Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - This is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So

Preview image of work. telegram with envelope, This is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So 27424

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This is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So

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Artist

Robert Rauschenberg (Milton Ernest Rauschenberg) (Port Arthur, Texas, 10/22/1925 - 5/12/2008, Lee County, Florida)

Title

This is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So

Creation Date

1961

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

13 3/4 x 17 5/8 in. (35 x 45 cm)

Classification

Documents/Archival Material

Creation Place

North America, United States

Medium and Support

telegram with envelope

Credit Line

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Robert Rauschenberg was invited to take part in the group exhibition "Les 41 présentent Iris Clert [or 41 Portraits of Iris Clert]" for the inauguration of Galerie Iris Clert’s new exhibition space in Paris in 1961. Calvin Tomkins reports that Rauschenberg, who was in Sweden for the installation of another exhibition at the time, forgot to make a portrait as promised. At the last minute he sent the telegram stating “THIS IS A PORTRAIT OF IRIS CLERT IF I SAY SO” for inclusion in the show. Rauschenberg’s purely conceptual contribution destabilizes all conventions of traditional portraiture, proclaiming identity as a subjective condition: unstable and at the whim of the speaker (or reader). The referent of the “I” in his text becomes ambiguous as each viewer reads the work. While Rauschenberg’s absurd gesture follows in the Neo-Dada spirit of the time, it simultaneously presages the trend toward emphasizing the conceptual in art that would come to the fore later in the decade.