington, 2011). 8 Robert Rauschenberg and Jack Cowart, “Chronology: 1984–1991,” in Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (Munich: Prestel; Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 181. 9 Robert Rauschenberg and Donald Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.” in Robert Rauschenberg and Jack Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (Munich: Prestel; Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 168.

4 country was filled with…obsessions about European culture. I think that any exhibition that originated in the United States at that time would not have found a receptive audience in Buenos

Aires.”10 (Due to the emigration and decimation of its indigenous people, Argentina became one of the most genetically and culturally European countries in Latin America.) In Brazil,

Rauschenberg was displeased with the architecture of the modernist museums and what he perceived as their excess of natural light, believing they would not be a good fit for the installation his works.11

In addition to Don Saff, other key members of the ROCI project included Terry Van

Brunt, Thomas Buehler, Brenda Woodward, and Lawrence Voytek. Van Brunt was

Rauschenberg’s assistant and lover. He traveled with the artist, took notes, photographed extensively and produced most of the footage used in the video travelogue. Buehler handled the logistics, including shipping, crating, and installing. He then worked as a registrar for the Robert

Rauschenberg Foundation until his retirement in 2006. Woodward was Saff’s assistant. She is rarely mentioned, yet she traveled with Saff and her name appears in most of the documents in the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s archives. Voytek was based in Captiva. He was

Rauschenberg’s in-house fabricator and problem solver, especially when it came to working out the new and complex technical process of his metal paintings which comprised many of the artist’s Latin American works.

Even before ROCI, Rauschenberg was already a “migrator.”12 After his trip to North Africa and Italy with Cy Twombly in the early 1950s, he began to explore other cultures and

10 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 168. 11 “Correspondence from Donald Saff to Frank Blochmann,” February 1, 1985, Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 12 The art historian Hiroko Ikegami uses the word “migrator” in reference to Rauschenberg’s work Course (1958), which includes an image of a Canada goose in flight that was originally published at Sports Illustrated. Ikegami uses the word “migrator” as a synonym for “traveler” (not to imply movement according to the yearly seasons) in her excellent investigation of Rauschenberg’s travels in the 1960s. Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).

5 geographies, and traveling became an essential part of his art practice. In 1964 alone,

Rauschenberg visited no fewer than thirty cities and fourteen countries while working as set and costume designer for Merce Cunningham’s dance company. 13 In the 1970s, Rauschenberg created art in Israel and in India in local venues and with local craftspeople.14 A few years later, in the early 1980s, he worked with specialists from one of the oldest papermills in China and with the Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Company in Japan.

Though the desire to create a global exchange project had been percolating in

Rauschenberg’s mind for some time, ROCI was ultimately less about contributions by local artists and more about the promotion, however well-intentioned, of the Rauschenberg “brand.” In the late 1970s, the artist began thinking about an international traveling exhibition titled The

Robert Rauschenberg Round the World Tour. According to Saff, however:

It was not until Rauschenberg’s 1982 visit to Jingxian, Anhui Province, China, to work at one of the world’s oldest paper mills, that the potential for what was to become ROCI was fully appreciated. The interaction that occurred in Jingxian, between old and new, East and West, parochial and international, gave to the ROCI project the impetus and energy, both artistic and practical, that would fuel it on a global scale.15

Rauschenberg described ROCI as “a peace mission without a missionary.”16 He stated that

“emphasis will be placed on sharing experiences with societies less familiar with non-political ideas or communicating ‘worldly’ through art.”17 He continued, “I feel strongly in my beliefs . . . that one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful powers, and is the most non-elitist

13 Ikegami, The Great Migrator, 7. 14 Evan Bellantone, “Snowpool (Jammer), 1976,” Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, accessed January 13, 2021, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Bellantone_SnowpoolJammer1976.pdf; Margaret Colbert, Untitled,1974, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, accessed January 13, 2021, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Colbert_Untitled1974.pdf. 15 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I,” 155. 16Robert Rauschenberg, “A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers (July 13, 1985),” p. 2, Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 17Robert Rauschenberg, “Tobago Statement,” in Robert Rauschenberg and Jack Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (Munich: Prestel; Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991), 154.

6 way to share exotic and common information, seducing us into creative and mutual understanding for the benefit of all.”18

The acronym ROCI, pronounced “Rocky,” refers to the artist’s pet turtle, which became something of a mascot for the project and appeared in ROCI’s official logo. Art historian John

Blakinger has associated the image with the so-called “world turtle,” the tortoise figure present in Hindu, Chinese, and Amerindian myths that carries the weight of the world on its back. 19

When asked about the symbolism of the project’s mascot, however, Rauschenberg denied that he intended this reference, yet he accepted potential associations: “No. I don’t think so. [The world turtle symbol] might have been a reaffirmation.”20

ROCI was primarily self-funded by the artist. Rauschenberg sold works from his personal collection, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Jasper Johns, to pay for the extensive travel, staffing, and material costs.21 On more than one occasion, the artist emphasized that ROCI was only able to maintain its integrity because he funded it himself.22 Yet, art historians have overlooked the fact that that the project did have some outside financial and logistical support. The US Embassy bought a small number of airplane tickets for ROCI staff.

Archival documents show that the multinational freight company Schenkers International

Forwarders, Inc. also paid for a limited number of airplane tickets and may have helped with some art transportation costs.23 In Venezuela, Rauschenberg offered some of the ROCI works for

18Rauschenberg, “Tobago Statement,” 154. 19 Blakinger, “‘The World is My Palette’: Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ9bfZHbVpA&feature=emb_logo. 20 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 162. 21 Rauschenberg and Saff, 156–57. 22 Rauschenberg and Saff, 157. 23 Note containing information on airplane tickets to Mexico, Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York; Margaret Moorman, “Rocky Road to Peace and Understanding,” ArtNews 85, no. 2 (February 1985): 11. Thomas Buehler discusses Schenkers’ participation in his oral history, noting that the company stop supporting ROCI after Venezuela. Thomas Buehler interviewed by Sara Sinclair, “The Reminiscences of Thomas Buehler,” April 2, 2015, Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, conducted in collaboration with INCITE/Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives.

7 purchase to reimburse his costs, but it is unclear if any local collectors actually acquired them.24

Surprisingly, when asked if there were any sales, Rauschenberg answered, “No. There was no business. There could have been in a couple of situations, but I refused.”25

ROCI’s logistical arrangements were complex. After compiling an initial list of potential host nations, Saff conducted a series of reconnaissance trips to determine if the respective countries would be welcoming, and if ROCI could indeed play a positive cultural role in their capital cities. Rauschenberg would follow soon after, in what was essentially an inspirational and image-finding mission: he photographed selected locales and architecture and collected found, vernacular objects to be used as the raw, creative materials for his assemblages, collages and metal paintings. Given that Rauschenberg was a self-diagnosed dyslexic, it is unclear how much advance reading, if any, he did on the respective countries before his trips, though he was undoubtedly familiar with illustrated guidebooks and images of cultural landmarks. He spoke little to no Spanish. The works themselves were created in his Captiva, Florida studio; notably the artist never sought to set up a studio to achieve a genuine form of collaboration with local artists and artisans. There was little turn-around time between the artist’s visits, production, and the exhibition opening, and Rauschenberg traveled back and forth indefatigably between the three countries and the United States in little over a year (August 1984 to October 1985).

Each exhibition was different, but they all took place in prominent venues and they were large, including over a hundred works. The artist typically included a selection of his earlier travel photographs and of photographs taken in the ROCI nations, some of his earlier 1970s and

1980s works (Venetian, Tampa Clay piece, Kabal American Zephyr, Jammers, and Hoarfrost

24 Correspondence from Donald Saff to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, September 13, 1985, Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. According to Rauschenberg Foundation’s curator, Helen Hsu, no works were sold at the time. Email exchange between Helen Hsu and the author, April 15, 2021. 25 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 157.

8 series), a video travelogue spearheaded by Van Brunt, a selection of ROCI works from other hosting nations and the works produced after his visit to the host country. Installations highlighted the latter, but overall, Rauschenberg sought to emphasize the continuity of his artistic vision and also the cumulative record of the ROCI multi-national enterprise. ROCI CHILE for example, displayed nine out of twelve of the works from the ROCI MEXICO series. In its largest iteration, ROCI consisted of more than three hundred paintings, objects, photographs, and drawings.26 Despite an initial plan to travel to twenty-two nations, ROCI, which ran from 1984— when it was first announced at the United Nations—to 1991, ultimately visited only eleven. The project ended with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the first time this museum mounted a show of the work of a living artist. As a sign of his good will and self- promotional plan, the artist donated one of the exhibited ROCI works to most hosting nations at the time of their respective exhibition. Rauschenberg also gave one or more works from each of the ROCI series to the National Gallery of Art (NGA).27

Rauschenberg published a small magazine-like catalogue (fig. 1) for each ROCI stop and invited important poets and intellectuals to write short texts. The catalogues had the same cover and were printed in thin glossy paper and designed to resemble Time magazine.28 Mexican poet, diplomat, and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz contributed the poem “A Wind Called Bob

Rauschenberg” for the ROCI MEXICO iteration.29 José Donoso, the Chilean writer and activist, wrote an untitled piece for the Chile catalogue.30 As will be further explained in a subsequent

26 Rauschenberg and Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, 193. 27 The ROCI works donated to the NGA were not exhibited in Mexico, Chile, nor Venezuela. They were only exhibited in D.C. even though they were part of country-specific series. It is also worth noting that the NGA ROCI works (e.g., Altar Peace/ROCI MEXICO, Copperhead Grande/ROCI CHILE, Urban/Interior Network/ ROCI VENEZUELA) were shown individually at the D.C. venue before the 1991 closing exhibition. 28 “Letters exchanged between Brenda Woodard and Time Magazine (1984),” in Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 29 ROCI MEXICO, “Poem by Octavio Paz and essay by Robert Hughes,” (Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, 1985). 30 ROCI CHILE, “Essay by José Donoso and Robert Hughes,” (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, 1985).

9 chapter, ROCI VENEZUELA’s catalogue did not include text by any Venezuelan writers.31 The

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, however, later published its own, much more luxurious (104 pages), hard-cover catalogue to mark the event.32 Another hard-cover catalogue was published in 1991 by the NGA to accompany the concluding show in D.C.33 These catalogues, their texts, and the choice of authors are fundamental references for this thesis.

While the subject matter and certain materials were country-specific, Rauschenberg used similar techniques across the series, consistent with his polymorphous and polymaterial approach to artmaking. Many of the ROCI works continued in the spirit of Rauschenberg’s mid-1950s combines, with three-dimensional fabrics and things attached to two-dimensional supports. He made an effort, where possible to choose varied materials redolent of the locale. In Mexico, the artist used sacks of domestically produced flour, cardboard tequila boxes, and local textiles, in

Chile, known for its copper mines, he used copper supports for his silkscreen imagery, and in

Venezuela he attached an indigenous-made net and Venezuelan textiles to canvas and plywood panels.

Photography was foundational. The artist turned the photographs he took during his initial visit into silkscreens that were then applied to a variety of surfaces, such as copper plates (e.g.,

Copperhead/ROCI CHILE), fabrics (e.g., Casino/ROCI MEXICO) and plywood panels (e.g.,

Rudy’s House/ROCI VENEZUELA). Once juxtaposed, overlapped and screenprinted in a variety of bright and symbolic colors, the ostensibly straight photographs gave way to evocative, even exoteric, readings. As art historian Chris Murtha explains, the so-called “silkscreen paintings exemplified Rauschenberg’s intermedia approach to art, fusing—or confusing—photography, printmaking, painting, and sometimes sculpture to create composite images that often obscure

31 ROCI VENEZUELA, “Essay by Arturo Uslar Pietri and Robert Hughes,” (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Caracas, 1985). 32 Robert Rauschenberg et al., Rauschenberg (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, 1985). 33 Rauschenberg and Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange.

10 more than they reveal.”34 The photographs that served as the basis for most ROCI pieces were also independent artworks in their own right; Venezuelan archival documents show that they had a room of their own in the show at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Caracas.35

Rauschenberg had been taking pictures for most of his life. He began formal instruction at

Black Mountain College in 1949, where he met photography professor Hazel Larsen Archer, an important early mentor.36 Around that time, he flirted with the idea of photographing the entire

United States of America, “inch by inch.”37 Although the project was clearly unrealistic, it is not hard to see how its ambitious and documentarian approach influenced ROCI’s development.

When discussing his attraction to the medium, Rauschenberg explained: “Photography is a way for me to stay in touch with all the shadows and highlights that are around me. It’s an exercise that keeps my feet on the ground but moving, the realization that every corner of the room is never going to be the same again.”38 Photography allowed him to be a wearer of many hats. At times, he was a tourist taking snapshots, while in other instances he acted as a journalist capturing the effects of the economic crisis on the Mexican people or the environmental destruction caused by the copper mines in Chile and oil extraction in Venezuela. Although

Rauschenberg believed that the “artist needs to act as a journalist,” he did not seem to be aware of the touristic, voyeuristic, or even colonizing characteristics of his gaze.39

His Texas upbringing, free-spirited persona, and voracious use of mass media, industrial printing methods (e.g., silkscreen), and the detritus of consumer society (e.g., the Cardboard,

Gluts, and Combine series), are just a few of the reasons why Rauschenberg’s identity was

34 Chris Murtha, “Photosensitive Rauschenberg: Developing Images in the Night Shades and Phantoms,” in Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms, 1991, eds. Julia Blaut and Emily Braun (New York: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Hunter College, 2019), 21. 35 Robert Rauschenberg et al., Robert Rauschenberg (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, 1985). 36 Murtha, “Photosensitive Rauschenberg,” 23. 37 Murtha, 23. 38 Rauschenberg and Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, 161. 39 Werner Krüger, ROCI: Robert Rauschenberg in Mexico, 16 mm color film, 30:13 (Artemedia Buch und Film GmbH, Cologne).

11 inexorably linked to his nation of birth. Writer Mary Lynn Kotz noted that “Rauschenberg has been described as the most American of artists, ” while Jean Louis Prat argued that

“[Rauschenberg] brought to the rest of the world, in the language of art, absolutely what was

American.”40 Not only his citizenship, but also the content and flavor of the work itself exuded the culture of the Star-Spangled Banner. In works such as Daydream/ROCI MEXICO (1985; see fig. 10), the artist highlighted his country’s corporate imperialism by incorporating a photograph taken in Mexico of a sign advertising Coca-Cola. In Latin America, the scale of the ROCI enterprise, its lavish costs, and coordinated media campaigns tainted it as a symbol of capitalism and the ultra-commodification of art.41 According to art historian Christin J. Mamiya, the ROCI project on the whole “reveals the degree to which Rauschenberg had become identified with an

American vision.”42

My research shows that ROCI was often received with distrust in Latin America because of its brash “Americanism.” Despite the different political contexts in Mexico, Chile, and

Venezuela, their shared antiyanquismo (anti-US sentiment from a Latin American perspective) explains the project’s ambivalent reception. For centuries, “the United States and Latin America have been entwined and entangled in a way that other places have not.”43 Already-extant antiyanquismo was exacerbated by US imperialist pursuits during the Cold War, which included supporting dictatorial regimes in Latin America, and further fanned by the unevenness of neoliberal globalization.44 In 1971, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano published the best-selling

40 Kotz, Rauschenberg, 25. 41 Josefina de la Maza Chevesich, “Introducing the World to Himself: Robert Rauschenberg and ROCI Chile,” Art Criticism (Stony Brook University, NY) 25, nos. 1–2 (2010): 45. 42 Christin J. Mamiya, “We the People: The Art of Robert Rauschenberg and the Construction of American National Identity,” American Art (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) 7, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 56. 43 Mary Louise Pratt, “Back Yard with Views,” in Anti-Americanist, eds. Andrew Ross and Kristin Ross (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 35. 44 For more on antiyanquismo, see Alan L. McPherson, Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008) and Paul Hollander, Understanding Anti-Americanism: Its Origins and Impact at Home and Abroad (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).

12 book “Open Veins of Latin America,” where he analyzed the impact of imperialism in Latin

America.45 The book was a must-read for the leftist elite, but it was nicknamed the “idiot’s bible” by defendants of the free market.46 It was particularly successful in Mexico, while it was censured in Chile. When describing the 1980s in Latin America, Argentinian scholar Ana Del

Sarto argued that “the dominant powers erected diverse obstacles… to disarticulate hope, replacing it with the glitter of globalization.”47

The cultural aversion among some Latin American intellectuals to anything seen as a North

American import was epitomized by their negative reception of Pop art, with which

Rauschenberg was often incorrectly associated. When Latin American artist embraced the style, they did it from a critical perspective.48 In 1978, on the occasion of the 1ª Bienal Latino-

Americana de São Paulo (First Latin American São Paulo Biennial), art critic Mario Pedrosa condemned Pop art as an expression of capitalist society and mass consumerism.49 For Pedrosa, a distinguished member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), imagery that celebrated consumerism marked a crisis in art. He expressed disappointment that, within the

AICA, only the US critics advocated for an art based on publicity.50 On the occasion of

Rauschenberg’s opening in Caracas, Axel Stein, an American curator based in Venezuela, quipped sarcastically, “If Rauschenberg was French, or better, Swiss or Norwegian, the polemic

45 Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997 [1971]). 46 Mary O’Grady, “Americas: The Idiot’s Bible,” Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2009, pp 14. 47 Ana del Sarto, “The 1980s: Foundations of Latin American Cutural Studies,” in The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader, eds. Ana del Sarto, Alicia Ríos, and Abril Trigo (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 156. 48 For more on Pop art in Latin America see Esther Gabara, María Eugenia Hidalgo, and Clara Marín, Pop América, 1965-1975 (Durham: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2018). 49 From an essay Pedrosa wrote in 1970 in Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro, entitled “Variações sem Tema ou a Arte da Retaguarda” (Variations Without a Theme or Art from the Rearguard), that was mentioned at the symposium organized during the first Latin-American Biennial, in 1978, and later published in Política das Artes, ed. Otília Arantes (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1995), 341–47. 50 Pedrosa, “Variations Without a Theme,” 341–347.

13 regarding how convenient his presence was (. . .) wouldn’t have happened. But the artist is North

American. Shame on him.”51

While there is no doubt that Rauschenberg was often received with skepticism by avant- garde critics in Latin American countries, as I will show, the same cannot be said about the reception of ROCI elsewhere in the world. In the USSR and China, his presence seemed to have fulfilled a need for artistic innovation. Artists from these nations had exhausted the artistic possibilities of Socialist Realism, and, as art historian Pamela Kachurin remarked, Soviet artists were in the midst of a creative crisis.52 Soviet painter Leonid Bazhanov stated: “To us, the show

[ROCI USSR] symbolized freedom.”53 Timing was key to ROCI’s favorable reception in the

East; ROCI “coincided with the breakdown of the cultural blockade between East and West.”54

In China, the exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing (1985) happened during the country’s “culture fever” for Western art and culture, and a number of contemporary artists recalled the show as a bold and generous gesture that influenced their subsequent careers.55 In the USSR, meanwhile, Rauschenberg’s presence and the ROCI USSR exhibition at the Central

House of Artists in Moscow (1989) became symbolic of the perestroika—Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring that allowed for newfound freedoms.

Due to the success of ROCI USSR, Rauschenberg’s work was included in the 1990 USSR

Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, a move that according to Kachurin indicated “the official view

51 “Si Rauschenberg hubiera sido Frances o, mejor, suizo o noruego, la polémica sore la conveniência de su presencia em el LACC no se habría destado. Pero el artista es norteamericano. Shame on him.” Axel Stein, “Venezuela: Cultura Infartada,” El Universal, October 28, 1985. 52 Pamela Kachurin, “The R.O.C.I. Road to Peace: Robert Rauschenberg, Perestroika, and the End of the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 37. 53 Leonid Bazhanov quoted in Hiroko Ikegami, “Art Had No Borders: Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange,” MoMA Post – Notes on Art in a Global Context (December 13, 2013), https://post.moma.org/part-2- art-has-no-borders-rauschenberg-overseas-culture-interchange/. 54 Hiroko Ikegami, “ROCI East: Rauschenberg’s Encounters in China,” in East-West Interchanges in American Art: A Long and Tumultuous Relationship, eds. Lee Glazer, Amelia A. Goerlitz, and Cynthia Mill (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012), 187. 55 Ikegami, “ROCI East: Rauschenberg’s Encounters in China,” 178.

14 that Rauschenberg and his work were consistent with the goals and concerns of the Soviet artistic and political elite.”56

A much earlier episode in the artist’s career—unfairly or not—cemented the association between his art and American political interests. It is well known that the CIA promoted Abstract

Expressionism during the Cold War, which lasted from 1947 to 1991 but had begun to thaw by the 1980s. During this war, abstract expressionism became a symbol of American freedom and thus an effective critique of the restrictive cultural policies of the communist regimes.57 Although

Rauschenberg was not directly linked to the CIA endeavors, his award at the 1964 Venice

Biennale was received with suspicion. “Since the 1964 Biennale was the first in which the

United States government assumed official sponsorship for the American Pavilion,” Ikegami writes, “Rauschenberg’s award has been considered an outcome of American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War.”58

Some art historians, notably American ones, have argued that ROCI can be viewed as a product of its time, specifically the transitional decade of the 1980s, a decade defined by

Margaret Thatcher’s and Ronald Reagan’s adoption of neoliberalism, the global expansion of free markets, and the beginning of the end of the Cold War, with the resulting cultural thaw and the opening of borders.59 Neoliberalism, according to scholar David Harvey, is a doctrine of political and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can be better advanced by

56 Kachurin, “The R.O.C.I. Road to Peace,” 42. 57 Eva Cockroff, “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” Artforum 15, no. 10 (June 1974): 39–41. 58 Ikegami, The Great Migrator, 58. 59 Blakinger, perhaps being the most articulated amongst these scholars. Stamford University professor of anthropology, James Ferguson is critical of academia’s cliché approach to Neoliberalism: “In thinking about the rapidly expanding literature on neoliberalism, I am struck by how much of the critical scholarship on topic arrives in the end at the very same conclusion—a conclusion that might be expressed in its simplest form as: “neoliberalism is bad for poor and working people, therefore we must oppose it.” It is not that I disagree with this conclusion. On the contrary. But I sometimes wonder why I should bother to read one after another extended scholarly analysis only to reach, again and again, such an unsurprising conclusion.” James Ferguson, “The Uses of Neoliberalism,” Antipode 41, no. 1 (2009); 166.

15 liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom.60 Such liberation is achieved through strong private property rights, governmental deregulation of essential services, the encouragement of free-enterprise over state controls and social safety nets, and the lowering and elimination of trade barriers and tariffs. “Neoliberalism has, however entailed much creative destruction” argues Harvey.61 It destroyed labor protections and social safety nets, and increased inequalities through accumulation by dispossession. Another key consequence of neoliberal policies, which by essence require maximizing the reach and volume of market transactions, is the birth, growth, and expansion of multinational corporations and the development of technologies that allow for more global interconnectivity.62

Was ROCI an example of this free market, global enterprise, with the added veneer of multiculturalism, itself a vehicle and justification for economic expansionism? In the words of

French art historian Hérve Vanel, multiculturism represented “Western indulgence towards the rest of the world.”63 From charity record singles, such as Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie’s

“We Are the World” (1985), to marketing campaigns, such as Benetton’s “All the Colors of the

World” (1984) and “United Colors of Benetton” (1985), which depicted people from various ethnic groups happily together and sent a message of racial unity, multiculturalism was everywhere. 64 Vanel described the period as “the years when the bizarre concept of "World

60 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 2. “Deregulation, privatization, and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision have been all too common. Almost all states, from those newly minted after the collapse of the Soviet Union to old-style social democracies and welfare states such as New Zealand and Sweden, have embraced, sometimes voluntarily and in other instances in response to coercive pressures, some version of neoliberal theory and adjusted at least some policies and practices accordingly. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 3. 61 Harvey, 3. 62 “These technologies have compressed the rising density of market transactions in both space and time. They have produced a particularly intensive burst of what I have elsewhere called ‘time-space compression’.” Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 3. 63 Hérve Vanel, “Speaking in Tongues (Selvaging Rauschenberg)” in Robert Rauschenberg: Salvage (Paris: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2016), 24 64 See Serra A. Tinic, “United Colors and Untied Meanings: Benetton and the Commodification of Social Issues,” Journal of Communication 47, no. 3 (Summer): 5. Artist Guillermo Gómez Peña, approaching this trend with skepticism, wrote in a 1989 letter that “a multicultural fever of epidemic proportions is afflicting the art world.”

16

Music" meant that non-Western music of any kind ended up in the same bin in the record shops; so that "The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices" was happily racked with Ravi Shankar, soon to be joined by a Japanese salsa group.”65 Yet, such trends did not give these subaltern cultures any agency in their own representation and led to the erasure of critical difference and global inequities. In a well-known lecture (1985), given at the time of ROCI, professor of anthropology

Clifford Geertz argues that “we are living a process of softening cultural contrasts.”66 In a 2019 lecture, Blakinger compared Rauschenberg’s work Hutan Belantara (Virgin Forest)/ ROCI

MALAYSIA (1990) to the Benetton campaign, arguing that ROCI was inherently part of the visual culture of globalization. 67 Though such comparisons – and results - are inevitable, they may not have been the artist’s intentions. “We are going to end up with a generic world. Where everybody is going to be exactly the same,” feared Rauschenberg, to his credit.68

To be sure, with regard to the global expansion of the culture industry and the art market,

Rauschenberg was a trailblazer. Before the boom of international art fairs and mega-galleries with outposts all over the world, he was already expanding his brand throughout the globe while also connecting with local art scenes. As Joseph Branden writes:

Much of the same anticipatory function [of social and subjective transformations] can be found in the artist’s Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (R.O.C.I.) project of 1984–91 wherein he and a team of assistants visited eleven countries, producing artworks in response to and in partial collaboration with the local context. What then seemed quixotic or even megalomaniacal now appears as a virtual one-artist Biennial circuit that modeled, for better or worse, the multinational itineraries that have become every successful artist’s normal operating procedure today.69

“The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National Arts Community,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America, ed. Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 183–193. 65 Vanel, “Speaking in Tongues (Selvaging Rauschenberg),” 24. 66 Clifford Geertz, "The Uses of Diversity,” Michigan Quarterly 25, no.1 (Winter 1986); 105. 67 Blakinger, “‘The World is My Palette’: Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ9bfZHbVpA&feature=emb_logo. 68 Robert Rauschenberg, 'Talking to Robert Rauschenberg: An Interview with Julia Brown Turrell," in Julia Brown Turrell and Ponlus Hultén, Robert Rauschenberg: Sculpture (Fort Worth: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 1995), 68. Exhibition catalogue. 69 Branden W. Joseph, “Media Player,” Artforum (September, 2008); 441. See also Ikegami, The Great Migrator, 212, in which she writes: “By traveling from one place to another and having contact with local art communities, he revealed both the possibilities and the conflicts of globalizing art scene.” A globalizing art scene is one of

17

Here again, framing Rauschenberg merely as a pawn and player of neoliberal globalization fails to take into account the agency of the countries and their inhabitants where he promoted

ROCI. More interesting, perhaps is the dialogical space between intention and reception, which is the purview of this study. Take for example, the problem of language and language barriers.

Despite the attempt to laud and partner with other cultures, the goals of the ROCI project were often literally lost in translation. In Mexico, Paz’s excellent poem for the project’s catalogue was poorly translated. As a result, the catalogue had to be reprinted and was not available at the opening.70 In the ROCI GERMANY catalogue, the title of the work Pemon Sunday/ROCI

VENEZUELA (1985) appears as “Demon Sunday,” another serious translation mistake.71 The work features an indigenous boy who is a member of the Pemon (also spelled Pemón or Pemong) people. When mis-titled “Demon,” the work acquired totally different, even racist connotations.

At the time, these translation error might have seemed like a minor challenge or necessary nuisance, but hindsight shows that these problems illustrate the limitations of basing one’s art on fleeting impressions of a foreign place, with little historical background or expertise in the native tongue. These translation mistakes also point to the tensions of the overall diplomatic and messianic nature of the project. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation archives contain various contact lists, and indicate which persons had proficiency in English, suggesting that, despite

Spanish being the official language of the host countries, communication was mostly in English.

The chapters of this thesis follow chronologically and by country—Mexico, Chile, and

Venezuela. I view Rauschenberg’s visit to Mexico through the lens of the complicated relationship between the United States and its southern neighbor. Rauschenberg recalled ROCI

multinational mega galleries, international art fairs, biennales, and a growth of interest and marketability of non- Western artists. 70 Rachel Tibol, “Rauschenberg como cuerpo de paz,” O Processo (Mexico City), April 20, 1985. 71 ROCI GERMANY, essays by Heiner Müller and Robert Hughes (Berlin: Neue Berliner Gaelerie im Alten Museum, 1990), 51.

18

MEXICO as a success, and a large part of the Mexican media agreed. Some members of the intelligentsia, however, harshly criticized the show and the artist’s alliances with the Mexican cultural and corporate establishment. I argue that Rauschenberg was part reporter and part gringo tourist and that these two coexisting identities become evident in the ROCI MEXICO series, which mixed sights of abject poverty alongside advertising images promoting an invasive

American consumer economy. Chapter Two focuses on the Chilean political turmoil during

Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and how this context affected Rauschenberg’s reception in the nation. Fraught with public relations debacles, Chile was the thorniest of the ROCI stops. The situation was so heated that Chilean artists and other members of the leftist intellectual elite thought that it was plausible that Rauschenberg was working for the CIA. Even so, as I show,

Rauschenberg’s specific choice of copper for his metal painting supports, demonstrates his awareness of sensitive cultural and economic issues. Typically, such sensitivity, however well intentioned, could not be perceived through the literal veiling of his collage-based style and the politicized facades of the official museum institutions which sponsored his exhibitions. In

Chapter Three, I explain that Rauschenberg saw a chance to redeem himself for his missteps in

Chile by aligning with Venezuela’s democratic regime, at a moment when the country was confronting the economic crises of a failed statist economic model overly-reliant on domestic oil production. Many of the works created for this venue evince the artist’s concern for the environment and offer a rare example, within his Latin American oeuvre, of more overt messaging of his position on a specific issue. I also examine the artist’s trip to the Amazon region, and how his romanticized interest for indigenous cultures translated into problematic portrayals of the Amerindians in the ROCI VENEZUELA series.

This thesis does not consider ROCI CUBA. That country’s communist regime under Castro and the lack of a diplomatic relationship with the United States stood in stark contrast with the

19 governments and foreign policies of Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela.72 More relevant to the exclusion, the timing of ROCI CUBA was not contiguous with the events in Mexico, Chile and

Venezuela, but occurred afterward: Rauschenberg travelled there in August 1987 and the shows were mounted in Havana a year later, following upon China (November 15 to December 5,

1985), Tibet (December 2 to December 23, 1985), and Japan (November 22 to December 28,

1986). Thus, ROCI CUBA did not directly build on the experiences of the other Latin American countries, whose respective exhibitions were developed both concurrently and sequentially, and it arguably presented a unique set of challenges for the artist and his team.

As I aim to demonstrate, ROCI transcends the personal Rauschenberg brand, because it offers a useful model of the pitfalls of what we now call “cultural appropriation.” Significantly, the term and technique of “appropriation” also came to the fore by the end of the 1980s as a form of cynical artmaking among a younger generation of artists (such as the “Pictures Generation”) who used media images to critique capitalism and constructions of gender. Although their strategies ultimately derived from those of Rauschenberg, Warhol, and other Pop artists, the tone and tenor were dramatically different. While Rauschenberg claimed to use his art as a vehicle for mutual understanding in the international arena, he failed to see how he reinforced stereotypes of the exploitative American by recasting the culture of the “other” into his own artistic image. I reclaim ROCI to better understand the international relations, politics, and culture in three Latin

American countries at the time, and in doing so, reroute and rewrite scholarship on ROCI from a strictly North American perspective, to consider, largely for the first time, how writers and critics in Latin and South American perceived the ROCI enterprise, and how the exoticized other returned a critical gaze.

72 For more on ROCI CUBA see Brett E. Betty, “Rauschenberg, ROCI and Cuba’s Young Lions” (PhD Diss., University of New Mexico, 2016).

20

Chapter 1

ROCI MEXICO: Mexico Gringo

August 15, 1984 was not the first time that the artist Robert Rauschenberg had landed at

Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez in Mexico City. He had been to the country at least once before, yet this ten-day trip (August 15 to August 25, 1984) was different.73 Rauschenberg was in

Mexico for research and inspiration—specifically, to collect source images, materials, and experiences that would later become part of his ROCI MEXICO exhibition. As arguably one of the most celebrated and world-renowned artists of the time, Rauschenberg was not just another

American tourist. The Mexican intelligentsia, however, often referred to his project as touristic and to Rauschenberg as a gringo: a derogatory stereotype of a white tourist infatuated by the novelty of the foreign and of otherness.74

ROCI MEXICO was Rauschenberg’s first project exhibition. When asked why he decided to start “in the neighborhood,” a term Rauschenberg used to refer to countries bordering the

United States, the artist replied: “because that was the first tryout of ROCI and I thought, humorously but practically, that if we overlooked anything, we’d be very close to home and we could come back and make corrections.”75 He also noted that it “was an ideal place to start because at that moment [the US’s] political relationship with Mexico had never been weaker,”76 thereby suggesting his self-proclaimed role as artist-ambassador and peacemaker.

73 Robert Rauschenberg, “A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers (July 13, 1985),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York; “Handwritten itinerary of ROCI MEXICO (1984),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 74 “Hubo quien le quiso agredir llamando a su projecto un intent de turismo norteamericano.” Merry Mac Masters, El Nacional, April 20, 1985. Olivier Debroise, “México Segun Rauschenberg,” La Jornada (Mexico City), April 24, 1985. A gringo is defined as “(in Spanish-speaking countries and contexts, chiefly in the Americas) a person, especially an American, who is not Hispanic or Latino.” “Definition of Gringo in English by Oxford Dictionaries,” Oxford Dictionaries, accessed December 13, 2018, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gringo. 75 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 164. 76 Rauschenberg and Saff, 164.

21

This chapter presents an account of ROCI MEXICO that takes both favorable and unfavorable local media responses and public reception into consideration. I present

Rauschenberg’s undertaking against the backdrop of the Mexican debt crisis and the country’s adoption of sweeping neoliberal policies. To better understand this controversial project, it is crucial to retrace the artist’s steps and geo-political footwork during his fact-finding trip to

Mexico. By mapping Rauschenberg’s Mexican itinerary, I reveal the complications inherent in his role as an artist-tourist, artist-ambassador, and artist-journalist.

A handwritten tourist itinerary in the archives of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation underscores the brevity of Rauschenberg’s stay and his mercurial interests.77 In addition to

Mexico City, where he toured for a total of six days, Rauschenberg visited Toluca and Oaxaca, where he bought the fabrics he would later use in his works. The journey was also recorded (with a video camera) by Van Brunt.78 Van Brunt followed the artist during his “photo-walks” through the busy streets, churches, and markets of Mexico.79 The video travelogue was included in the show and, according to Saff, “was a major element of each exhibition.”80 Saff describe it as a

“video verité.”81 The travelogue overlapped images of everyday life in Mexico with close-ups of

Rauschenberg’s Mexico works. It also showed the artist frantically photographing his surroundings. Like any other tourist, Rauschenberg visited the famous and still-standing Ópera restaurant as well as the Museo de Antropología. Realizing the dangers and limitations of such an approach, Argentinian-Mexican leftist art critic Raquel Tibol asked at the time: “Isn’t the ROCI

77 “Handwritten itinerary of ROCI MEXICO (1984),” RRFAA 10. 78 The travelogue also included footage by Thomas Buhler and local television channels. 79 Terry Van Brunt, R.O.C.I. Travelogue, 1986, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 1986, color video with sound, 61:57, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/86v021. 80 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 164. 81 Rauschenberg and Saff, 164.

22 project also representative of the United States tourist’s desire, with all the dangers of superficiality and mythification that it can bring?”82

Rauschenberg followed a long tradition of foreign photographers who considered Mexico to be “an absolutely photogenic country,” as John Mraz has written.83 It was in the “living” organism of the city streets that Rauschenberg took most of the images for the Mexico series. His

“photo-walks,” as recorded in the video travelogue, reveal Rauschenberg to be what Susan

Sontag termed a contemporary flâneur. As she writes:

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world “picturesque.” 84

In Mexico, the artist who traditionally leaned toward photographing inanimate things and animals began to pay more attention to people, though the travelogue footage shows that he rarely interacted with the subjects.85 In his own words, “the camera functioned as a social shield.”86 The flâneur, as Griselda Pollock adds, is exclusively male and “symbolizes the privilege or freedom to move about the public arenas of the city observing but never interacting.”87

To fully understand Rauschenberg’s project and its reception, one should consider the complex political context in Mexico in the 1980s. Though the country has not experienced

82 “Ahora bien… ¿el proyecto R.O.C.I., no es representativo también del deseo turístico del estadunidense, com todos los peligros de superficialidade y mitificación que puede acarrear?” Raquel Tibol, as quoted in Angélica Abelleira, “Rauschenberg en el Museo Tamayo: Todos los artistas están em contra de la censura y la represión,” La Jornada, April 20, 1985. 83 John Mraz, Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 5. 84 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 55. 85 The video was included in the exhibition. Rauschenberg stressed its importance by noting: “if they can see real people in real places, no matter how outrageously they may be behaving, that’s the truth. Then I think they reflected on the works and were able to see the same things here (works). And it had to be true because now that they had seen it in video or photographs it was part of their past.” Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 164. 86 Alain Sayag, Rauschenberg Photographs (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), np. 87 Griselda Pollock, Vision & Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 67.

23 military dictatorships like those seen in Chile and the rest of the Southern Cone, Mexico essentially was governed through a single party system from the 1920s until the 2000s.88 Latin

Americanist historian Renata Keller remarked that during the Cold War, “Mexico may have appeared to be an island of stability in the turbulent sea of Latin American politics … but a closer look reveals that the peaceful haven was actually an active battleground where multiple groups debated, spied, schemed, and struggled for influence.”89 From the years after the 1968

Tlatelolco student massacre until the early 1980s, the country endured the so-called “Dirty

Wars.”90 This period was marked by brutal conflicts between the government and leftist guerrilla fighters throughout the country, and, as in other parts of Latin America, United States involvement was undeniable.91

Just as the Dirty Wars drew to a close, a long-lasting economic crisis struck. Agricultural products and oil were the main pillars of the country’s economy; with a steep decline in oil prices, inflation rose alongside Mexico’s debt and unemployment. In 1982, Mexico’s Minister of

Finance informed the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that his country was unable

88 Asa Christina Laurell, “Three Decades of Neoliberalims in Mexico: The Destruction of Society,” International Journal of Health Services, vol. 45, no. 2 (2015): 247. 89 Renata Keller, Mexico's Cold War: Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations, 2015), 5. 90 On October 2, 1968, just a few days before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, government security forces fired at a group of students who had taken to the streets to demand an end to police repression and the release of political prisoners. The exact number of fatalities is unknown, but is believed to be between twenty-six—per government account—and a hundred and ninety—according to student activist groups. After the massacre, authorities said that leftist radicals had first shot down two soldiers, which prompted them to return fire. But over sixty years later, the Mexican government finally referred to the incident as a state crime. “The use of the term ‘war’ implies a battle between two relatively equal powers, a mischaracterization of the government’s inordinate use of force against small-scale violent resistance and nonviolent dissent alike. Furthermore, the term evokes the patriotic national security rhetoric employed by the state.” Mya Dosh, “Creating 1968: Art, Architecture, and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement” (PhD diss., Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2018), 87. For more on the Mexican Dirty Wars, see Adela Cedillo and Fernando Calderón, Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964–1982 (New York: Routledge, 2000). 91 “Fidelismo was significant amongst Mexicans, as the Cuban revolution and anti U.S. imperialist feeling resonated with the Mexican population.” Keller, Mexico's Cold War, 5. Since WWII, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had maintained an office in Mexico City, where it helped organize Mexico’s Department of Federal Security and provided training and weapons. “For years, the U.S. government had been training military officers, police, and other security officials from counties across Latin America, including Mexico. Like U.S.-Mexican intelligence cooperation, these training programs were open secrets(…).” Keller, 223.

24 to service its external debt. This debt crisis forced Mexico to adopt neoliberal policies that further impoverished the nation.92 Mexican economist Pablo Ruiz Nápoles explains:

The Mexican economic performance from 1982 to 1993 proved that its strategy for growth based on exports, by means of opening the economy, depreciating the currency, and reducing the role of the state to a minimum, was badly failing in terms of economic growth, jobs creation as to prevent migration to the US, and trade balance.93

The only beneficiaries in a period referred to in Latin America as the “lost decade” were large private corporations. The economic crisis pushed Mexican migrants to cross the border, further damaging the US-Mexico relationship.94 Such troubled circumstances pigeon-holed the nation, in

Rauschenberg’s terms, as a “sensitive area.”95

A child playing inside a cardboard box in a dirty street (fig. 2), garbage on the ground depicted from above (fig. 3), and a stray dog eating garbage (fig. 4) are examples of the scenes and sites that Rauschenberg photographed during his Mexico ROCI trip.96 Rauschenberg’s vicarious eye for “poverty porn” is most obvious in his photographs, which were not only used as silkscreens for the ROCI series but were also exhibited as artworks in their own right at all

ROCI stops.97 Writers from both Mexico and the US noticed Rauschenberg’s interest in

92 In December 1982, the IMF approved a loan of USD 3.8 billion to the Mexican government. As a condition, the government had to implement a series of free market reforms. Bergljot Barkbu, Barry Eichengreen, and Ashoka Mody, “International Financial Crises and the Multilateral Response: What the Historical Record Shows,” National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper no. 17351 (2011). 93 Pablo Ruiz Nápoles, “Neoliberal Reforms and NAFTA in Mexico,” ECONOMÍAUNAM vol. 14, no 41 (May– August 2017): 75. 94 Burton Kirkwood, History of Mexico (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., 2000), 193–213. By 1982, the inflation had skyrocket to 100 percent. The Mexican-born population in the US nearly doubled between 1970 and 1980, and nearly doubled again by 1990. By that time, Mexicans were the largest Hispanic group in the US, representing about 61 percent of the 22.3 million Hispanics. “We, the American…Hispanics,” a report by the Ethnic and Hispanic Statistics branch of the Census Bureau, supervised by Jorge del Pinal (1993). See also “Migration Policy Institute,” accessed February 15, 2021, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigration-trends#source 95 Kotz, Rauschenberg, 20. 96 Unfortunately, according to information provided by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, there are no final checklists for Rauschenberg’s photography. Thus, I cannot confirm which photographs were exhibited in Mexico. The examples given might not have been included in the show. 97 “Poverty porn” is a term used to refer to the exploitation of the poor's condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy.

25 depicting the financial hardships faced by the Latin American country. At the time, Mexican-

Israeli art critic Olivier Debroise complained that the artist focused too heavily on can collectors and other “images of our daily misery.”98 In a 1990 book, US author Mary Lynn Kotz observed that “an economy in decline found its way to his canvas.”99 The artist, however, believed poverty to be a crucial aspect of his work; the inability of Mexico’s citizens to afford shoes stood out to him as an affecting example of the country’s misery.100 To highlight access to footwear as a symbol of social disparity, Rauschenberg photographed a shoe shiner waiting for a customer (fig.

5), and incorporated old and abandoned shoes into his ROCI MEXICO works, such as those in

Wall Pond/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 6) and those exhibited in a photograph of a footwear store’s front window (fig. 7).

The depiction of poverty, especially in a sensationalized manner, is a double-edged sword. According to Sontag, by choosing to photograph misery, one chooses to maintain the status quo:

Although the camera is an observation station, the act of photographing is more than passive observing. Like sexual voyeurism, it is a way of at least tacitly, often explicitly, encouraging whatever is going on to keep on happening. To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a “good” picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing, including, when that is the interest, another person’s pain or misfortune.101

Yet, in highlighting the exploitative aspect of these images, Sontag seems to omit their impact and transformative power, such as that of Jacob Riis' turn-of-the-century muckraking photojournalism and that in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photography project (1935–

1944). Indeed, the FSA photographs and, more specifically, Robert Frank and Walker Evan’s

98 Debroise, “México Segun Rauschenberg,” April 24, 1985. 99 Kotz, Rauschenberg, 26. 100 “I’ve always addressed my work to also include poverty.” Rauschenberg, “A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers,” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 101 Sontag, On Photography, 12.

26 work, were extremely influential for Rauschenberg. Mark Johnstone compared Rauschenberg’s photography to the works of Frank and Evans noting their shared “attention to surfaces, evidence of many ethnic ghettos, signs of widely differing lifestyles.”102 Yve-Alain Bois goes as far as to say that Rauschenberg’s photography is “almost pastiche of Walker Evans.”103

Not quite social documentary photographer, not quite “art” photographer, Rauschenberg framed, enhanced, and manipulated his straight photography in ways that courted ambiguity. The subtle inferences or the blatant critique of a given reportage image were inevitably layered, even lost, amidst incongruous juxtapositions of discordantly sunny imagery or bright silkscreen colors. That Rauschenberg refused any textual commentary to accompany his works accentuated the seeming lack of commitment in the highly politicized contexts in which he was promoting

ROCI. Discretion may be the better part of valor, but not in the militant cultural 1980s arenas of

Latin America. Hence, his ROCI works were perceived as superficial, even ignorant or complicit in the hardships faced by the people of Mexico. This perception was so much the case that, even more than a decade later, Mexican political cartoonist Rafael Barajas (El Fisgón) asked the artist why he chose a photograph of a ramshackle truck to represent Mexico. Barajas was referring either to the old school bus being operated as a commuter bus in Mexican Canary/ROCI

MEXICO (1985; fig. 8) or to a government truck that appears in Casino/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 9). The artist simply replied: “because it was there.”104

Poverty is also highlighted throughout Rauschenberg’s ROCI MEXICO pieces by references to the lottery. The dream of a life filled with luxuries is starkly contrasted with the misery of the streets. In Mexican Canary most of the canvas is filled with images of posters that

102 Mark Johnstone in Kotz, Rauschenberg, 232. 103 Yve-Alain Bois, “Rauschenberg’s Optimism,” in Robert Rauschenberg: Fotografie 1949-1985 (Milan: Galleria Lawrence Rubin, 1999), 7–8. 104 Rafael Barajas and Robert Rauschenberg, “Entrevista com Robert Rauschenberg,” La Jornada Semanal, March 17, 1996.

27 illustrate the winning lottery numbers (because they are an effective way to communicate the lottery results, such posters are omnipresent in the streets of Mexico City). Rauschenberg’s curiosity led him to attend the festive spectacle of the lottery drawing night, during which he extensively photographed the scenes around him. Later, in Chile, Rauschenberg again incorporated lottery numbers into his work, hinting at the prevalence and importance of the lottery in both countries.

Casino functions as a grand-scale scrapbook of the artist’s experiences in Mexico and ties together the overarching themes found in the other eleven ROCI MEXICO works.105 The piece is constructed on a fabric background comprising a patchwork of various fabrics, colors, and patterns that are sewed together into a huge double-sided banner (302.75 x 129 inches) described as a “fabric collage.”106 Rauschenberg silkscreened photographs taken during his “inspirational” trip onto the fabric; their subjects range from Pre-Hispanic markers to symbols of Christianity, clichés of mexicanidad, and representations of poverty that are inevitably aestheticized. A saint printed in magenta shares the same register as a Pre-Hispanic calavera, an excess of photographs of skulls acts as a memento mori, and peanuts roasted by hand oppose the highly-industrialized

Coca-Cola sign printed in red. A poster advertising Lucha Libre, a stone carving of a jaguar, and an eagle standing on top of a cactus all refer to Mexico. On the other side of the unstretched fabric, a brighter color palette and an ad featuring a champagne bottle drips with green paint that mimics an explosive uncorking. At first, these images seem to convey a festive spirit. The

105 According to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the artist produced twelve ROCI MEXICO works (eleven were exhibited in Mexico and one was shown at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.). The artist also produced hundreds of photographs. While there is no complete checklist of the photographs exhibited in Mexico, according to the Rauschenberg Foundation’s contact sheets, the artist printed around seventy images, either to be used as silkscreens or as stand-alone art photos. 106 Lawrence Voytek interviewed by Donald Saff, “The Reminiscences of Lawrence Voytek,” April 29, 30 and May 1, 2015, Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, conducted in collaboration with INCITE/Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, p. 52.

28 inclusion of a photograph of a newspaper headline that reads “at this pace, there will not be enough to buy sandals,” however, forbids solely optimistic interpretations.107

Most, if not all, of the photographs in Casino reappear in other works of the same series.

The Coca-Cola sign reappears in Daydream/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 10), the image of the poster advertising Lucha Libre is silkscreened on a sack of flour in Wall Pond (see fig. 6) and the champagne bottle appears in a lavender color in Street Contract/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 11).

Not so different from the indigenous lienzo of the early colonial period—a form of manuscript that combined genealogical, cartographic, and historical information, often as pictographs on a large woven cloth—Casino portrays and defines the region. Rauschenberg’s sewing assistant,

Sheryl Long, compared the work to a large quilt.108 Associations between the Mexican lienzo and the US quilts allowed Rauschenberg to attempt to bridge cultures and promote common cultural ground through shared traditions.

Among Mexicans, ROCI MEXICO was received with equal parts excitement and criticism. Television commercials advertised the show and photos of the vernissage appeared in many newspapers in the nation’s capital.109 At the opening, American artist and musician Dickie

Landry played Jazz on his saxophone, which reverberated throughout the museum. Despite all the fanfare, however, reviews were harsh. “The knowledgeable-elite is the one that in their great majority will criticize the show,” wrote journalist Claudia Villareal Aguilera in the daily paper El

Sol de Mexico.110 Anti-US sentiment was a plausible reason for some of the art insiders’

107 The newspaper headline is from Vicente Moreno Aparicio, “AL Paso que Vamos YA NI PARA HUARACHES,” 2º Ovaciones, August 17, 1984. 108 Sheryl Long interviewed by Cameron Vanderscoff, “The Reminiscences of Sheryl Long,” July 22, 2015, Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, conducted in collaboration with INCITE/Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, p. 61. 109 Mexican journalist Sealtiel Alatriste mentions the obnoxious TV ads in “Rauschenberg o la crónica de um engano,” La Jornada, July 30, 1985. For photos of the opening, see Paul Lenti, “The Dreamt World of Rauschenberg Begins Its Tour in Mexico,” The News (Mexico City), April 20, 1985; Alfonso de Neuvillate, “ARTE: Robert Rauschenberg y sus Propuestas Estéticas,” Novedades, April 19, 1985. 110 Claudia Villareal Aguilera, “El Soñado Mundo de Rauschenberg en el Museo Tamayo,” Sol de Mexico, April 19, 1985.

29 cynicism toward the ideas of cooperation, good will, and humanitarianism through art that

Rauschenberg proposed. The Cold War era was slowly coming to an end; in 1980, Mexico refused to join the US in the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games.111 While President Ronald

Reagan took office with the explicit objective of restoring US leadership in Latin America,

Mexico boldly legitimized El Salvadoran rebels.112 Indeed, during a press conference before the opening of his exhibition in Mexico, Rauschenberg was asked to give his opinion on North

American artists that were organizing a movement against the US intervention in Central

America.113 Rauschenberg replied that he did not know anything about it and was criticized for his ignorance.114 A poll conducted by The New York Times showed that in 1986—just a year after ROCI MEXICO—67 percent of the Mexican population believed US interests ran the nation’s economy.115 In the same year, another poll, this time conducted by the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior, showed that 59 percent of Mexicans considered the United States to be an enemy nation, whereas 60 percent classified it as an “unpleasant” neighbor.116 Mexico and the

United States have a troubled history that goes at least as far back as the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, when Mexico ceded 500,000 square miles of its territory extending from the Rio

Grande to the Pacific Ocean, and the Spanish-American War of 1898. The two countries have

111 The boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow was a protest against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 112 Mónica Rócio Salazar, “Death and the Invisible Hand: Contemporary Mexican Art, 1988–Present,” (PhD., diss., The University of Texas at Dallas, 2016), 4. 113 Artist Call was "a movement among artists who seek to protest the United States military role in Central and Latin America. The protest itself, hatched by a group of activist artists and critics, including Coosje van Bruggen (whose husband, Claes Oldenburg, created the official poster), Lucy Lippard, Douglas Ashford, Daniel Flores Ascensio, Jon Hendricks, Irving Petlin, and Kate Linker, has seeded a number of events, performances and exhibitions.” Grace Glueck, “Art: ‘Interventions’ on U.S. Latin role,” The New York Times, February 3, 1984. 114 Angélica Abelleyra, “Todos los artistas están em contra de la censura y de la represión,” La Jornada, April 20, 1985. 115 Stephen D. Morris, Gringolandia: Mexican Identity and Perceptions of the United States (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 20. 116 Morris, 20.

30 lived in an abusive marriage ever since, as their damaging trade and labor interdependency does not allow for a complete divorce.

ROCI MEXICO’s exhibition was held at Museo Rufino Tamayo under the title El soñado mundo de Rauschenberg (The Dreamed World of Rauschenberg; April–June 1985). The museum was built in 1981 to host artist Rufino Tamayo’s international art collection, which focused mainly on works produced after WWII by artists residing in Paris and New York. The Tamayo collection also included some works by Spanish and Latin American artists. The Oaxacan artist and his wife Olga acquired most of their collection by trading works for Tamayo’s own paintings, which were selling extremely well outside of Mexico.117 In fact, Rauschenberg seemed to have paid an homage to Tamayo by inserting an image of a watermelon in the upper right corner of Street Contract (see fig. 11) that resembled the Oaxacan painter’s work.118

The museum, which at the time was controlled by the Televisa Corporation, is described in the ROCI MEXICO catalogue as a private institution dedicated to promoting international contemporary art.119 Televisa was, and still is, the largest media company in Mexico, and it is privately owned by the Azcárraga family.120 North American art historian James Oles noted that

Emilio Azcárraga, the institution’s board director and Televisa CEO, “may have recognized that

Televisa’s support for an international art museum would ameliorate possible critiques of his

“Americanizing” media empire.”121 By exhibiting at the institution, Rauschenberg inevitably became associated with Televisa’s cultural agenda in the eyes of the leftist media and

117 Rufino Tamayo in James Oles, “An Uneasy Alliance: The Early Years of Museo Tamayo,” in Art Museums of Latin America, eds. Michele Greet and Gina McDaniel Tarver (New York: Routledge, 2018), 152. 118 When visiting the museum in 1984, Rauschenberg saw Tamayo’s watermelon paintings. Van Brunt, ROCI Travelog 1986, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/86v021. The homage was evident to the Mexican viewer, as mentioned by MacMaster, “Se Inauguró en el Tamayo ‘El Soñado Mundo de Rauschenberg,’” April 19, 1985. 119 ROCI MEXICO, poem by Octavio Paz and essay by Robert Hughes (Mexico City: Museo Rufino Tamayo, 1985), 3. 120 See Michael Brenson, “Art People,” The New York Times, November 25, 1983; Dennis Volman, “US Director of Mexican Modern Art Museums Sparks Controversy,” Christian Science Monitor (Boston), October 21, 1985. 121 Oles, “An Uneasy Alliance,” 153.

31 intellectuals.122 As argued by writer and diplomat Sealtiel Alatriste, “on one hand the exhibition is one of the most important cultural events this year, while on the other hand it is a clear example of Televisa’s cultural politics; in other words, the exhibition has two faces: of itself … and of propaganda.”123 Later in the same article, Alatriste refers to the ROCI exhibition as a form of advertising for the corporation. To further complicate ROCI’s reception, Mónica Salazar explains that “although the Museo Rufino Tamayo … was not a state museum at that time, it was nevertheless regarded as official, for it was funded and operated by Televisa, a company known for being loyal to the regime that in return protected its monopoly over Mexico’s private broadcasting.”124

Rauschenberg and his project arrived just at the moment of this brewing controversy over the “Americanization” of Mexico’s leading cultural institutions in the nation’s capital, and the choice of venue was symbolically overloaded.125 Opposing the nationalist agendas of institutions such as the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Tamayo Museum was founded under the developing neoliberal, open-borders policies, as evidenced by its alliance with Televisa and its choice of an

North American curator, Robert Littman, as Director.126 According to Tamayo, the institution’s purpose since its conception was to “raise the smothering nationalistic siege that has up to now

122 “Even before it opened, the Museo Tamayo faced intense attacks by critics nostalgic for postrevolutionary glories and suspicious of the private sector: the new museum represented Tamayo’s ‘self-glorification’ (Juan O’Gorman), favored ‘present-day mediocrity’ in the arts (Fernando Benítez), was elitist and market-oriented (Jorge Hernández Campos), and revealed the artist-collector’s ‘excess of vanity’ (Antonio Marimón).” Oles, 152. 123 Alatriste, “Rauschenberg o la crónica de um engano,” July 30, 1985. 124 Salazar, “Death and the Invisible Hand,” 6. 125 Funded by the private sector, the Museo Tamayo was unlike the “house museums” previously established by other Mexican artists, including those by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Indeed, not only did it deemphasize Mexican art in general, but it also only fleetingly focused on Tamayo’s own artistic trajectory—the museum collection includes only eleven of his paintings from 1964 to 1981. Rather, as Debroise has noted, the museum reflected Tamayo’s “need to create in Mexico an ‘international context that would facilitate the reading of his own work, thus allowing him to be differentiated from his generation and the Mexican school.’” Oles, “An Uneasy Alliance,” 145–46. 126 Diego Rodríguez Arce and Natalia De La Rosa, “"OTRXS MUNDXS" in Face of Institutional Reaffirmation: Retrospective Views of an International Art Museum,” Terremoto, February 6, 2021, accessed February 21, 2021, https://terremoto.mx/en/online/otrxs-mundxs-frente-a-la-reafirmacion-institucional-miradas-retrospectivas-a-un- museo-de-arte-internacional/.

32 prevented [Mexico] from entering a true and open dialogue with the rest of the countries on the planet.”127 Nevertheless, the clarity of the institution’s mission was not enough to shield it from criticism. US journalist Denis Volman noted that “a substantial number of this city’s [Mexico

City] cultural elite” censured Littman for being from the United States and for running the museum with a “New York eye.”128 During his tenure, Littman maintained his residence in New

York City “to carry out his mandate from the Tamayo Museum to do international exhibitions.”129

A few months after the ROCI show, however, a dispute erupted between Tamayo and

Televisa. The Oaxacan artist criticized the company’s management of the institution, stating: “if they like museums so much, let them open their own.”130 In fact, this was exactly what the company did; together with Littman, Televisa opened the Centro Cultural de Arte

Contemporáneo in the year following the ROCI Mexico exhibition. (1986). While it is impossible to determine to which extent ROCI affected the break between Tamayo, Littman, and Televisa, it is known that works from the Tamayo collection had to be taken off display so that the institution could host ROCI: that curatorial decision violated the museum’s deed with the

Oaxacan artist.131 Later, Rauschenberg’s Forecaster/ROCI MEXICO (1985) became a part of the

Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo’s permanent collection.132

127 Rufino Tamayo in Oles, “An Uneasy Alliance,” 150. 128 Volman, “US Director of Mexican Modern Art Museums Sparks Controversy,” October 21, 1985. After strong criticism of Televisa’s control from people like Rufino Tamayo himself, the media corporation abandoned the Museum Rufino Tamayo and, together with part of the museum’s staff (Littman among them), created the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City. In 1988, Rauschenberg gifted Forecaster to the newly-created institution. Larry Rohter, “Born of Strife And Controversy, A Lively New Museum Finds Itself A Niche,” The New York Times, July 19, 1987. 129 Michael Breson, “Art People,” The New York Times, November 25, 1983. 130 Rother, “MEXICO CITY; Born of Strife And Controversy,” 33. 131 Tibol, “Rauschenberg como cuerpo de paz,” April 20, 1985. 132 “Letter between Thomas Buehler and the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo (April 15, 1988),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

33

Rauschenberg often used symbols of US culture and commerce in his works, but these motifs acquired different meanings when employed in the ROCI MEXICO series.

Advertisements for Coca-Cola, a curtain with a Mickey Mouse pattern, and T-shirts displaying

Michael Jackson’s face were among his photographs of Mexico. Intentionally or not, they directly spoke to US economic and cultural forays and exploitation in the Latin American region.

The choice of images—that is, the details that caught Rauschenberg’s roaming eye in the streets of Mexico—certainly implies that he saw this intrusion of this mass culture as an interference with or flattening of the tourist experience. Such visual culture is not “exotic,” but it gives new meaning to the modernist aesthetics of displacement. His works made manifest the irresistibility of soda, Disney, and pop music to wide swaths of the world’s population, including to many impoverished communities, and highlighted a main paradox of globalism. The presence of these symbols also equates US culture with commercialism. Yet the happenstance and combinatory approach that typified Rauschenberg’s “random order” images belied any critique, however subtle or overt.

Rauschenberg captured the effects of a globalized neoliberal economy in Mexico in works such as Park/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 12) and Daydream (see fig. 10). In the first, the artist arranged red poinsettia doilies on the canvas in a manner that resembled a skull shape. The skull is an obvious reference to Mexican religious traditions, specifically Dia de los Muertos. To the right of the calavera, Rauschenberg silkscreened an image of a plaza photographer’s equipment and display. The plaza photographer, with his old equipment, evoked a sense of nostalgia and a longing for simpler times. Horizontally dividing the lower third of the canvas is a silkscreened photograph of a curtain with a Mickey Mouse pattern; barely visible behind the curtain are feet wearing run-down flip-flops. The tension between a strong symbol of mexicanidad made of artisanal materials—the calavera—and an industry-dependent icon of

34

North American cultural imperialism—Disney cartoons—highlighted the unevenness of global trade. The worn-out sandals implied the perils of a newly-adopted neoliberal economy that expanded inequality.133 A similar juxtaposition of symbols of Mexico and of the reach of US corporations, appeared in Daydream. In the assemblage, sacks of Mexican-produced flour, with visible labels stating their origin, share a canvas with an image of a Coca-Cola sign. The image seems to indicate a comparison between the humility and sustenance of the Mexican product and the global reach of the non-nutritious US beverage.

On other levels, however, ROCI MEXICO offered only the touristic and clichéd. While

Rauschenberg was not a tourist per se—according to scholar John Urry, tourism is leisure, therefore by nature it cannot be part of paid or unpaid work—his gaze was at times “touristic.”134

Olivier Debroise, for one, critiqued the works for their appropriation of overused and stereotypical symbols of the country.135 “There is not the slightest consideration by

Rauschenberg on the elements that ‘signify’ Mexico,” he wrote. “His gaze remains on the surface of things. Rauschenberg, obviously, is like any other gringo tourist.”136 A good case in point is the multimedia collage on canvas Mexican Canary (see fig. 8) the color scheme of which pays unsubtle homage to the Mexican flag with prominent splashes of red, white, and green centered on top of lottery posters. Rauschenberg surrounded the collage with a metal frame consisting of flattened cans of chiles jalapeños with visible labels; this choice underscored how a

133 “The United State, in contrast, has traditionally imported from Mexico various raw materials and certain nonessential agricultural items—goods that are either dispensable, easily substitutable, or purchasable from other countries. Even if trading with Mexico has been profitable for the United States, it is not as imperative for the U.S. economy as trade with the United States is for the Mexican economy.” Riordan Roett, Mexico and the United States: Managing the Relationship (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 9. 134 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage Publications, 1991), 2–3. Urry defines “the tourist gaze as constructed through signs…When tourists see two people kissing in Paris what they capture in the gaze is ‘timeless romantic Paris.’” Jonathan Culler adds: “All over the world the unsung armies of semioticians, the tourists, are fanning out in search of the signs of Frenchness, Typical Italian Behaviour, exemplary Oriental scenes, typical American thruways, traditional English pubs.” Jonathan Culler, “Semiotics of Tourism,” American Journal of Semiotics, no. 1 (1981); 127. 135 Debroise, “México Segun Rauschenberg,” April 24, 1985. 136 Debroise, “México Segun Rauschenberg,” April 24, 1985.

35 nation’s image in the age of globalism is molded by export foods and packaging. Among the images depicted are the Yagul archeological site in Oaxaca, a cactus, and a sculpture of the

Mexican coat of arms (an eagle on top of a cactus eating a rattlesnake), which is also featured in

Casino (see fig. 9). The symbol derives from the foundational myth of Mexico City

(Tenochtitlan).137 According to Mexican mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli told the Mexicas, who until that point were nomadic, that they were to settle where there was a sighting of an eagle with a snake in its talon.

Rauschenberg visited the Museo de Antropología in Mexico City, Zapotec sites such as

Mitla, and the already-mentioned Yagul ruins in Oaxaca. This venerated cultural patrimony is prominently translated into the iconography of the ROCI MEXICO works. A silkscreened photograph of a Mexican stone jaguar sculpture from the Museo Nacional de Antropología appears in two of the ROCI MEXICO works: Casino and Market Altar/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 13).138 The basalt carving (1325-1521 CE) from Mexico City shows a jaguar, which represented laying down with his mouth open. This was not the only carving from the Museo de

Antropología that Rauschenberg highlighted by extraction; the artist’s interest in these indigenous sculptures moved him to visit the institution at least twice.139 A figure known as

Ahuítzotl, el espinoso del agua (1325-1521 CE) appears in Awn/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 14), and the Coyote Emplumado (1325-1521 CE) is depicted in Street Contract (see fig. 11).

Ahuítzotl, a stone carving from Mexico City, depicts a dog sitting in the center of a water current.

Ahuítzotl was considered an envoy of Tláloc, the god of the rain, and has a human hand at the end of its tail. The Coyote Emplumado is a basalt carving of a sitting feathered coyote, which the

137 The image appears in the 1542 Codex Mendonza, and it depicts the founding of Tenochtitlan. 138 The Jaguar probably relates to the cult of the deity Tezcatlipoca. Elizabeth Baquedano, Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity (University Press of Colorado, 2014), 3. 139 “Handwritten itinerary of R.O.C.I. Mexico (1984),” RRFAA 10.

36 museum label describes as phallic and related to sexuality and masculinity.140 The presence of these carvings hint at the artist’s romantic desire to value indigenous Mexican culture. Indeed, the museum is a source of pride for Mexicans and its collection has inspired many Mexican artists over the years, but it also represents a mexicanidad de exportación and is always the first attraction listed in any Mexico City travel guide.141

This attention to iconic images was central to Rauschenberg’s photography and collage aesthetic wherever he travelled in the world, as illustrated his shots of the Colossus of

Constantine in the Capitoline Museum in Rome as far back as 1952. For Rauschenberg, lowbrow and highbrow merged in these images of famous paintings that were widely reproduced, embodied national pride, and were immediately identifiable as a Velasquez, a Titian, a Millet, etc. This strategy, however, became problematic in a project that aimed “to introduce the world to itself.” Such iconic images were at times interpreted as stereotypical, shallow, or even touristic.

Another revered image from a Mesoamerican belief system, the serpent deity, makes several appearances in the ROCI MEXICO series. In Altar Peace/ROCI MEXICO (1985; fig. 15) it takes the form of a double-headed aluminum snake that hangs above a canvas, constituting the only assemblage with a three-dimensional element among the ROCI MEXICO series.

Rauschenberg’s snake resembles the infinity symbol. Instead of appearing organic or like a real- life snake, its geometric surfaces are made of flat pieces of differently-colored tin. The object was fabricated by Voytek, who noted that the artist asked for a “square” snake.142 The reptile is

140 Object label for Coyote Emplumado, Sala Mexica, Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City. Seen on April 13, 2019. 141 Four of the carvings photographed by Rauschenberg appeared in the first edition of Forma (1926), thus underscoring the significance of such pieces. The magazine was a key publication of Mexican modernism and it highlighted the artist’s interest in the country’s pre-conquest past. “La Escultura Indigena Mexicana, Collecion del Museo Nacional,” Forma, no.1 (October 1926): np. 142 Voytek interviewed by Saff, “The Reminiscences of Lawrence Voytek,” 50.

37 associated with several deities, including Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent), Xiuhcoatl (Fire

Serpent), Mixcoatl (Cloud Serpent), and Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt).

In his acclaimed book The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, Paz argued that “any contact with the Mexican people, however brief, reveals that the ancient beliefs and customs are still in existence beneath Western forms.”143 This attitude reflects the ideologies and views on Mexican identity that are embedded in Paz’s writings. Paz’s understanding of the role of influence is revealing: by this postmodernist point in time “influence” was often recast as appropriation, with negative connotations of unfair intellectual use in an unequal power relationship. For Paz, however, the issue of cultural influence – that is, of the influence of the culture of the subaltern and subjugated on colonizing, dominant power - was not a one-way street, but multi-layered and often reciprocal. It could serve to valorize and reinvigorate the creativity and subjecthood of the colonized. According to the Nobel Laureate, who is himself of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry: “without Western modernism, whose artists appropriated the style and visions of non-Western cultures, the Mexicans … could never have understood the Mexican indigenous tradition.”144

Arguably the most controversial piece in the Mexican venue was Night Post/ROCI

MEXICO (1985; fig. 16). Made with flattened boxes used to transport tequila and rum, as evident by marking and labels on the outside, to which the artist added acrylic painted squares and rectangles, Night Post stands out for being the only cardboard work in the entire ROCI series. It is not by chance that cardboard boxes, with various labels of origin and destination, like Alberto

Burri’s Sacchi in an earlier era, had been used by Rauschenberg since the 1970s (Cardboard,

1971–1972; Early Egyptian, 1973–1974; Cardbird series, 1971), a period understood as the

143 Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico (New York: Grove Press, 1977), 89. 144 Octavio Paz cited in Horacio Legrás, Culture and Revolution: Violence, Memory, and the Making of Modern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 135.

38 beginning of the so-called “global turn.” These boxes originally serve as storage, shipping and packing of goods that travel long distances into old and new consumer’s markets. Cuban-born painter René Alís, writing at the time of the ROCI MEXICO show, noted bitingly that “cardboard boxes put on the wall are meaningless, they do not thrill me. I see them every day, and

Rauschenberg does too.”145 While for Alís the problem with the work was the banality of its material, for Yve Alain Bois, commenting several decades after their production, the banality is what gives these works their political edge: “the cardboard pieces bear witness to the world’s gradual homogenization under the condition of capitalist over-production.”146 Hardly banal,

Rauschenberg’s choice of material underscored the new reality and inequalities of trade flow created by advertising, consumer demand, scaled up production, and cheap labor.

By creating an artwork out of tequila boxes, Rauschenberg highlighted the commodification of mexicanidad. Latinx sociologist Marie Sarita Gaytán noted that

“commodities like tequila are themselves agents that take part in imagining the nation.”147 In the globalizing 1980s, advertisements for the distilled agave plant beverage and its availability in US liquor stores as part of bar culture became a vector for exporting Mexicanness. Francisco

González, the president of the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry (NCTI), added that tequila “very well represents Mexico because everybody that I know outside of Mexico associate tequila with Mexico … Tequila is Mexico as Mexico is tequila… Tequila is the best ambassador of Mexico.”148

The tequila boxes, however, are not the only reference to alcohol consumption. The abovementioned high contrast image of a bottle on middle-left edge of Casino (see fig. 9), as

145 René Alís in Dorothea Hanh, “Exposiciones como las de Rauschenberg son negativas y mercantiles: el pintor René Alís,” Uno Mas Uno, July 11, 1985. 146 Yve-Alain Bois et al., Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces (Houston: Menil Foundation, 2007), 18. 147 Marie Sarita Gaytán, Tequila!: Distilling the Spirit of Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press: 2014), 156. 148 Gaytán, Tequila!, 135.

39 well as various photographs of bottles painted on street walls, suggest that there might also be a biographical undertone to these works. One should not forget that Rauschenberg had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and that during his 1984 ROCI announcement at the UN, for example, he was clearly inebriated.149

Not everyone saw ROCI MEXICO as a “bloody Trojan horse and cruel interventionism,” as did Tibol.150 Paz—Rauschenberg’s cicerone in Mexico—went against the grain of harsh criticism, writing a poem titled “A Wind Called Bob Rauschenberg” for the exhibition’s catalogue.151 Throughout the poem, which was commissioned during Rauschenberg’s exploratory trip in 1984, Paz refers to the artist as a wind that joins, breaks, and unmakes objects and things.152 This complicated description suggests an intimate familiarity with Rauschenberg’s work. The poem ends with a laudatory tone: “The wind [Rauschenberg] hears what the universe says, and we hear what the wind says.”153 Paz, who was quite pleased by the exhibition, articulated after attending:

What is so interesting in this exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg is that he has utilized the Mexican popular art, the Mexican industry, the flour sacks, wall posters, autobuses, the real life of Mexico. It is an example of how you can make art which is refined and very energetic using everyday Mexican elements.154

Although the illustrious art critic and cultural analyst was not, by the mid-1980s, the progressive and radical thinker that he had once been, his words still resonated in Mexico. Paz was a celebrity who often appeared in Televisa’s shows; at the time, he “was certainly more often seen

149 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 164. 150 Tibol, “Rauschenberg como cuerpo de paz,” April 20, 1985. 151 Octavio Paz in ROCI MEXICO, 6-7. 152 Octavio Paz, “A Wind Called Bob Rauschenberg,” in Rauschenberg and Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, 141. 153 Paz, “A Wind Called Bob Rauschenberg,” 141. 154 Excerpt of an interview for Televisa in Van Brunt, R.O.C.I. Travelogue 1986, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/archive/86v021.

40 that read.”155 As argued by Alatriste, Paz’s words “if favorable absolved, if negative condemned.”156

It is not surprising that Paz, an evangelist for democracy and pluralistic freedom of expression and an outspoken critic of a nativist Mexican identity, aligned with Rauschenberg’s project. By the 1980s, Paz was facing enormous criticism from leftist intellectuals in Mexico.

First, he was condemned for his televised presence. As Brazilian scholar Priscilla Dorella questioned:

How could a poet who was committed to freedom, democratic values and intellectual independence and criticism of the patrimonial state be on such friendly terms … with the owner of Televisa, turning a blind eye to the conservative and unscrupulous measures of this telecommunications company?157

In 1984, Paz wrote an essay in which he was critical of the developments of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.158 The essay sparked protests in Mexico City, where leftists chanted

“Reagan rapaz, tu amigo es Octavio Paz!” (Reagan man, Octavio Paz is your friend!).159 By supporting Rauschenberg, Paz reinforced his reputation as a critic of leftist ideologies and as someone unafraid of liberal ideologies and economic globalism. Other commonalities included their mutual devotion to Marcel Duchamp as well as their status as celebrities and cultural icons of their birth nations. While is unclear how close they became, Rauschenberg thanked the poet by giving him one of his works.160 In 1999, after Paz’s death, Rauschenberg participated in a tribute to the poet, an act that underscored their mutual esteem and understanding .161

155 Priscilla Dorella, “Octavio Paz, Media and Mexican Politics,” Berkley Review of Latin American Studies (Fall 2017–Winter 2018): 69. 156 Salazar, “Death and the Invisible Hand,” 8; “la palavra de octavio paz se favorable absolve, se negativa condena.” Alatriste, “Rauschenberg o la crónica de um engano,” July 30, 1985. 157 Dorella, “Octavio Paz, Media and Mexican Politics,” 71. 158 Dorella, 73. 159 See also Armando Gonzalez Torres, “Octavio Paz em 1984: A Querella del Diálogo y el Ruido,” Letras Libres (October 2011): 26–31. 160 Torres, 26–31. 161 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mexican Cultural Institute, and Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, A Tribute to Octavio Paz: In Memoriam 1914–1998 (New York and Washington, DC: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mexican Cultural Institute, and Mexican Cultural Institute, 2001).

41

In Mexico, the negative views of ROCI focused on the project as a living symbol of exploitative and arrogant neoliberal capitalism, where unregulated free enterprise, corporate tax cuts and lowered trade barriers took precedent over small businesses, some local production, social safety nets and state controls. Rauschenberg’s association with Televisa and his identity as a US artist was received with suspicion by the Mexican leftist intelligentsia, who complained that the show followed “mercantile interests”;162 Alatriste called the show “advertising.”163 The artist’s adoptions of iconic references to mexicanidad were also used against him, and some called him a “gringo tourist” or attacked him for apparently doing little research on the country.164 Tibol, for example, called for “honesty and a minimum of knowledge about the host country.”165 As is often the case, the situation was not as simple, and the Mexican works were more complex than initially perceived. They were physically and metaphorically layered, but

Rauschenberg’s critics were often dogmatic and could only view ROCI from binary—colonialist versus subaltern—perspective. In the end, the criticisms that Rauschenberg faced were related more to Mexico than to ROCI, the result of a country traumatized by poverty and centuries of colonial oppression, of which this purported cultural “ exchange” seemed but the latest if “soft” power incarnation.

162 Alís, “Exposiciones como las de Rauschenberg son negativas y mercantiles.” July 11, 1985. 163 Alatriste, “Rauschenberg o la crónica de um engano,” July 30, 1985. 164 Debroise, “México Segun Rauschenberg,” April 24, 1985. 165 Tibol, “Rauschenberg como cuerpo de paz,” April 20, 1985.

42

I never experienced as much anger about any artist's project . . . as about ROCI CHILE. The reactions from friends, fellow artists, and others was absolute outrage. . . . Personally, I would have counted myself among the critics, but Rauschenberg saw his Chilean exhibit as a radical gesture that would eventually help to open the path to democracy.166 Donald Saff

Chapter 2:

ROCI CHILE: Copper Bites Back

Chile was Rauschenberg’s second stop. He arrived there for his groundwork trip on

October 26, 1984. The Andean nation was arguably the most volatile, violent, and politically unstable place he visited. The ROCI CHILE project was, and still is, received negatively by most critics, and revisionist art historians in South and North America. In retrospect, Rauschenberg referred to his experience there as “a real drag.”167

One of the works produced for ROCI CHILE, Copperhead-Bite VII/ ROCI CHILE (1985) brings the contradictions of this altruistic project to the fore (fig. 17). Consisting of silkscreened imagery on a copper plate, it belongs to the Copperhead-Bite series, which comprises twelve

“metal paintings” produced in Rauschenberg’s Captiva studio but based on his trip to Chile the year before.168 From July 17 to August 18, 1985, the ROCI CHILE exhibition titled El Viajero

Mundo de Rauschenberg (Rauschenberg’s Traveled World), hosted by the Museo Nacional de

Bellas Artes, Santiago, featured Copperhead-Bite VII along with the other eleven Copperhead-

Bite works: Caryatid Cavalcade I/ROCI CHILE (1985), Caryatid Cavalcade II/ ROCI CHILE

166 Donald Saff in Josefina de la Maza Chevesich, “Introducing the World to Himself: Robert Rauschenberg and ROCI Chile,” Art Criticism 25, nos. 1–2 (2010): 45. 167 Barbara Rose, An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg by Barbara Rose (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), 106. When mentioning that Chile “was a real drag,” Rauschenberg was referring to the mutual hatred amongst different parts of the population. He also noted the criticism he encountered by exhibiting at a state-owned museum and the political unrest in the country during that time. 168 Besides the twelve Copperhead-Bite works, Rauschenberg also created Caryatid Cavalcade I and II, Altar Peace Chile, Araucan Mastaba, Copperhead Chica, and Copperhead Grande as part of ROCI CHILE.

43

(1985), Altar Peace/ ROCI CHILE (1985), the ROCI MEXICO series, and a selection of around one hundred of Rauschenberg most recent works.

Copperhead-Bite VII consists of a large copper plate (246.1 x 130.2 cm) with four different scenes silkscreened in acrylic paint five times: a makeshift cemetery, a bird's-eye view of a beach scene with bathers, a close-up view of a flower (likely a rose), and an interior courtyard with a chair placed in front of a doorway. In the upper middle section of the work, the cemetery is screened in a copper-colored acrylic paint, mimicking the effect of acids on metal.

This lack of contrast between the surface and the paint, together with the visual confusion caused by the green beach scene, which was partially printed underneath the cemetery, compromises the clarity of the images. A murky gray, painterly splatter and a few gestural brushstrokes blur the division between the bathers and the cemetery, reminding the viewer of Rauschenberg’s connection with abstract expressionism and his interest in the medium of paint. To the bottom left, overlapping with the bathers, a flower, is printed twice (in white and magenta). The courtyard, screened in blue, also visually impinges on the beach scene.

By employing such layering, Rauschenberg choreographed the scenes in a dance of concealment and revelation. All of the source images came from photographs taken by the artist during his first visit to Chile, situating the viewer in its specific geography and culture.

Additionally, the large, vertical format of Copperhead—Bite VII evokes the idea of a door, window, or portal to Rauschenberg’s Chile. Yet, doors, windows, chairs, and beach scenes were already part of the artist’s iconography, which raises questions as to what extent the motifs of

Copperhead—Bite VII were based on his preconceived visual tropes and how much the country itself inspired them. Windows also appear in the upper right corner of Copperhead-Bite IX/ROCI

44

CHILE (1985; fig. 18) and in the lower left corner of Copperhead-Bite XII/ROCI CHILE (1985; fig. 19). Such iconography is also present in the later ROCI VENEZUELA series.169

This chapter establishes a nuanced understanding of Rauschenberg’s problematic attempt at cultural diplomacy in a country under a brutal military dictatorship. The artist’s liberal political views did not always translate into effective action outside the United States; moreover,

Rauschenberg always refrained from overt ideological commentary or didactic messaging in his art. Arguably, his view of the inherent openness of his art did not play well in Chile. As Saff, put it, the artist had been profoundly naïve to perceive “the Chilean exhibit as a radical gesture that would eventually help to open the path to democracy.”170

To begin with, Rauschenberg’s identity as an US artist, and one who positioned himself as a cultural ambassador, was politically fraught. Similar to what happened in Mexico, in Chile, the artist fit the derogatory gringo stereotype. Moreover, the United States was directly and deeply involved in the rise to power of Augusto Pinochet—a military officer who in 1972 had been appointed the Chilean army commander in chief.171 Pinochet ultimately seized control in a violent coup d’état in 1973, which deposed democratically elected Marxist president Salvador

Allende. As the United States consistently worked to undermine the spread of communism in

Latin America during the Cold War period, the coup received financial and military assistance from the CIA.172 In the 1970s, the US was the main collaborator in and financier of Operation

169 In Urban/Interior Network/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985), the artist attached a chair seat to the plywood panel, and in the upper portion of Power Stack/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985), a group of men appears sunbathing at the beach— both works will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. A silkscreened photograph of a gated door is prominent in the middle of Saturday/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985). 170 Donald Saff in Josefina de la Maza Chevesich, “Introducing the World to Himself,” 45. 171 Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc: 1991), 16. 172 Leslie Bethell, Chile since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 167. For a detailed discussion on the North American interference in Chile, see Samuel Chavkin, “The Coup and the CIA Involvement,” in Storm over Chile: The Junta under Siege (Westport: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1985); Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press, 2013), and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Story of a Death Foretold: Pinochet, the Cia and the Coup against Salvador Allende, 11 September 1973 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Furthermore, during the mid-1980s, a well-reported

45

Condor: a secret intelligence and operations system of repression in which Latin American military states (mainly in the Southern cone) shared intelligence and seized, tortured, and executed political opponents in one another’s territories.173

Pinochet’s regime was marked by fear and systematic suppression of political parties.

Not only were Marxists seen as members of the opposition, but also centrists and anyone who was not outspokenly pro-Pinochet were at risk.174 Human rights violations included burning teenagers alive, beheading people believed to be communist, and dragging journalists out of their beds in the middle of the night to shoot them.175 Others were imprisoned, tortured or simply

“disappeared.” The “disappeared” were the thousands who opposed and were likely executed by the government, and whose whereabouts were unknown.176 Media channels that opposed the dictatorship were censored and shut down, among them the radio stations Cooperativa, Santiago, and Chilena.177 According to US journalist Pamela Constable and Chilean political scholar

Arturo Valenzuela, until 1977, the only critical journalism came from small, private, and obscure publications.178 In the same year, a government decree forced media channels to send the material they intended to publish or broadcast to Dirección Nacional de Comunicación Social

(DINACOS)—a government censorship bureau—for approval.179 And, though the first six years of the dictator’s government were considered the most violent (e.g., more than 1,260 Chileans

polemic had been published regarding an American plan to build an emergency runway for space shuttle landings on Easter Island. Chileans suspected this to be a disguised military base. 173 Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham: Rowan and Littlefied Publishers, 2005), 22. 174 Constable and Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies, 146–47. 175 Patricia Politzer, Fear in Chile: Lives Under Pinochet (New York: Patheon books, 1989), xv. 176 In February 1991, the Chilean National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation released a report detailing human rights abuses resulting in deaths and disappearances during the years of military rule. According to the report, 2,296 people were murdered during the seventeen-year period. Subsequent estimates have put the number of missing as high as 3,400. Addressing the issue of the missing has been recognized as a key element in the process of social reconciliation following the return to democracy. “International Commission of Missing Persons: Chile,” accessed November 25, 2018. https://www.icmp.int/the-missing/where-are-the-missing/chile/. 177 Constable and Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies, 157. 178 Constable and Valenzuela,156. 179 Constable and Valenzuela,156.

46 were killed between September and December of 1973), in 1984 he instituted a state of siege after months of political unrest.180 In his quest for legitimacy, Pinochet held two plebiscites during his time in office.181 The first, in 1980, approved a new constitution, though the electoral procedure was likely corrupted.182 Then, in 1988, following democratic trends in other Latin

American countries, a second plebiscite removed Pinochet from power.183 Although by 1990 he no longer held office, he continued to work for the Chilean military until 1998.184

Despite the state brutality, Pinochet achieved great economic success until the early

1980s as a result of the implementation of the neoliberal policies of the so-called “Chicago boys.”185 Rauschenberg’s visit in 1984 and his return for the exhibition in 1985 coincided with a recession and some of the most repressive phases of the dictatorship. Given the direct involvement of the United States in toppling Allende, Rauschenberg’s Chilean venture was understandably tainted from the start. The artist must also be held responsible for not being sufficiently informed about Chile’s past and present. The briefing papers he received were produced by his staff and contained an overview of the country’s history and culture that was

180 Mark Ensalaco, Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 36, 137. 181 Darren G. Hawkins, International Human Rights and Authoritarian Rule in Chile (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 13. 182 “Of course, the 1980 constitutional plebiscite was denounced as fraudulent by the political opposition to Pinochet and its legitimacy was severely questioned by all impartial international observers.” Harry L. Simón Salazar, Television, Democracy, and the Mediatization of Chilean Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 11. 183 Ensalaco, Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth, 156. 184 Mary H. Spooner, The General's Slow Retreat: Chile After Pinochet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 266. 185 Spooner, 193–194. The so-called “Chilean miracle” was a consequence of the country’s neoliberalism (following the model of the Chicago School), yet it was partially an illusion “built on unrealistic economic assumptions and a fragile edifice of debt, high interest rates and speculation.” Therefore, in 1982 the country was hit with a recession. By the late 1980s, Chile’s economy had recovered. The term “Chicago boys” is used to refer to a group of economists, mainly from Chile, who studied under Milton Friedman through an exchange program between the Catholic University of Chile and Chicago University. Friedman was one of the main proponents of what we now call neoliberalism. The exchange program started in the mid-1950s and was mainly financed by the US as part of the country’s Cold War soft power strategy. Many of the “Chicago boys” ended up holding important roles in Pinochet’s government.

47 inadequate and reduced to tourist information and stereotypes.186 For example, while eating habits and preferences were discussed in detail over three paragraphs, the complexities of the multifaceted political situation were explained in no more than a few sentences.187 The damage was done: mocking the artist’s superficial understanding of Chile, a 1985 newspaper cartoon

(fig. 20) showed him depicting a bottle of wine and a lotto poster as symbols of the country and an observer asking “But how did you portray us so well?” 188 The cartooned image, which also depicts a caryatid, parodies Caryatid Cavalcade I (1985; fig. 21), a ROCI CHILE work.

The series’ punning title, Copperhead-Bite, has also allowed for disparate interpretations of just how political—or evasive—Rauschenberg intended to be. The wording alludes to a snake’s poisonous bite, while also commenting on the material and production process of the works. It should be noted that the copperhead snake is native to North America and is not found in the southern hemisphere, but the significance of “copper” and “bite” may well move beyond

Rauschenberg’s evident pleasure with word play. Several art historians have recently argued that the artist intended the snake’s venom to be a symbol of Pinochet’s poisonous government, despite a clear statement by the artist that the title had no underlying political meaning.189

186 “ROCI Chile briefing papers,” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 187 “The briefing paper went on to note that significant human rights abuse had occurred during Pinochet’s years in power, but that the situation had improved over the last several years and the United States was working toward a condition of normalcy in Chile. The briefing paper’s summary report of Pinochet’s time in power and its mild ending left Rauschenberg unsuspecting of how devastating Chile’s recent history had been and largely ignorant of how volatile was its current situation.” Robert Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” in Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 242. Years after the fact, Thomas Buehler, his principal assistant throughout the project, still mistakenly called the South American nation “socialist”: “It was sad in a way. The way socialist countries are set. They are very happy people, Chileans.” The Reminiscences of Thomas Buehler, 2 April 2015, Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, conducted in collaboration with INCITE/Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives. 188 Lukas, “Rauschenberg,” Cartoon, El Mercurio, July 11, 1985. 189 Kotz, Rauschenberg, 27; Claire Bergeal, “An Alchemical Era: Materiality and Technology in Robert Rauschenberg's Paintings on Metal, 1986–1996” (Master’s thesis, Hunter College, 2014), 19; Mattison, 248. These texts also exaggerate the dangers of these copper-colored snakes. Besides biting frequently, they have mild venom. For Rauschenberg’s statement, see Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 167.

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“Bite” is also a common technical term in printmaking used to describe the corrosion caused by the application of acids on a metal plate, or in the case of Rauschenberg’s methods, the oxidizing effect of chemicals on metal.190 The “bite” effect is present in the upper section of

Copperhead—Bite VII (see fig. 17), creating a strong horizontal line while also evoking a sense of decay and despair, as the metal appears old, dirty, and neglected, as if the work is perishing in front of the viewer. The words “copperhead” and “bite,” thus draw attention to the literal process behind and materials of the work. The upper edge of Copperhead-Bite IX also appears to be rotting (see fig. 18). Rauschenberg’s use of acids on the plate, which he also applied to create a hand print, together with a silkscreened photograph of funerary flower arrangements rendered the work morbid.

According to the artist, he employed a copper plate as a support material for the silkscreened images because he wanted to show “solidarity with the Chilean people.” 191

Nonetheless, in 1987, Nelly Richard—arguably the most important Chilean cultural theorist— complained that the artists usage of copper emphasized its “value as an aesthetic material” and not as a “social problem.”192 As in every other aspect of ROCI Chile, there is more to this statement than meets the eye. Contrary to the prevailing consensus amongst scholars, the copper plates did not come from Chile (or at least not as finished copper plates).193 According to recent research conducted by conservator Natalya Swanson, Rauschenberg acquired the plates from a

190 Rauschenberg learned the technique from Benito Rojo, an artist and art professor who specialized in the handling of metals and chemicals. See de la Maza Chevesich, “Introducing the World to Himself,” 47. Rojo was one of the few visual artists with whom Rauschenberg had contact during his first trip to Chile. 191 “Copperheads,” Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, accessed November 29, 2018, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/series/rocichile. 192 Nelly Richard, “R.O.C.I. : Rauschenberg ; overseas culture interchange, ou la transnationale de l'art,” Parachute, no. 48 (September-November 1987): 26. 193 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 251. While it is not impossible that the mineral used to make the plates was mined in Chile, the US has a fairly robust copper mining industry. Therefore, it seems more likely to me that the material in its raw state was mined in Arizona, Utah, or New Mexico.

49 company called American Architectural Metals in Mineola, New York.194 Thus, the copper’s connection to Chile is symbolic and not literal.

The copper industry still supports Chile's economy today. The country is one of the world's leading producers of the mineral, but at a cost to workers and the environment. Copper has simultaneously been a symbol of hope and inequality in Chile, as demonstrated in the following Communist Party slogan from 1970: "By nationalizing copper / We shall cease to be poor."195 Although the copper mines were eventually nationalized in the early 1970s, poverty rates did not change in Chile as a consequence. While Rauschenberg had the financial resources to work with the metal, the same could not be said about most Chilean artists and art students. As an unknown art student remarked to Rauschenberg: “We are poor. We don’t have any copper.”196

Benito Rojo, a Chilean artist who had contact with Rauschenberg during his visits, believed that the US artist “knew … the enormous nobility of copper as a support material in pre-Columbian art. When he was in Chile, he understood the enormous socio-political value of the metal and how it was deeply rooted in our identity.”197

Whereas in the Mexican series, Rauschenberg drew attention to the nation’s textiles, in

Chile the artist was interested in stressing the country’s mineral wealth. Besides employing copper in the Chilean works, in the sculptural multiple Araucan Mastaba/ ROCI CHILE (1985–

1986; fig. 22) Rauschenberg included a pair of lapis lazuli stones and an envelope cast out of sterling silver. It is worth noting that Araucan Mastaba—a work done in partnership with Saff’s

University of South Florida Graphicstudio—was not exhibited in Chile at the time, though it was

194 Throughout her thorough research, Swanson found an invoice from February 1985 by American Architectural Metals Incorporated listing 23 copper plates measuring the approximately the same as the works from the Copperhead-Bite series. She generously shared this documentation with me. Natalya Swanson, email exchange with the author, August 28, 2019. 195 Simon Collier and William F. Sater, A History of Chile, 1808–1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 334. 196 Rauschenberg, "A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers (July 13, 1985)," in Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 197 Benito Rojo, email interview with the author , December 17, 2018.

50 officially included in the ROCI CHILE series and was later exhibited at the National Gallery of

Art. As art historian Robert S. Mattison remarks, “the [Chilean] landscape is so rich with minerals that semi-precious stones lie right on the surface, and Rauschenberg remembers picking up three big turquoise stones just lying in this desert.”198 Mineral wealth vis-à-vis environmental destruction would become an important aspect of the ROCI VENEZUELA works.

The artist’s attraction to copper was also related to the material’s inherent formal qualities, specifically its warm and shiny surface. The Copperheads were Rauschenberg first metal painting. He continued to silkscreen images on metal plates in many subsequent series

(e.g., Borealis, 1988-1992; Night Shade and Phantom, 1991). According to Voytek,

Rauschenberg’s assistant in the production of the “metal paintings,” the artist compared these surfaces to human skin, attesting to the sensuality of the material.199 Scholar Eileen R. Doyle adds that, "the reflective quality of all of these works not only unfixes their surfaces and thus the meanings of the images, but it also visually implicates the viewer in that interpretation through her reflection."200 Corroborating his intent to insert the Chilean viewer “into” the Copperheads,

Rauschenberg stated during a Q&A session with artists and students, "If you can't find the warm answers in your question which exist in the reflections of the coppers … then you don't need me, you need your eyes."201 Yet this idea of reflection is problematic. In Copperhead—Bite VII and the other works in the series, Chilean viewers did not see their own national image, but their national image interpreted by an artist from the US, inevitably raising the specter in their minds of an imperialist gaze.

198 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 242. 199 Lawrence Voytek in Bergeal, “An Alchemical Era,” 68. 200 Eileen R. Doyle, "Art in the Mirror: Reflection in the Work of Rauschenberg, Richter, Graham, and Smithson" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, Columbus, 2004), 27. 201 Rauschenberg, "A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers (July 13, 1985)," 5.

51

The ambiguity of the imagery in Copperhead—Bite VII (see fig. 17) is derived from the layering of the silkscreened images, the lack of clarity resulting from the low-contrast colors, and various areas of its reflective surface. “R.O.C.I. equalizes all the layers of meaning, reduces the distances by confusing the near and the far, reconciles the opposites by assimilating the signs of wealth and those of poverty,” describes Richard.202 As is the case with Rauschenberg’s work on the whole, it is hazardous to attempt a single reading or one-to-one correlation of image and message; the collage-like composition provokes multiple associations, as was the artist’s intention. The most striking image consists of a graveyard in the Atacama desert with three thin crosses, two of them standing vertically on domed structures, while a smaller one (actually the shadow of a cross) leans diagonally. It is difficult to reconcile this scene with others on the copper plate.

Mattison, the only scholar heretofore to discuss this work in detail, identifies the domed structures as country ovens and states that they are another screened image layered on top of the photograph of the cemetery.203 He uses this observation to support his argument that

Rauschenberg was indeed worried about the violence during Pinochet’s dictatorship, as many believed that the bodies of the “disappeared” were burned to destroy any incriminating evidence.204 Mattison then associates the blue image of a "courtyard whose dominant feature is a striped pattern formed by light shining through an exterior grill" with a jail cell. He sees the close-up image of a rose (fig. 23) in the lower left corner as a "red abstract pattern similar to bloodshed."205 My archival research allows for different readings. The original contact sheets reveal that there is no juxtaposition of oven and graveyard (fig. 24). The former shape is, in fact,

202 Richard, “R.O.C.I. : Rauschenberg ; overseas culture interchange, ou la transnationale de l'art,” 27. 203 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 255. 204 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 255. 205 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 255.

52 a common type of grave marker with a niche that holds an offering or a saint figurine, and the perceived bloodshed, as noted earlier, is a rose.206

As underscored by the artist himself, all interpretations are somewhat valid. He notes,

“I’ve never explained the imagery, like the iconography of my work, in any country.”207 That being said, one can read Copperhead—Bite VII’s layering of people sunbathing at the beach with a graveyard as a form of ironic commentary on the fragility of life, of pleasure one moment and pain the next. Moreover, the starkness and stillness of the courtyard image emphasizes the emptiness of the chair, perhaps a symbol of the "disappeared." The red flower, which unless one has knowledge of the source photograph, appears quite abstract, can be perceived as funerary flowers—a symbol later used to protest the deaths caused by the government. The image can also be linked to Socialist International, and therefore to Allende, and interpreted as a covert sign of protest against Pinochet.208 Or it could evoke the bloodshed that Mattison sees, or, conversely, and despite the horrors, the beauty Rauschenberg still found in the country. In Copperhead—Bite

VII, the artist leaves meaning open to the viewer. Indeed, what appears to have been his final intervention—the visceral splatter and quick gestural brushstroke—can be read as both an act of aggressive violence or his longstanding signature reference to abstract expressionism.

To complicate things further, the site of Rauschenberg’s exhibition, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, belonged to the Chilean government—in other words, ROCI CHILE was hosted by the dictatorial regime, underscoring that Pinochet never saw Rauschenberg’s visit as a threat.

If Rauschenberg’s message was in favor of democracy, it was undermined by the regime’s

206 Chile contact sheets, 1984, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York City. 207 Rauschenberg, "A Discussion with Students, Artists, and Writers (July 13, 1985)," 5. 208 Since the late nineteenth century, red roses or carnations have been worn on lapels as a way to discretely state one’s socialist affiliations. The red flower later became the symbol for the Socialist International and was also used as the logo of several left-leaning parties around the world. As a democratic socialist, Allende is inescapably linked to the red flower icon. For an interesting article on the use of red roses and carnations see Algernon Lee, “Our Imitation Bismarcks,” Metropolitan 38 (May 1913), 63.

53 ability to make itself look “open” by welcoming, even co-opting, the artist. The prominent dissident writer José Donoso pleaded with the artist to change venues, but to no avail.209 Donoso, who in Chile played the cicerone role that Paz had in Mexico and later wrote the text of the

ROCI CHILE catalogue, published a disclaimer in the pro-democracy Spanish newspaper El País just after the artist’s first visit.210 In this article, Donoso noted that he had suggested to the artist different places for the exhibition and presented the reasoning behind his suggestions. As options, Donoso proposed an abandoned factory (a symbol of Chile's failed economic boom) or a

Catholic church (an institution with sects that fought for human rights and for the return of political exiles).211 One may ask why Donoso wrote for the catalogue even though he disagreed with the artist’s position. Although there are no clear answers, in his text, the poet acknowledged

Rauschenberg’s importance as an artist who could bring a new form of “contemplation.”212

Donoso was critical of the project but not of Rauschenberg’s work and intentions. Rauschenberg had, in fact, rejected Donoso’s suggestions, replying, “There was no way a church needed that much art.”213 Nonetheless, Catholic iconography—and the imagery of death—cannot be missed in Copperhead-Bite VII, particularly the striking photograph of the crosses. Religious iconography also permeates many other ROCI CHILE works, such as Copperhead-Bite IV

209 Rauschenberg was proud to exhibit at the Chilean museum, as he also participated in the production of a medallion with his own face on it, which was placed in the neoclassical building side-by-side with other medallions depicting old masters such as Leonardo da Vinci. The museum's caryatids were also important to Rauschenberg, who included them in many of his works, such as Caryatid Cavalcade I and II (1985). 210José Donoso, “Visita de Rauschenberg,” Opinión, El País, November 23, 1984. 211 Donoso, “Visita de Rauschenberg.” It is important to note that when Donoso suggested a church, he was thinking of progressive sectors of the Catholic Church, such as the Vicaría de la Solidaridad. For more on the Catholic Church in Chile, see Michael Fleet and Brian H. Smith, The Catholic Church and Democracy in Chile and Peru (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 35–76. 212 Cowart, Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, 125. 213 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 233; Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 166.

54

(1985), Copperhead-Bite X (1985), and the sculpture Altar Peace/ ROCI CHILE (1985; fig. 25) suggesting that the conversation with Donoso may have affected the artist.214

Arguably, the most strikingly religious work is the Chilean Altar Peace—the Mexican series also had its Altar Peace, thus underscoring Rauschenberg’s belief in art’s peaceful powers.

The Chilean sculptural piece resembles a cross. The front of the work is covered in fabric reminiscent of clerical clothes. The sides are silkscreened with a variety of images, including a street vendor carrying a large pile of boxes on his shoulders, a rose, and child-like graffiti. The liturgical-looking cross is adorned with symbols of everyday Chilean life, suggesting a close relationship between the church and the people. A light bulb inside the sculpture creates a glow that makes the object seem holy. It should be pointed out that Catholic symbols were not solely used in the Chilean works. They were also present in the Mexico and the Venezuela series. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Casino/ ROCI MEXICO (see fig. 9) incorporates images of saints and angels. In the Venezuela series, an image Pope John Paul II—who had just visited the country in January 1985—was included in Primo Calle/ ROCI VENEZUELA (1985).

The layering of different images and the use of industrial printing methods in

Copperhead-Bite VII testify to the artist’s career-long relationship with the popular press; the accumulation of varied information on the surface of his works has been compared to the front page of a newspaper.215 The work’s documentary-style photography also emulates photojournalism. Besides using the popular press as source material for his Dante Drawings

(1958–60) and Silkscreen Paintings (1962–64), among other works, he also designed several covers for Time magazine between 1967 and 2002 and designed the first ROCI catalogues to resemble that publication (see fig. 1). The artist and various media outlets both used and featured

214Although at this point it is mere speculation, I do suspect that it is possible that Rauschenberg might not have had a choice in where to exhibit and was forced to show his works in the state-sponsored museum. 215 John Cage, “On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work,” Metro 2, May 1961, 37.

55 each other. Mattison argues that it was fitting that some of the most recognizable images in

Rauschenberg's Chilean works were of newspaper or newsstands, as in Copperhead-Bite IV,

Copperhead-Bite X, and Copperhead-Bite XI (1985).216 He presents this as evidence of commentary on Chile's political situation; this idea is complicated, however, by the fact that the media sponsor for ROCI CHILE was the controversial newspaper El Mercurio.217

El Mercurio supported both Pinochet’s dictatorship and Rauschenberg’s ROCI CHILE, adding to the project’s negative reception in the South American country. The tabloid was an elitist and conservative newspaper that lacked credibility because it constantly adulterated the facts.218 Indeed, Saff asked the artist to consider being interviewed by another newspaper “to balance the unending barrage of El Mercurio.”219 One must take into account that there was no freedom of the press during the dictatorship, and by partnering with the Pinochet-friendly El

Mercurio, Rauschenberg got visibility. Nonetheless, there were still a few media outlets, such as the centrist newsweekly Hoy, that were not as compromised.220 Highlighting these contradictions, Chilean art historian Josefina de la Maza Chevesich notes, "If Rauschenberg's aim was to ‘open access to information' through his art …, through his actions he was doing precisely the opposite."221 Not surprisingly, El Mercurio and other mainstream newspapers such

216 Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 245. 217Mattison, “ROCI in Chile,” 245. 218 For this reason, the expression El Mercurio miente (El Mercurio lies) became a part of Chilean vernacular. See de la Maza Chevesich,“Introducing the World to Himself,” 45. According to Kristen Sorensen: “El Mercurio, which belongs to the powerful, ideologically conservative Edwards family of Chile, has had a special relationship with the U.S. It is cited in the Church Report: Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973 as a crucial tool, which the CIA funded generously, in U.S. attempts to prevent Socialist President Salvador Allende from being elected in 1970 and then as a tool to destabilize his government after he came to power.” Kristin Sorensen, "Chilean Print Media and Human Rights: Mainstream Silence Versus Satirical Subversion," Peace & Change 36, no. 3 (2011); 423. 219 “Do you want to consider an individual interview with the reporter Jorge Pappia from ‘La Nacion?’ He has called many times. I am going to get in contact with him to see if he can attend the press conference. Just thought it might be a good idea to balance the unending barrage of ‘El Mercurio’ with someone else.” Donald Saff, “Questions to Robert Rauschenberg (July 17, 1985),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 220Constable and Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies, 146 221de la Maza Chevesich,“Introducing the World to Himself,” 50.

56 as La Nácion covered his visit and artwork positively, while more obscure publications, such as

APECH 2 (the magazine of the Associacíon de Pintores y Escultores de Chile) were not as supportive.222

Opponents of Pinochet’s government saw the Copperhead series as a symbol of US imperialism.223 Some associated the shiny surfaces of the artworks and the mechanistic-looking silkscreened images with a detrimental commodification of art.224 Interestingly, Rauschenberg himself seems to make use of this association between shiny surfaces and US imperialism.

Polished surfaces reappear in the aluminum and stainless steel employed in the ROCI USA series

(1991) shown in Washington DC. Likewise, ROCI’s production model was read by Chilean artists opposed to the dictatorship as a demonstration of a perceived US superiority.225 Thus, it is not surprising that during one of the few opportunities Rauschenberg had to talk directly to

Chilean artists and art students, he was harshly disparaged.226 Likewise, when he visited the

University of Santiago, he was received with suspicion. As noted by Rojo, “It was thought that his visit was a maneuver of the CIA in support of the dictatorship of Pinochet. Those were very difficult times and culture took care of it.”227

Despite the popular belief that Chile was an insular country, the nation had significant exposure to US and European art, a fact that contradicted Rauschenberg ’s statement of

"collaboration with countries which have had little or no contact with contemporary work to enjoy an artistic spectacle.”228 Such exposure happened less through traveling mega-exhibitions than through magazines, mail art, and even through Chilean artists that were in exile. Artist

222Patrício Rueda and Patrícia Saavedra, “Rauschenberg em el Bellas Artes,” APECH 2: Revista de la Associacíon de Pintores y Escultores de Chile, July 1986, 14–16. 223de la Maza Chevesich, “Introducing the World to Himself,” 45. 224de la Maza Chevesich, 45. 225 de la Maza Chevesich, 45. 226 Rauschenberg, “A Discussion with Students, Artists and Writers (July 13, 1985),” 1–7. 227 Benito Rojo, email interview with the author, December 17, 2018. 228 Robert Rauschenberg, “Artist Statement (draft) (August 1, 1984),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York.

57

Enrique Zamudio, who met Rauschenberg during ROCI, explained that Rauschenberg had influenced him long before the exhibit.229 Chile also had a lively avant-garde scene that managed to create and exhibit in alternative spaces, despite widespread censorship. As noted by Chilean writer Marjorie Agosín, “Poets and painters invented new signs and spaces in the most marginal areas of the cities, thus altering the so-called privileged and official space assigned to art by the government and announcing their alliance with marginality.”230 Indeed, while some of the work was fiercely political—such as Lotty Rosenfeld’s Una Milla de Cruces sobre el Pavimento

(1979) and Catalina Parra’s Diario de Vida (1977)—any criticism of the regime was indirect or coded to escape censorship.231 The Copperhead series was actually criticized by many Chileans for not taking a clear anti-Pinochet stance. 232 The perceived political neutrality of

Rauschenberg’s works for ROCI USSR and ROCI CHINA, however, was what allowed for his successful reception in those countries.

Although Rauschenberg stressed his apolitical status time and again, his statements should be questioned. As art historian Roni Feinstein maintains in her discussion of

Rauschenberg's early 1960s silkscreen paintings (the ancestors of Copperhead—Bite VII), many of those works “seemed to have indeed been inspired by political events about which

Rauschenberg felt strongly.”233 During this period, he was sourcing his imagery from mass

229 Enrique Zamudio Oral History at “Testimonios: R.O.C.I. Chile,” accessed December 13, 2018, http://www.rauschenbergchile.cl/testimonios/ 230 Marjorie Agosín, "Art Under Dictatorship," Agni, no. 31/32 (1990): 34. 231 “Most art in Chile during those 16 years of dictatorship required the active collaboration of the viewer to complement utterances or to implement meaning; and because of this cooperation throughout different strata of Chilean society, it worked.” Agosín, "Art under Dictatorship," 36. “Nonliteral languages managed to give shape to communities capable of decoding dissident meanings in texts and representations that, to the unknowing public said or showed next to nothing. Indeed, this strategy was used in artistic expression produced under dictatorship not only in Chile but also in Argentina and Uruguay.” Andrea Giunta, “Poetics of Resistance,” in Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, eds. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Andrea Giunta (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, University of California; Munich, New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2017), 253. 232 In 1974, New York artists organized the show Chile Emergency Exhibition. While I was able to confirm that artists such as Carl Andre and Donald Judd participated, I could not verify if Rauschenberg was involved. 233 Roni Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg: The Silkscreen Paintings 1962–64 (New York: museet, 1990), 81.

58 media. He was inescapably immersed in the current affairs, and he did voice his concerns regarding “race issues” and “atrocities of all sorts” in a 1965 interview.234 It is true that Feinstein was discussing a different period in the artist’s career, but the larger point is that Rauschenberg often made his political opinions clear, even if he chose a less obvious route in his art.235

Other evidence shows that Rauschenberg was not indifferent to the US government’s intervention in foreign affairs or to certain social issues that linked politics and culture. In 1965, for example, Rauschenberg financed much of the Artists’ Peace Tower in protest against the

Vietnam War.236 His position, however, seemed inconsistent at times. In 1969, he produced a number of works for NASA. Working for this government agency meant that he was somewhat involved in the space race, which was a significant aspect of the Cold War. As an artist, he supported his government's advertised technological superiority. Then, during the ROCI years, he lobbied Senator Ted Kennedy to pass a bill regarding artist rights and the international taxation of artworks, and donated a painting to an Art Against AIDS benefit.237 He often donated funds to the democratic party, and in 2000 Rauschenberg he designed a print to benefit Hillary

Rodham Clinton’s campaign for senate. Webster’s dictionary defines the word “political” as

“engaged in or taking sides in politics,” and based on the examples above, Rauschenberg fits this description.238

One last piece of evidence may reveal Rauschenberg’s true understanding of Pinochet’s brutal regime and even a later recognition of the flaws inherent in ROCI Chile. In 1986, shortly

234 “I do take a stance in questions like race issues and atrocities of all sorts ... If you feel strongly [about political issues], it's going to show there. I mean, that's the only way it can come into my work. And I believe it's there ... I think cultivated protest is just as dreamlike as idealism.” Oral history interview with Robert Rauschenberg, 21 December 1965, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 235 Interestingly, scholars have also been revisiting Andy Warhol’s silkscreens as political. See Thomas E. Crow, "Saturday Disasters: Trace and Reference in Early Warhol," Art in America (May 1987); 128–36. 236 Feinstein, Robert Rauschenberg, 81. Artists’ Peace Tower was a collective art work spearheaded by Irving Petlin and Mark di Suvero to protest the Vietnam War. The work was installed in Los Angeles in 1966. 237 Anne-Marie Schiro, “Artists Rally to Fight AIDS,” New York Times, June 5, 1987. 238 Webster’s New World College Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 1129.

59 after the project ended, Rauschenberg collaborated with the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, providing art for the cover of his book, Anteparadise (fig. 26). Zurita’s anti-Pinochet, activist stance cannot be in doubt, as he was even tortured for his views and his poems focus on bodily violence.239

Curiously, literary critics describe Anteparadise as Dantean—referring to late medieval poet

Dante Alighieri whose Inferno also inspired Rauschenberg. That Rauschenberg used the exact same beach scene in Copperhead—Bite VII (see fig. 17) for the cover of Anteparadise is telling.240 It favors the reading of Copperhead—Bite VII’s imagery as commentary on the conflict in Chile, or, conversely, may suggest that the cover collaboration served as a kind of acknowledgement of and a redemption for ROCI CHILE’s missteps.

The ROCI CHILE series, with its open-ended title, indecipherable iconography, and charged materiality is ambiguous—a reminder of the artist’s complexity, if not his outright refusal to be didactic in any messaging. ROCI CHILE did not foster worldwide peace and understanding, but its legacy continues to be relevant, especially in reminding audiences of US involvement in Pinochet’s regime.241

239Karen E. Bishop, Cartographies of Exile: A New Spatial Literacy (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 254. It is worth noting that early in his career Zurita was praised by El Mercurio. This is probably why in his novel Distant Star, Latin American novelist Roberto Bolaño modeled his controversial character Carlos Wieder on Zurita. Unlike Wieder, “Zurita was neither a torturer nor a murderer; in fact, he opposed the military dictatorship. But his first works of poetry, like Wieder's, were boosted by glowing reviews in El Mercurio.” Marcela Valdes, “His Stupid Heart: Robert Bolaño’s Novels Were a Love Letter to His Generation, but What He Had to Say Many Chileans Didn’t Want to Hear,” Virginia Quarterly Review 84, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 174. 240 Raúl Zurita, ANTEPARADISE: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Jack Schmitt (Los Angeles: University of California, 1986). 241 The project “Derivaciones de la visita de Robert Rauschenberg en Chile,” launched in 2017 and spearheaded by Camila Estrella, revisits Rauschenberg ’s impact in Chile, attesting to the relevance of the episode. See “ROCI: Derivaciones de la visita de Robert Rauschenberg en Chile,” accessed December 10, 2018, http://www.rauschenbergchile.cl

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Chapter 3

ROCI VENEZUELA: “The Devil’s Excrement”

On August 27, 1985, the Venezuelan military flew more than a hundred works of art by

Rauschenberg from Santiago to Caracas in anticipation of the artist’s ROCI VENEZUELA exhibition.242 Typical of his cumulative approach to the checklist and the project’s global itinerary, many of the works exhibited in Chile (including selections from the ROCI MEXICO series) continued on to the Venezuelan venue. The unorthodox shipping arrangement was devised by Sofia Ímber, director of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (MACC), in order to offset exhibition costs. Rauschenberg approved: “Just keep all the armies and navies and military busy hauling art around, not necessarily mine, anybody’s, so they won’t have time to be aggressive militarily.”243 Rauschenberg’s quip, in retrospect, was both cynical and naïve, given how ROCI VENEZUELA could be seen as complicit with both the US government and its prevailing economic interests in the region.

The venue proved to be a useful diplomatic tool for all involved. Before deciding to take

ROCI to Venezuela, Saff met Ímber and her husband, conservative writer, ambassador, and museum board member Carlos Rangel, in Washington (1985). As a result, the artist decided “to balance the shadow cast by Chile’s dictatorship with an exploration and exhibition in South

America’s oldest, albeit youthful, democracy, Venezuela.”244 In contrast to the other ROCI Latin

America ventures, the United States Embassy was involved with the Venezuelan project. This fact underscores the degree to which Rauschenberg’s operations were implicated in specific geo-

242According to information provided by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, there were two flights between August 27 and August 29 that transported Rauschenberg’s works from Santiago to Caracas. Email exchange between Francine Snyder (Chief Archivist), Shrim Khaki (Assistant Archivist), and the author, March 19, 2021. The exhibition included around 230 work, but not all were brought from Chile. Some pieces might have come directly from the artist’s studio in Captiva to Caracas. 243 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 168. 244 Rauschenberg and Saff, 168.

61 political contexts—namely the maintenance of the oil economy and this nation’s capitalist democratic government. For Rauschenberg and Saff, Venezuela appealed because it could potentially garner a favorable reception and counter the backlash ROCI received in Chile.

ROCI VENEZUELA opened at the MACC on September 12, 1985. The show included a total of two hundred and thirty-three works, including seventy-eight photographs and twelve

“bespoke” pieces created for the host country.245 The exhibition had two catalogues, the standard-venue one published by Rauschenberg and another, far more elaborate publication undertaken by the museum. Although Venezuelan writer and statesman Arturo Urslar Pietri was invited to contribute an essay, Rauschenberg ultimately decided, for reasons explained later in this chapter, not to include it in his publication.

In this chapter, I discuss the politics of MACC and the link between ROCI and Rangel, a polemic figure in Latin America whose ideologies were most aligned with libertarianism. I also illuminate the degree to which the US Embassy was involved in the project and analyze

Rauschenberg’s Venezuelan works in relation to the artist’s preoccupation with the environment.

Rauschenberg’s trips to the Amazon Forest and the Gran Sabana were a key part of ROCI

VENEZUELA. While he also went to Maracaibo and Caracas, most of the imagery came from photographs he took in remote regions of the country. I offer a new reading of Rauschenberg’s interest in and representation of the Amerindians of the region, which were unique in his oeuvre.

Until his stay in Venezuela, indigenous people appeared in his works only through the appropriation of already-extant images of Native North Americans, such as in the Poster for

CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) (1965; fig. 27). How he chose to incorporate, juxtapose,

245 Venezuela seems to be the only location with an official checklist. It was published in the MACC catalogue and included 78 photographs. “Lista de Obras,” in Rauschenberg (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, 1985), np.

62 and color these images of Amazonian Amerindians raises questions of stereotypes, including that of the “primitive,” and the representation of otherness.

It is not difficult to see why the US Embassy in Caracas wanted to be involved in ROCI.

Despite its brewing economic crisis, Venezuela was still a fairly stable democracy at the time of

Rauschenberg’s visit, a haven in a region affected by authoritarianism, revolt, and unrest.246 “It appears that the only trail to a democratic future for developing societies may be the one followed by Venezuela. . . . Venezuela is a textbook case of step-by-step progress,” argued the influential German political scientist Peter Merkl.247 Given its history of supporting authoritarian governments and military coups in Latin America—as demonstrated in Chile—an alliance with democratic Venezuela gave the United States the chance to improve its image in Latin America.

An official document (May, 1984) issued by the Bureau of Public Affairs, titled “background notes” and stored at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s archives, illuminates the government’s position: “Not only does Venezuela endorse the theoretical goals of democracy, but it has worked with the United States vigorously to promote democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere.”248 The same document continues: “Venezuela is one of our most important Latin American trading partners and a major supplier of petroleum and petroleum products to the United States.”249

Though the US government did not finance ROCI VENEZUELA, the US Embassy viewed Rauschenberg as an unofficial cultural ambassador. In a report from January 1984, Saff’s assistant, Brenda Woodward, noted meeting with Marilyn McAfee, Public Affairs Officer, and

246 Javier Corrales, “Venezuela in the 1980s, the 1990s and Beyond: Why Citizen-Detached Parties Imperil Economic Governance,” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America (Fall 1999): 26–29, https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/venezuela-1980s-1990s-and-beyond. 247 Terry Lynn Karl, "Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela," Latin American Research Review 22, no. 1 (1987): 63, accessed October 18, 2020, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503543. 248United States Department of States, Bureau of Public Affairs, “Background Notes: Venezuela (May 1984),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 249 United States Department of States, “Background Notes: Venezuela (May 1984).”

63 with Cultural Attaché John Russell, both of whom were stationed at the embassy and were

“willing to help facilitate the show in any way they could.”250 Venezuelan President Jaime

Lusinchi was present at the opening night festivities which underscores the support at the highest levels. He awarded the artist with the Andrés Bello Medal, which honors those who have excelled in education, scientific research, literature, and the arts.251 It can also be bestowed upon any who have rendered outstanding service in the areas of culture or cultural development. In a letter addressed to Rauschenberg and Van Brunt, McAfee mentioned that it was a “marvelous experience for me and for all the USIS [United States Information Service] staff to have played even a small part in your splendid success here.”252 The embassy’s interest in promoting the artist was such that they flew in US art critic and academic David Galloway from Germany where he resided at the time.

Galloway’s presence was strategic. The academic was in Venezuela to “educate” the public on Rauschenberg’s work. He was a professor of American Studies at the Ruhr University of Bochum in Germany and taught many classes on Rauschenberg’s work. With the help of a translator, he gave tours of the exhibition, lectures in Caracas and Maracaibo, and granted interviews about ROCI.253 The title of one of the lectures at the MACC was “Rauschenberg y la decade Pop.”254 He also played the role of a publicist.255 “ [Rauschenberg] is probably the best

North American painter. Certainly, the best of his time and perhaps the best that had ever lived,”

250Brenda Woodward, “R.O.C.I. Report,” in Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York, 251 “Cumplida su Misión de Paz, Maestro,” El Universal (Caracas), September 14, 1985, 144. 252 Marilyn McAfee, “Letter to Robert Rauschenberg and Terry Van Brunt (October 16, 1985),” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 253 Galloway: “I try to explain his work… (trato de explicar su trabajo…)” María Sylvia Briceño, “David Galloway ¿um critíco incondicional?,” Arte Plural de Venezuela IV, no. 10 (1985), 7. 254 “Encuentro com Rauschenberg,” El Universal, September 13, 1985. 255 Similarly, during his 1982 trip to China, “feeling a responsibility to introduce them [Chinese art students] to the world, he [Rauschenberg] and Saff gave a lecture on the history of Western Modern art.” Ikegami, “ROCI East: Rauschenberg’s Encounters in China,” 180.

64 attested Galloway to the Venezuelan press. 256 As if scripted by the US Embassy, Galloway’s talk stressed that “the goals of ROCI are fundamentally the goals of democracy.”257

The embassy’s involvement, however, was received with suspicion by the Venezuelan media, so much so that the journalist Nabor Zambrano falsely stated on national television that the exhibition was sponsored by the US government. As a reaction to Zambrano’s comments,

Ímber, the director of MACC, published an open letter in several newspapers attesting that the

US government was not directly funding the project.258 The tense dynamic between Zambrano and the MACC illustrates the anti-US sentiment in Latin America that was particularly acute in the transitional 1980s.

Among the key players supporting Rauschenberg once he arrived in Venezuela were

Ímber and Rangel, who hosted a popular television interview show called Buenos Días and were well-known members of the cultural elite in Caracas. Ímber, the director of the MACC, was born in Romania to Jewish parents but moved to Venezuela as a young child. She studied medicine at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, but never finished her degree. She later founded the

MACC in a former garage. Rangel, who was born in Venezuela, studied at Bard College and at

New York University. He joined the Venezuelan Foreign Service in 1958 and served as a First

Secretary at the Venezuelan Embassy in Brussels. In the mid-1980s he served as the Chief

Ambassador of Venezuela’s mission in the Dominican Republic and was also a board member at the MACC. Famous for voicing his disapproval of Marxist ideologies, Rangel took aim at Latin

America’s left-wing intellectuals and authoritarian military governments and lambasted those who blamed the US for most of the region’s difficulties.259 In a 1987 postscript for his iconic

256 Briceño, “David Galloway ¿um critíco incondicional?,” 6. 257 David Galloway, “Pintor Robert Rauschenberg,” video lecture, 22 min., Audiovisual Collection RRFA 02, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 258 Sofía Ímber, “Aclaratoria del MACC,” El Nacional, October 12, 1985. 259 “Obituary: Carlos Rangel, Author Dies in Venezuela at age 58,” New York Times, January 28, 1988, B5.

65 book, “The Latin Americans,” Rangel wrote that the book’s “basic purpose … is to expose and refute those falsehoods, of which I single out the most pernicious one, the smug and paralyzing myth that the backwardness of Latin America is due mainly to US imperialism.”260

ROCI fit Ímber and Rangel’s political agenda like a glove. Nonetheless, Rauschenberg and his team were sensitive to Rangel’s partisanship and the potential associated problems. In

Caracas (January 24, 1985), Saff met with US Ambassador George W. Landau, who voiced concerns about Rangel writing for the ROCI catalogue: “[Arturo] Urslar Pietri is above politics whereas Carlos Rangel is a political conservative, [and] it could confuse public sentiment concerning the show.” Landau then stated that “Urslar Pietri is the best choice in Venezuela.”261

Ultimately, Rauschenberg followed the ambassador’s recommendation, though inviting Urslar

Pietri to write for the catalogue turned out to be a mistake. Despite not having an official title,

Rangel was still involved in the project, participating in meetings and requesting materials from the ROCI staff.

Urslar Pietri, a writer best known for his magical realist works, delivered a superficial text that consisted mainly of descriptions and exoteric explanations of Rauschenberg’s iconic works. His description of Rauschenberg’s Bed (1955): “The pillow is real, as it’s the rest [of the bed], but only a huge dragonfly could adhere to it and even cover itself.”262 The author also analyzed Monogram (1959): “It could have been the result of a terrible storm, which swept and mixed everything in the most hazardous way leaving it confused and mixed such as the undecipherable remains of a vanished civilization.”263 He concluded his piece by stating that

260 Carlos Rangel, “Postscript,” in The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), 288. 261 “Miscellaneous notes from Don Saff relative to his trip to Caracas, Venezuela and Madrid, Spain,” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 262 Arturo Urslar Pietri, “Rauschenberg,” in Rauschenberg (Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, 1985), 64. 263 Urslar Pietri, “Rauschenberg,” 64–65.

66 through “magic,” Rauschenberg converted leftovers into art: “Perhaps, he should be called

Rauschenberg-Midas.”264 The text fell back upon an old, anti-modernist trope of junk being turned into art. Also, the term “Midas” connotes greed, and in this context capitalist excess. The

English translation, filled with mistakes and misused words, only made matters worse.

Rauschenberg rejected the writing, noting that he “did not find that quality [passion] in the piece,” and that Urslar Pietri’s “literal descriptions . . . would inhibit . . . the personal one-to-one confrontations that make every work unique.”265 Ultimately, the official ROCI VENEZUELA catalogue, which was really more of a magazine funded by the artist, included texts by Paz and

Donoso, but none from Venezuela. Though excluded from the official catalogue, Urslar Pietri’s words were later printed in the catalogue published by the MACC. It is possible, since it seems somewhat redundant to have two catalogues for one exhibition, that Ímber published the second in order to avoid upsetting Urslar Pietri, who was an important figure in Venezuelan society and politics.

After his experiences in Mexico and Chile, Rauschenberg hoped for a warmer reception in Venezuela: the response was less barbed, but not overwhelmingly positive. In a letter to the artist, McAfee acknowledged her disappointment in the less than effusive reaction of the acclaimed Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero.

Regrettably, your great success has provoked some negative comments in recent days from some of Venezuela’s artists. Alejandro Otero led the way with a sharply critical piece on the exhibition and your work. It was followed by two other “me toos.” Interestingly, Otero was overheard the night of the inauguration of the exhibit effusively praising your work (to a degree that surprised those with him).266

In fact, Otero did criticize the exhibition, but not as harshly as one might have expected based on

MacAfee’s letter. He disliked the style of the works overall, complaining that they were chaotic

264 Urslar Pietri, “Rauschenberg,” 66. 265 Robert Rauschenberg, “Unsent letter to Arturo Urslar Pietri,” Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 266 McAfee, “Letter to Robert Rauschenberg and Terry Van Brunt (October 16, 1985),” np.

67 and were made of “an excess of useless associations,” but complemented Rauschenberg’s photography.267 By contrast to Otero, the Venezuelan poet Juan Liscano was aggressive in his political tone and dismissal of “the conceptual weakness of Rauschenberg’s work; ” with irony, he was impressed by the effectiveness of the US Government’s soft power, which was “capable of launching around the world as an ambassador of its art, an artist of such weak work, whose modernity and inventiveness are only foreignness and manual skill disguised as an avant-garde that is already senile.” Liscano ended his article by quipping that, in the United States, “art is always mediocre.”268

As was the case with Mexico and Chile, Venezuela was suffering through an economic crisis in the 1980s. Yet, a decade earlier Venezuela was the richest nation in Latin America. The country was, until 1980, “one of the only four Latin American countries certified by the World

Bank as an upper-middle-income economy.”269 As in the rest of the region, however, Venezuela soon experienced the collapse of the statist economic model, wherein the government controls all major aspects of the economy through state-owned and run enterprises, subsidies, and interventions. 270 The failure of this model provided a major incentive for the ascent of neoliberal capitalism. In Venezuela, crude oil production and exportation fueled the economy and the decade’s oil glut led to a drastic and crippling reduction in the price of this raw material; much of Venezuela’s economic downfall was related to the country’s over-reliance on petrol exports. As economists Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez explain:

political and economic institutions [in Venezuela] worked well under increasing or even stable prices but were ill prepared to manage the strong declines in oil rents

267 Alejandro Otero, “Rauschenberg Revisado,” El Nacional, September 29, 1985. 268 Juan Liscano, “Rauschenberg: Rock en Rosado,” El Nacional, October 5, 1985. 269 Venezuela also had a GDP higher than that of Spain, Greece, or Israel. Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez, Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), 19. 270 Javier Corrales, “In Search of a Theory of Polarization: Lessons from Venezuela, 1999–2005,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 79 (October 2005): 105–118.

68

that characterized the period between 1981 and 1998. Venezuela’s difficulties in diversifying its economy . . . gave the economy very few buffers that would allow it to react to an adverse oil price shock.271

In Earth Haunts/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985), Rauschenberg made evident his awareness of Venezuela’s resource curse—the idea that the overreliance on an abundance of natural resources tends to be harmful to a country’s social and economic development (fig. 28).272 The artist was no stranger to the social and economic impact of oil extraction. He was born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, a city completely dependent on the petrol-chemical industry that was once the center of the largest oil refining network in the US. “In this oil town, both economic necessity of industry and its disfigurement of the environment must have been abundantly clear,” notes Robert Mattison.273 In Earth Haunts, the word Llano appears in black on the upper right corner, referring to the Los Llanos region along the border with Colombia, an area known for its delicate floodplain ecosystem and for its crude (sand) oil extraction.274 Rauschenberg aggressively slapped sand from the region onto the canvas, and superimposed large photographic images of oil barrels over details of the fragile Venezuelan fauna and flora. The heavy silhouetted barrels seem to weigh on the delicate tropical bird in the lower left corner of the canvas. Tones of black subsume cheerful hints of blue, pink, and orange. As somber as its title, the style and imagery of the work echoes the prediction made by Venezuelan Oil Minister and

OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo in 1970: “ten years from now, 20 years from now,

271 Hausmann and Rodríguez, Venezuela Before Chávez, 16, 18-19. As further explained by the authors: “In the 1970s, the Venezuelan economy did an about-face. Per capita non-oil GDP declined by a cumulative 18.64 percent between 1978 and 2001. Because this period was associated with growth in labor force participation, the decline in per worker GDP was even higher: 35.6 percent in the twenty-three-year period. The oil sector’s decline was even more pronounced: 64.9 percent in per capita terms, 49.2 percent in per worker terms from its 1970 peak.” 272 For more, see Syed M. Murshed, The Resource Curse (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2018). 273 Robert S. Mattison, “Robert Rauschenberg’s Environmental Activism,” in Last Turn, Your Turn (New York: Jacobson Howard Gallery, 2008), 6. Exhibition catalogue. 274 Isabel Cristina Calcano, “Trying to understand R.O.C.I.,” The Daily Journal (Caracas), September 24, 1985, 15.

69 you will see . . . oil will bring us ruin.”275 According to Perez Alfonzo, petrol was “the devil’s excrement.”276

The gloomy quality of Earth Haunts evokes Mother Nature’s revenge for human greed and the specter of a lost beauty and ecological balance. It is no mystery that Rauschenberg cared about environmental issues. In 1970, he had created the first poster for Earth Day and later produced lithographs for the United Nation’s first climate conference in 1972. Composed of silkscreened images on a vertical plywood panel, the oversized Power Stack/ROCI VENEZUELA

(1985) (fig. 29) displays the artist’s environmental concerns and awareness of the dangers of an economy based on extractivism. On the upper edge, an image of bathers laying on the sand merges with a silkscreened photograph of cattle in dark red, highlighted by yellow brushstrokes.

Below, inside a grey triangle, the artist placed the blurry image of a flare stack or oil platform.277

Bottles on a shelf lie along the bottom edge accompanied by a sign that reads “no se fía, ne se presta” (we don’t sell on credit). Framing this image, around the edge of the plywood panel,

Rauschenberg placed overgrown cacti and two more flare stacks or oil towers in red. The cattle and oil imagery represent the devastating and environmental results of an extractivist economy, and “no credit,” the failure of the all or nothing economy. Oil may be flowing but cash is not.

Rauschenberg once said “It’s hard for me not to build in a lesson because I care so much about technology and the environment. We’re really going to be lost if we don’t come to terms.”278

Does Power Stack’s image of overgrown vegetation proffer a sign of nature’s resilience, nonetheless? Typically, the artist messages in ways both subtle and layered, prodding the viewer to shuffle through the juxtaposed imagery and the emotion and symbolic valences of color.

275 Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo quoted in Charles Ukeje, Oil and Violent Conflicts in the Niger Delta (Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 2002), 98. 276 Jerry Unseen, “The Devils Excrement,” Fortune, February 2, 2003. 277 The image was identified by the Robert Rauschenberg foundation as a radio tower. Based on the work’s title and theme, however, I believe it is a flare stack or an oil platform. 278 Mattison, “Robert Rauschenberg’s Environmental Activism,” 19.

70

The issue of environmental destruction and its effects on local populations relates to the other focus of ROCI VENEZUELA: Rauschenberg’s photographs and screen prints featuring

Amerindians from the region. These images included the e’nyëpa—more commonly referred to by the criollo term Panare—and the Pemón peoples; the former lived mostly in isolation, while the latter were more integrated. Rauschenberg also visited the Maquiritare and Piaroa people.279

He was adamant from the beginning about traveling to the Amazon region despite being discouraged in doing so by the Venezuelan elite.280 This experience was crucial to ROCI

VENEZUELA, differentiating it from the Mexico and Chile visits. The sheer number of

Rauschenberg’s photographs “capturing” the Amerindian tribes, reveals his fascination with the subject; as he noted “those images [photographs taken in the Amazon forest] plus the information are a big part of the Venezuelan series.”281

At the time of Rauschenberg’s visit, many Amerindians were in a precarious situation.

The 1961 Venezuelan constitution, which included the first formal acknowledgement of the existence of the indigenous population, offered protection in exchange for integration. This paradox between protection and integration is particularly evident in the following passage: “The

State is aimed at improving the living conditions of the peasant population. The law will establish a state of emergency, requiring the protection of indigenous communities and their progressive incorporation into the life of the nation.”282 Peruvian writer Mirko Lauer argued that

“[indigenism] became especially marked when patterns of land ownership began to change and

279 Paul Henley, The Panare/Tradition and Change on the Amazonian Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), XIII. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation kindly provided me with a calendar of Rauschenberg’s trip to Venezuela. The calendar notes the name of the tribes visited by the artist. Some names are misspelled (e.g., “Maxitare” instead of Maquiritare). It mentions the “Sawena” tribe, but I was not able to verify the name. It is possible that it refers to de Sáliba people. Calendar created by Terry Van Brunt, in Calendar and Schedules, RRFA 01, Robert Rauschenberg papers, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. 280 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 168. 281 Rauschenberg and Saff, 168. 282 Nalúa Rosa Silva Monterrey and Alexánder Mansutti Rodríguez, “Situación de los pueblos indígenas de Venezuela,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes, no. 82 (1996): 349.

71 the Indian became an immigrant in the bourgeois nation, ‘a candidate for integration,’ or rather

‘to be integrated.’”283 In 1969, the Venezuelan government began to build roads to stimulate economic development of the Amazon region under the Comisíon para el Desarrollo del Sur

(Commission for the Development of the South or CODESUR).284 This commission was responsible for the displacement of many peoples, while the emergence of mining in the area worsened the situation and gave rise to additional conflicts.285 In 1978, the Amerindian population, which was estimated at around 150,000 people was divided into approximately thirty-two ethnic groups.286 These numbers, however, may not be accurate, as a considerable number of Amerindians lived in cities at that time, specifically in so-called ethnic neighborhoods, and had already been absorbed into urban society.287

As Rauschenberg himself made a point of noting, Catholic missionaries were a disruptive presence in many Amerindian tribes, as they introduced materialism (for example, gifts of goats and clothing) and built parochial schools.288 “I went to another tribe and they were totally civilized in a Catholic sense that made them ashamed of who they were. This was quite a letdown from the braless, loinclothed, clay-colored people.”289 Similarly, Evangelical missionaries had been attempting to convert the Venezuelan indigenous tribes since the early twentieth century, but their presence grew exponentially after the sixties. In 1943, these missionaries, who were often from the United States founded the periodical New Tribes

Mission—Journal Brown Gold; the title referred to the color of the skin of the Amerindians.290

Pemon Sunday/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985; fig. 30) depicts the tribe Rauschenberg

283 Mirko Lauer, “Populist Ideology and Indigenism: A Critique,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America, ed. Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 76. 284 Henley, The Panare, 1. 285 Henley, 182. 286 “Política Indigenista del Estado Venezolano,” Boletín Indigenista Venezolano, no. 14 (January–June 1978); 10. 287 Monterrey and Rodríguez, “Situación de los pueblos indígenas de Venezuela,” 349. 288 Henley, The Panare, 196. 289 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 169. 290 The journal is currently published under the title “Ethnos 360.” Henley, The Panare, 168.

72 referred to as “totally civilized.” A silkscreened image of a Pemón boy under a faucet occupies half of the canvas, while the other half show a confused image of broken windows. With fury, if not violence, white splatters overtake the body of the boy, while dark splatters and strokes partially obscure the windows. Excepting the natural-colored canvas, the imagery is entirely in black and white. The visual and metaphorical layering perhaps evokes Rauschenberg’s disappointment with the effects of displacement and integration, and the resulting loss of authenticity or otherness. “They [Pémon] are very close to not being Indians,” says a note, probably by Van Brunt, in a calendar provided by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.291 As

Lauer put it, “progress erodes identity, whereas permanence preserves it.”292

My Panare Dream with Yutaje/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985; fig. 31) balances the pessimism of Pemon Sunday and Earth Haunts by depicting an Amazonian paradise that is far from the evils of modern society. A wide vertical yellow line divides the grand-scale canvas (90

7/8 x112 5/8 inches). To the left, three silkscreened photographs of Amerindians in traditional garments frame a portrait of a monkey. The artist colored them in an earthy red that mimics onoto (also known as urucum or achiote), a natural pigment commonly used by the indigenous population from the Amazon to paint their bodies. Above them, a purple window and a bridge appear side-by-side. To the right of the canvas, the artist silkscreened photographs of different ecosystems, including depictions of a meadow and of the lush vegetation of the Amazon. In the lower right corner, the image of a chicken emerges almost imperceptibly. The window, a leitmotif in Rauschenberg’s oeuvre, seems to function as an entrance point to the eponymous

“Panare” dream. The word yutaje means “river foam” in the dialect spoken by the Panare, who use it to refer to both the region and to a specific river and waterfall. Portraying the indigenous

291 Email exchange between Francine Snyder (Chief Archivist), Shrim Khaki (Assistant Archivist), and the author, March 19, 2021. 292 Lauer, “Populist Ideology and Indigenism: A Critique,” 76.

73 subjects as simultaneously one with nature and its guardians, the work is romantic, nostalgic, and, in the words of Saff, “seductive.”293 .

The ambiguity of Rauschenberg’s “random order” that underlies his compositions reveals the, arguably, productive tension between his good faith interest in defending and preserving the integrity of the Amerindians and his exoticizing, voyeuristic gaze. Inevitably, the artist perpetuated the “noble savage” stereotype, the etymology of “savage” relating to one who dwelled in the woods or wilderness. According to art historian Judy Sund, it came to refer to vestiges “of humanity’s Golden Age, when people lived in harmony with nature, innocent of modern vice.”294 This romanticized view of the other– which revealed more about the European anxiety over the ills of industrialization – emerged in the late sixteenth century as part of a reaction against another stereotype, “the portrayal of Brazilian indigenes as rude cannibals in

Mundus Novus.”295 Despite the artist’s genuine concern for indigenous people, his images of the

Amerindians ultimately reinforces value judgements of backwardness, positions the other as the figure with which to critique the ills of Western society, and supports racist tropes. While animals are a common motif in Rauschenberg’s works, his choice of bright yellow for the silkscreened image of a monkey posed alongside those of Amerindians seen in My Panare

Dream with Yutaje, recalls the fetish for the “primitive” in the iconic paintings of French artist,

Henri Rousseau (1844-1910). Archeologist Michael Rowland argues that “when indigenous peoples are stereotyped as ‘noble savages,’ they are frozen in the past, with little to contribute to human history.”296

293 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 168. 294 “Known today as the ‘Noble Savage’ the figure they crafted from Native American parts was never labeled as such by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers who invented it.” Judy Sund, Exotic: A Fetish for the Foreign (London: Phaidon, 2019), 160. 295 Sund, Exotic: A Fetish for the Foreign, 160. 296 Michael Rowland, “Return of the ‘Noble Savage’: Misrepresenting the Past, Present and Future,” Australian Aboriginal Studies (January 2004): 2.

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Onoto Snare/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985; fig. 32) offers another example of

Rauschenberg’s abstruseness. The unruly composition evades straightforward readings: he smeared it with onoto-colored paint and long vertical of white and yellow splatters. A graphic outline of a tapir and a silkscreened photograph of fragments of an oca (typical indigenous housing) are depicted in the bottom half of the work. The artist glued a ripped net, used by

Amerindians to hunt wild hogs and tapirs, to the middle of the canvas, while a green image of a cloth with a pattern made of Native American busts occupies a large section of the upper half.

The artist’s original photograph shows that cloth hanging in front of an Amerindian dwelling.

Despite the unknown origin of this industrially-produced fabric—it could have been a gift from

Rauschenberg or from missionaries, or perhaps the Amerindians purchased it in the nearest mining village—its presence in such a remote location testifies to the reach of globalization. The textile pattern – the repeated bust of a Native American in a headdress—recalls ubiquitous (and often demeaning) advertising images and those found in other printed materials. The pattern uncannily resembles the Washington football team’s former racist mascot (Redskins) and clearly depicts the indigenous peoples of North America rather than the Amerindians of the Amazon region.297 While Rauschenberg’s conflation of North American indigenous peoples with

Amerindians from Venezuela might seem arbitrary, the late 1970s saw the ‘Pan-Indianism’ movements gain traction throughout the world.298

Significantly, Rauschenberg identified as part Cherokee: “My father’s mother was

Cherokee...my father looks Indian in the photographs.”299 His pride in his Cherokee

297 In 2020, after increasing pressure from sponsors, the team formerly known as Washington Red Skins decided to change its name and mascot. 298 “During the 1970s these movements were internationalized, and consequently in 1982 the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) was established within the UN [United Nations] Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Since then, indigenous peoples in the world have participated in an extensive discussion of their rights to im- prove how they are treated under international law.” Ayako Uchida, “Searching for Indigenous Alliances: International NGOs of the United States and Canada in the 1970s,” Japanese Journal of American Studies, no. 23 (2012); 210. 299 Rose, Rauschenberg, 105.

75 background—not unusual in the United States, where many citizens declare their Native

American ancestry—might have driven his curiosity and empathy for the indigenous tribes of the

Amazon basin. His attitude reflects the more positive attitudes historically held by Europeans toward North American native peoples versus the perceived “primitive” Amerindians from Latin

America, as Sund has documented. Admired for their bravery and strategies in warfare and their masterful communion with the land, North American Natives were considered more “noble”:

“North American Indigene of Western cliché were freedom-loving but community-minded individual, self-sufficient, stoic and virile,” Sund writes.300

Rauschenberg’s use of onoto-colored paint and an actual found object (the net) can itself be interpreted as a form of artistic “epistemic extractivism,” further complicating the readings of his Venezuelan works. From its original application to the exploitation of natural resources, recent postcolonial scholarship has extended this concept to include the extraction of knowledge from societies nonetheless deemed culturally subaltern (e.g., Amerindians, Aborigines, etc.).

According to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an academic and activist of First Nation descent:

Extracting is taking. Actually, extracting is stealing—it is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts that extraction has…. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous—extraction of indigenous knowledge, indigenous women, indigenous peoples.301

Building on this view, scholars such as the Bolivian Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui argue that extractivism includes the appropriation of ideas and their transformation into symbolic and economic capital. “As in any knowledge system, we produce raw material, and they return elaborated products.”302 The Amerindians provided the natural onoto pigment that

300 Sund, Exotic: A Fetish for the Foreign, 160. 301 “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle-No-More’s Leanne Simpson,” YES Magazine, May 5, 2013, https://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no- more-leanne-simpson. 302 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui in Ramón Grosfonguel, “Del extractivismo económico al extractivismo epistémico y al extractivismo ontológico: una forma destructiva de conocer, ser y estar en el mundo,” Tabula Rasa, no. 24 (Jan–Feb. 2016); 134. Author’s translation. For a critique of decolonial aesthetics, see Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “Ch'ixinakax

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Rauschenberg brought back to Captiva and used as a reference for his custom-made industrial paint. I “had some paint mixed.” I think it’s ‘Number 15,” noted the artist.303 To be sure,

Rauschenberg’s creative process preceded the circulation of decolonial and postcolonial thinking in Anglo-American academia, and which followed upon the liberation of European-held territories in Africa and the Middle East.304 Yet, Latin American critics writing on Rauschenberg before the term was coined intuited the problem of inequitably appropriating things that are valued in a foreign, subaltern culture, especially when those objects are not ubiquitous, nor considered waste, nor mass produced commodities of import or export. They are “taken” rather than found. In his nonetheless positive review of ROCI VENEZUELA, Edgar Otálvora acknowledges the issue by asking “Is it necessary to be Venezuelan … to create art with elements from this culture?” He persisted: “is it necessary to live with the Waraos [Amerindian people living in northeast Venezuela] to use some colorful feathers in an assemblage?”305

It must be noted, however, that during his initial exploratory visit for ROCI

VENEZUELA, Rauschenberg became aware of the dynamics of power and racism within the regional urban elites of Caracas and, to a lesser extent, of Maracaibo. After his return to the capital from the Amazon region on June 30, 1985, the artist received a letter from the

Venezuelan Ambassador’s wife, Pepita Tejera Paris, in which she voiced her concerns: “Just a few lines to tell you how relieved we were that you were back at the Hilton Hotel of Caracas after your tour of the interior. That sense of relief—we really were quite worried—was followed

utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization,” South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (Winter 2012); Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017). 303 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 169. 304 The liberation of European-held territories in Africa and the Middle East started just after WWII through the 1970s. Foundational works for postcolonial scholarship includes Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 2019 [1978]) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice.” Wedge 7, no. 8 (Winter/Spring 1985): 118–31. 305 Edgar Otálvora, “El Color Local y lo Universal,” El Universal (Caracas), October 6, 1985, 6.

77 by a tremendous curiosity.”306 This letter is an example of what Brazilian scholar Paulo

Herkenhoff has described as “internal colonialism,” which is a result of geographic concentration of wealth in large cities.307 As he explains, with an example from Brazil that is applicable to most

Latin American capitals at the time: “A city like São Paulo may very well be halfway between

New York and Bélem. That is to say, in Brazil the hegemonic centers exert on the peripheral regions of the country the same relation of power to which they would be subjected, as peripheral cities of the world, by the international hegemonic centers.”308

Rauschenberg observed the fundamental disparity in outlook and resources between the urban elite in Caracas and the rest of the country: “in Venezuela there are only about three leading cities with a lot of aristocrats and intellectuals. They asked why I would want to go to the

Amazonas Territory and visit with the tribes, since they had nothing to do with the country.”309

The disdain toward the indigenous peoples exhibited by Venezuelan urban elites arguably accounts for the fact the press for the most part ignored Rauschenberg’s depictions of the

Amerindians. Articles mentioned “the jungle” instead of naming or focusing on the people themselves; or in the case of the art critic Rafael Pineda, they mentioned the artist’s interest only in passing: “And finally, …there are some Indians integrated into the Guayana landscape (My

Panare Dream with Yutaje).”310

The artist made visible this social, racial, and economic divide in the title and composition of his assemblage Urban/Interior Network/ROCI VENEZUELA (1985; fig. 33). He divided the canvas into three sections. To the left, in red and magenta, appears the silkscreened

306 Pepita Tejera Paris, “Letter addressed to Robert Rauschenberg,” RRFAA 10, Donald Saff Papers, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 307 Paulo Herkenhoff, “The Void and the Dialogue in the Western Hemisphere,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America, ed. Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 70. 308 Herkenhoff, “The Void and the Dialogue in the Western Hemisphere,” 70. 309 Rauschenberg and Saff, “A Conversation about Art and R.O.C.I.,” 168. 310 Rafael Pineda, “Lo que Robert Rauschenberg vio en Venezuela,” El Nacional, November 10, 1985.

78 photograph of a rudimentary bridge. On top of the image of the bridge, he attached a colorful mirror as well as the seat of a chair with a roll of twine on top supported by a single plywood leg.

Reminiscent of the Mexico series, Rauschenberg swathed the middle section of the canvas in colorful fabrics. Three Amerindian men, washed in red, stand in the middle of the canvas next to an outline of the tapir already seen in Onoto Snare. Below these the men and the tapir, is a hand- painted image of a bed and the oil flare from Power Stack (see fig. 29). To the right is a cropped photograph of a neoclassical building from downtown Caracas (either the Basilica de Santa

Teresa or the Palacio Federal Legislativo). Through his usage of vertical and horizontal stripes and selective application of the dark blue and red of the Venezuelan flag, the artist creates distance—physical and cultural—between the silkscreened photograph of the Amerindians and the urban elements. The Amerindians and the tapir seem alien in a work in which all other motifs

(e.g., a light pole, a modern bed, and a chair) relate to urban life. While the bridge might suggest a path toward harmonious coexistence, the mirror is what deserves special attention. It not only reflects the viewer’s face, thereby including the urban museumgoer in the work, but it is placed in such a way to create a triangulated gaze: the Amerindians appear to look actively at the viewer as he or she is captured in the mirror image.

In 1992, years after the ROCI show, in the Venezuelan arts and culture magazine Estilo,

Maria Luz Cárdenas mounted a defense of Rauschenberg, in reaction to what she perceived as the bias of local critics. She did so by referring to the intricacies of the actual artworks, and their operative strategy of refusing interpretative closure:

Some intellectuals, writers, critics and artists, in a retarded, nationalist and third world tone, accused the Museum of having established hidden agreements with the CIA to make the Yankee culture penetrate Venezuela and undermine the nation’s folkloric values. The controversy turned into insults from a group of people with the same way of thinking, young and mostly uprooted who spend half the year in New York...To the critics, the exhibition responded by itself, and its works showed that an artist can avoid a world of predetermined molds. No one is as aware as Rauschenberg that there is no longer a place for definitive and categorical truths in

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contemporary art. Even when it was about social realities completely opposite to his own, he instinctively knew how to deal with stereotypes. He solves them: his gaze is a gaze of the fragmentary, the juxtaposed.311

Cárdenas targeted the anti-US sentiment prevalent among the Latin American cultural elite. She pointed out the hypocrisy of many who impugned Rauschenberg, when they themselves had travelled to New York for the benefit of their own careers, and precisely because of its status as an international capital of creativity and the art market. Moreover, she opined that

Rauschenberg’s “fragmentary” gaze actually interrogates the simplistic, unified form of the stereotype, and thus alerts the viewer to the dangers of preconceived ideas about the other.

Perhaps the elapse of a few years allowed for the less accusatory, more thoughtful tone, though it underscores the ways in which an exhibition project, as a spectacular, heavily promoted, public event, is one thing, and the individual artists, another. More than Rauschenberg was on view at these Latin American countries, as this thesis has argued – the policies of the United States were also up for critical evaluation. The reception of the ROCI works reveals much about the politicization of art criticism and inherent biases within different cultures.

Indeed, the ROCI VENEZUELA series exposed fault lines deep inside Venezuelan society, specifically the failed domestic policies regarding the Amerindians and the catastrophic weakness of the statist, extractivist economy. ROCI VENEZUELA testifies to Rauschenberg’s concerns about environmental destruction, which were ahead of their time, given that only in the last two decades have eco-critical art and interpretive frameworks come to the fore among contemporary artists and in art history, alongside postcolonial approaches. He declared in 1987:

“I try to use my art to communicate that you, yourself, must take responsibility for life on earth.”312 The Venezuela series and show also confirmed that Rauschenberg had learned along

311 Maria Luz Cárdenas, “Descubrir, Transformar, Deconstruir: Los viajens equinocciales de Robert Rauschenberg,” Estilo, no. 15, (October 1992), 54. 312 Mary Lynn Kotz, “Rauschenberg’s Tour de Force,” New York Times, March 3, 1987, p. 30.

80 the way and could no longer be naïve about the geopolitical implications of his project, or remain neutral about political issues—the environment—that actually concerned him. Rauschenberg went where many Caraqueños would not venture, attempting to present Venezuela to

Venezuelans.

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In order to achieve dialogue, we must learn each other’s language, history, art, literature and political ideas. We must travel south and east, with frequency and humility, not as cultural tourists but as civilian ambassadors. Only through dialogue can we develop models of coexistence and co-operation.”313 Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Conclusion:

Departures

Those who knew and worked with Robert Rauschenberg attest that the artist deliberately arrived at the ROCI host countries without much background knowledge, so that he could observe their respective cultures and daily life without preconceived ideas.314 As always, the element of chance governed the artist’s creative process. This strategy, however, backfired in the volatile political climate of 1980s Latin America. His typical refusal to take a stance on pressing socio-economic issues, to remain seemingly aloof, did not play well at the time. Sophisticated local audiences considered both the ROCI concept of cultural good will and the importation of the Rauschenberg “brand” to be presumptuous. The project often gave the impression that the artist came and went, appropriating scenes of everyday life in a foreign country as grist for his creative mill. The program did not allow for true cultural exchange, even as it was a form of a cost-free exhibition that allowed many to see foreign avant-garde art, who would otherwise have no opportunity to do so. As to the finished works in his characteristic style of “random order”— the images contained therein and their seemingly miscellaneous combinations led many to

313 Guillermo Gómez-Peña, “The Multicultural Paradigm: An Open Letter to the National Arts Community,” in Beyond the Fantastic: Contemporary Art Criticism from Latin America, ed., Gerardo Mosquera (London: inIVA, 1995), 186. 314 Donald Saff and Julia Blaut in Antonella Pelizzari, “ROCI and Rauschenberg’s Internationalism,’ Hunter College (New York), February 11, 2021, Zoom, lecture.

82 perceive them as shallow, evincing a perspective steeped in stereotype. Rauschenberg made himself vulnerable to charges of being a gringo tourist.

A lingering Cold War dynamic, a long history of antiyanquismo, and a legitimate fear of neoliberal trade policies and cultural imperialism, preconditioned a hostile reception toward any

“ambassador” coming South from North of the Rio Grande. With few exceptions, notably Paz in

Mexico, the local, mainly left-wing intelligentsia greeted the ROCI endeavor with skepticism.

Some individuals even believed that the project was linked to the CIA. “I don’t feel like I am the animal you guys described,” Rauschenberg defended himself during a press conference in

Mexico.315 Yet, it is also true that in each location he had powerful corporate and/or government support and allies. The exhibitions took place in official institutions, not alternative spaces, and he made no effort to reside in the urban communities, set up a studio or engage local craftsmen or artists. “Although it may seem strange, Rauschenberg does not contact the artists of the countries included in his tour,” remarked journalist Maria Angelica Hernández.316 By contrast he had created more collaboratively in France (1973) and India (1975).317

Rauschenberg’s initial naiveté soon vanished. At each stop, he became increasingly more aware of the geopolitical implications of his project. The situation in Chile was especially eye- opening. Venezuela ended up being an opportunity for restating his support for democratic values. In a 1987 interview with art historian Barbara Rose, he mentioned ROCI CHINA

(November 15, 1985), which followed upon ROCI VENEZUELA. He noted that his project was

“acceptable” to the Chinese government because it coincided with the country’s cultural

315 MacMasters, “Un Rauschenberg ‘con Tablas’ Charló com la Comunidad Artística Mexicana,” April 20, 1985. 316 Maria Angelica Hernández, “El arte es una rareza del mundo,” El Diario de Caracas, September, 1985, p. 52. 317 In France, Rauschenberg worked with Marius Peraudeau at the paper mill Richard de Bas in Amber. In India, the artist worked at a textile center founded by Mohandas K. Gandhi. He also collaborated with Russian poet Andre Voznesesky in 1978. In 1982, before ROCI, the artist also worked at the Xuan paper mill in China (1982) and together with the Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics Company in Shigaraki, Japan (1982).

83 opening.318 It was at the end of 1984, that the Central Communist Party started a massive program to open up the country to Western arts and thoughts.319 He went on to correct Rose when she referred to the host ROCI countries as “Third World” cultures: “they’re sensitive areas,” he retorted, “not Third World countries.”320

Rauschenberg’s post-1987 iterations of the ambitious mural-scaled, ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong

Piece (1981-1998; fig. 34 & 35) conspicuously features images and materials from the inaugural

ROCI ventures in Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela.321 The artist included caryatids and copper from Chile, street vendors and flour sacks from Mexico, and images of favelas from Venezuela in his 750-foot-long painting considered by many a self-portrait or a memoir.322 The work,

Rauschenberg explained, “reflects my travels, changes in my own life, my desires and prejudices.”323 While it is undeniable that ROCI was in many ways a political affair, the prominence of elements from these Latin American countries in this one-piece memoir, suggests that the project was also quite personal. Milton—Rauschenberg’s birth name—who dreamed of photographing the entire US, ended up photographing much of the world.

For some time, critics and art historians writing on ROCI have grappled with the project’s geopolitical ambitions, successes and failures—indeed, the results differed, on a case- by-case basis. Some texts function as apologias, while others censure him. The artist’s friends were at times blindly laudatory: “the art of Rauschenberg is universal, and it is the universal

318 Rose, Rauschenberg, 106. 319 Ikegami, “ROCI East: Rauschenberg’s Encounters in China,” 181. 320 Rose, Rauschenberg, 115. 321 Later iterations of the work, which just like ROCI was accumulative, featured images and material from other ROCI countries. The piece was first put together in 1982 at the Edison Community College’s exhibition hall. By 1984, Rauschenberg had assembled 400-feet of the painting which was then exhibited in Miami. In 1987, the work including the ROCI imagery, was shown with great fanfare at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Most recently, the work was installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2018-2019). Created over 17 years, the work is composed of 190 panels. The piece is comprised of an eclectic array of material. 322 Roslyn Sulcas, “Decoding Robert Rauschenberg,” New York Times, December 14, 2018. 323 Kotz, Rauschenberg, 258.

84 ideal that can save the world from self-destruction” said New York Senator Jacob K. Javits.324

Recent reactions should also be taken with a grain of salt. The ROCI project functions today as a lighting-rod for debates on cultural imperialism, globalism, and on how to represent the other.

Although there is no true neutrality in art history, emotions run high when it comes to analyses of

ROCI. As someone born in Brazil, not long after the end of a military dictatorship blatantly supported by the United States, I was first attracted to ROCI because of resentment; once immersed in the archives, I became fascinated by the varied reception of the work and what that revealed about cultural differences and tensions in the three different Latin American countries and among different types of people. If the imagery of ROCI sometimes thrived on stereotypes, it nonetheless served to mirror other stereotypes held by citizens of Mexico, Chile, and

Venezuela toward the United States.

Interest in the history of ROCI is currently having a renaissance, a consequence of the global trend in contemporary art criticism and the reality of the contemporary art biennales on the rise over the past three decades. Here too Rauschenberg’s ROCI and his impresario-like approach to travelling exhibitions were prototypes of sorts. After all, exhibitions of old masters do not circulate with such alacrity. Artists who self-righteously imbue their work with overt political and polemical content also do not shy away from self-promotion and commercial opportunities. And Rauschenberg continues to be an artist’s artist, ever relevant, as witnessed by the Nari Ward’s exhibition at The New Museum, where this social activist acknowledged

Rauschenberg’s influence on his own copper pieces Ground (In Progress) (2015)325

324 Jacob K. Javits (December 13, 1984) in Donald Saff records on ROCI, RRFAA 10, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. 325 “Inspired by an encounter with Robert Rauschenberg’s prints on copper during a residency at Rauschenberg’s former studio in Captiva, FL, these works also reference the traditional use of copper in many cultures as a tool for healing the body.” Wall text for Ground (In Progress) (2015), by Nari Ward. Nari Ward: We the People, February 13 to May 26, 2019, The New Museum, New York.

85

Most recently, Blakinger gave a lecture on ROCI at the Courtauld Institute of Art in

London (2019).326 While I write this thesis, Professor Maria Antonella Pelizzari at Hunter

College in New York is teaching a class on Rauschenberg’s ROCI project (Spring 2021). In

Chile, art historian Camila Estrella just finished gathering her extensive research on the artist’s visit to her home country in a resourceful website; and curator Gabriela Rangel is organizing an exhibition on the topic. 327 The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation welcomes these open inquiries into the artist’s legacy. They have not shied away from adverse assessments. It is crucial that in approaching ROCI and it is aftermath, Mexicans, Chileans, and Venezuelans—the ones that were indeed there and that saw their respective countries depicted in Rauschenberg’s works—are heard. The artist believed that it would take twenty-five years for people to understand ROCI; in that regard he was correct. The generative questions and scholarship continue.328

326 John Blakinger’s lecture, “‘The World is My Palette’: Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange,” YouTube, May 13, 2019. Video, 48:11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ9bfZHbVpA&feature=emb_logo. 327 Camila Estrella, R.O.C.I.: Derivaciones de la visita de Rauschenberg en Chile, accessed March 25, 2021. It is unclear to me where and when the exhibition will happen. Gabriela Rangel is the former artistic director of MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). 328 Conversation with David White, September 4, 2018, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

86

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ROCI MEXICO. Poem by Octavio Paz and essay by Robert Hughes. Mexico City: Museo Rufino Tamayo, 1985.

ROCI VENEZUELA. Essay by Robert Hughes. Caracas: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, 1985.

Rócio Salazar, Mónica. Death and the Invisible Hand: Contemporary Mexican Art, 1988- Present. PhD., diss., The University of Texas at Dallas, 2016.

Roett, Riordan. Mexico and the United States: Managing the Relationship. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988.

Rose, Barbara and Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg: An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg by Barbara Rose. New York: Vintage Books, 1987.

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Ross, Andrew, and Kristin Ross eds. Anti-Americanism. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

Rowland, Michael “Return of the ‘Noble Savage’: Misrepresenting the Past, Present and Future,” Australian Aboriginal Studies (January 2004): 2.

Rueda, Patrício and Patrícia Saavedra. “Rauschenberg em el Bellas Artes.” APECH 2: Revista de la Associacíon de Pintores y Escultores de Chile, July 1986, 14–16.

Saff, Donald J. “Conservation of Matter: Robert Rauschenberg’s Art of Acceptance.” Aperture (New York), no. 125 (Autumn 1991), 24–31.

Salazar, Harry L. Simón. Television, Democracy, and the Mediatization of Chilean Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018.

Sarto, Ana del, Alicia Ríos, and Abril Trigo eds. The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Sayag, Alain. Rauschenberg Photographs. New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.

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Simpson, Leanne. “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle-No-More’s.” YES Magazine, May 5, 2013. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://www.yesmagazine.org/peace- justice/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson.

Sontag, Susan. On photography. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

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Sund, Judy. Exotic: A Fetish for the Foreign. London: Phaidon, 2019.

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Wivel, Mikael. “Boxer Blues.” In Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades & Urban Bourbons. Kbh: Ordrupgaard, 1996.

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Illustrations

Figure 1: Cover of the ROCI MEXICO catalogue, 1985. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 2: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [child inside a cardboard box], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-T, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 3: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [garbage], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-M, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 4: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [dog eating garbage], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-T, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 5: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [shoe shiner’s chair], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-R, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 6: Robert Rauschenberg, Wall Pond/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and fabric collage on canvas (80 x 121 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 7: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [shoe shop window], Mexico, 1984. 84-8-D, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 7, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 8: Robert Rauschenberg, Mexican Canary/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Silkscreen ink, acrylic, fabric and graphite on canvas with metal frame (90.625 x 161.375 x 6.125 inches). Private collection.

Figure 9: Robert Rauschenberg, Casino /ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic on double-faced fabric (302.75 x 129 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 10: Robert Rauschenberg, Daydream /ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (65.5 x 80.5 inches). Collection of James and Katherine Goodman.

Figure 11: Robert Rauschenberg, Street Contract/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (110.25 x 111.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 12: Robert Rauschenberg, Park/ ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic, collage, and pencil on canvas (114 x 51.375 inches). Minneapolis Institute of Art. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the P.D. McMillan Memorial Fund.

Figure 13: Robert Rauschenberg, Market Altar/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (122 x 114 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 14: Robert Rauschenberg, Awn/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (122.75 x 115.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 15: Robert Rauschenberg, Altar Peace/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic on canvas with aluminum frame plus object of aluminum tin (installed 126 x 90 x 24 inches). National Gallery of art, Washington D.C. Gift of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

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Figure 16: Robert Rauschenberg, Night Post/ROCI MEXICO, 1985. Acrylic and collage on cardboard (84. 25 x 156.25 x 3.875 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 17: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite VII/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48.125 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figures 18: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite IX/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 19: Robert Rauschenberg, Copperhead-Bite XII/ROCI CHILE. Acrylic and tarnishes on copper (96.125 x 48 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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o F R Figure 20: Lukas, “Rauschenberg.” Cartoon. El Mercurio (Santiago), July 11, 1985.

Figure 21: Robert Rauschenberg, Caryatid Cavalcade I/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Acrylic on canvas (138.5 x 260.75 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 22: Robert Rauschenberg, Araucan Mastaba/ROCI CHILE, 1985-1986. Hand painting and silkscreen ink on mirrored aluminum with cast sterling silver and lapis lazuli (20 5/8 x 22 x 22 in.). From an edition of twenty-five produced by Graphicstudio, University of South Florida, Tampa (only 12 realized).

Figure 23: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [flower], Chile, 1984. 84-11-N, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 8, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 24: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [cemetery], Chile, 1984. 84-11-EE, Rauschenberg 35mm black and white negatives and contact sheets, Box 8, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 25: Robert Rauschenberg, Altar Peace/ROCI CHILE, 1985. Silkscreen ink and fabric on aluminum construction with electric light (80 x 44.75 x 15 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

For research purposes only. Do not duplicate crop, or reproduce without permission. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

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Figure 26: Robert Rauschenberg, cover design for Raúl Zurita, ANTEPARADISE: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Jack Schmitt (Los Angeles: University of California, 1986).

Figure 27: Robert Rauschenberg, Poster for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 1985. Silkscreen print with varnish overlay (35.85 x 23.85 inches).

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Figure 28: Robert Rauschenberg, Earth Haunts/ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic and sand on canvas mounted plywood (49.25 x 54.75 x 2 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 30: Robert Rauschenberg, Pemon Sunday /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985.Acrylic on canvas mounted on plywood panel (49.25 x 54.75). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 30: Robert Rauschenberg, Pémon Sunday /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985.Acrylic on canvas mounted on plywood panel (49.25 x 54.75). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 31: Robert Rauschenberg, My Panare Dream with Yutaje /ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic on canvas (90.875 x 112.625 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

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Figure 32: Robert Rauschenberg, Onoto Snare/ROCI VENEZUELA, 1985. Acrylic and collage on canvas (69.75 x 78.375 inches). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.

Figure 33: Robert Rauschenberg, Urban /Interior Network/ ROCI VENEZUELA 1985. Acrylic and collage on plywood panel with objects. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Gift of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

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Figures 34 & 35: Robert Rauschenberg, ¼ Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981-1998). 190 mixed media panels and sculptural elements (approximately 15840 inches or ¼ mile). Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York.