Exploiting the power of image

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibition of posters made by Robert Rauschenberg over the last four decades appears alongside a larger survey of German and Austrian posters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The link is more circumstantial than conceptual -- both commemorate recent or promised additions to LACMA’s permanent collection -- but a patchy chronology nonetheless suggests itself and one inevitably draws comparisons, the result of which is surprisingly unfavorable to Rauschenberg.

The problem is partly one of historical context. The German and Austrian posters were made at the dawn of the age of mass media. They’re flush with the promise of modernity and generally untainted by the irony and cynicism it would precipitate. They’re bold in their iconography and singular in their messages, such that it’s usually possible to decipher their meaning without understanding the language in which they’re captioned. Their potency, however, betrays a significant naivete: a faith in the power of images that’s yet untainted by the horror of abuses to come. It’s telling that the show ends with examples of Nazi propaganda. In the wake of fascism, such singularly persuasive imagery became suspect.

Rauschenberg, who was born in 1925, speaks for a very different era. His career postdates the Holocaust and the atom bomb. It encompasses the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War; Nixon and Reagan; the rise of television; the explosion of consumer culture; the mad proliferation of advertising; and the corporatization of American life. The power of images -- and particularly the power of a well-designed icon -- has been so thoroughly researched and ruthlessly exploited over the last 50 years that it’s now impossible to regard the notion without ambivalence.

Rauschenberg was among the first generation of American artists to confront these issues directly, to acknowledge the ubiquity of popular culture and genuinely grapple with its implications. He referred to his early assemblage works as “combines,” and the metaphor is fitting: One imagines a machine plowing through fields of cultural information, churning up Coke bottles, bits of fabric, photographs and snatches of newsprint.

The result is a lyrical sort of anarchy in which no one image takes precedence and no single reading is implied. In contrast to propaganda imagery -- or advertising, for that matter -- his works begin from a distrust of images; they eschew clarity and complicate the process of reading. In this context, meaning becomes elusive and relative. The image of an astronaut implies one thing on the front page of a newspaper; set adrift among images of smokestacks and flowers and expressive splotches of paint, it’s not so clear.

As valuable as this approach remains in a fine art context, it’s precisely what makes these posters problematic. The traditional function of a poster, after all, is to convey a message as concisely and memorably as possible. There are certainly exceptions: the posters designed to advertise Rauschenberg’s own exhibitions -- a good percentage of the 100-plus assembled in the exhibition -- allow for considerably more ambiguity and generally come off better.

In most cases, however, Rauschenberg’s determination to remain elusive in his iconography and diffuse in his design, combined with his reluctance to surrender any but the most concrete information (date, time, organization, etc.) seriously limits the success of the works as posters. Few leave you with a very clear understanding of what’s being promoted, including his own exhibitions. (One exception is an attractive poster for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, thanks primarily to the inclusion of images of dancers.) None is especially eye-catching, and all suffer from the banality of the medium (offset lithography), which feels thin and ephemeral -- an excusable condition on the street, but decidedly dull in the context of a museum.

Most come across simply as compromised versions of Rauschenberg’s paintings -- and herein lies the other problem. The German and Austrian posters were also made by individual artists, most of whom are cited in the wall texts, but their sensibilities were employed strictly in the service of the subject. With the Rauschenbergs, that equation is reversed: We see Rauschenberg first and Merce Cunningham, the New York Philharmonic and the 1st International Festival of Asian Film second.

It may be that these parties actually prefer it this way, that it’s advantageous to channel their message through the style of such a famous artist. In our personality-driven culture, this is no small thing. But it doesn’t make for a very interesting exhibition. Everything just begins to look the same: token Rauschenbergs with neither the depth of original works nor the novelty of anything different.

It seems unlikely that Rauschenberg made these posters with the intention of their eventually being showcased in this manner. That they are seems to be primarily the result of their having been assembled in a private collection (that of Stanley and Elyse Grinstein) now promised to the museum, and a side effect of Rauschenberg’s tremendous importance as an artist -- an importance that lends even the most tangential output an element of at least academic significance.

The museum takes pains to bolster this latter consideration by couching the works in specialized jargon: These aren’t just posters but “mass-editioned, public-use fine art posters.” It may be more generous, however, to situate them in the context of Rauschenberg’s involvement with the public sphere: to approach them not as discreet works but gestures of activism, cultural advocacy, and, in the case of the exhibition posters, public art. If they fare poorly against the earlier German and Austrian posters, it has more to do with a change in the nature of the artist’s relation to this sphere then any inherent artistic disparity.

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‘Rauschenberg: Posters’

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Noon to 8 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and until 9 p.m. Fridays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays; closed Wednesdays.

Ends: June 12

Price: adults, $9; students and seniors, $5; children 17 and younger, free

Contact: (323) 857-6000; www.lacma.org

Also

What: “German and Austrian Posters -- War, Revolution, Protest,” also at LACMA through June 12.