Robert Rauschenberg House Call (Phantom), 1991

Silkscreen ink on anodised mirrored aluminium

122 x 123.1 cm

The ghostly appearance of the Phantoms emerged by chance, which was not unusual for Rauschenberg, an artist who ‘collaborated’ with his materials and often pushed the limits of their intended use. In a typically fortuitous moment, he intended to apply the tarnishing process he was then using in his Night Shades to anodised mirrored aluminium, unaware that the oxidising agent, Aluma Black, would not chemically react with the pre-treated metal. The result was a spectral image that barely registered, immediately appealing to Rauschenberg’s interest in veiling and obfuscation.

The imagery in House Call (Phantom) includes a photograph of a painted rooster at top right, paired with a sculptural head of a woman, rotated 90 degrees and barely identifiable by her parted hairstyle with circlet. The artist often chose to photograph mediated representations of artworks – such as garden statuary that reproduces an iconic sculpture – playing with ideas of high and low, vernacular and canonical.