The Razorback Bunch (Etching VII)

Robert Rauschenbergs The Razorback Bunch (Etching VII) from 1983 is a color photoetching from five plates on white wove paper that exemplifies the artists engagement with the print medium as a vehicle for combining photographic imagery with hand-drawn marks in compositions of extraordinary visual complexity and technical ambition. Rauschenberg, who had been exploring the relationship between photography and painting since his Combine paintings of the 1950s, brought to printmaking the same combination of photographic reproduction and gestural painting that characterized his work in other media, creating prints in which found photographic images and hand-drawn marks coexist on the same surface in a way that refuses the distinction between mechanical reproduction and artistic expression. The Razorback Bunch, with its title evoking the wild hogs of the American South and the colloquial language of Rauschenbergs native Texas, combines photographic images of animals, machinery, and landscape in a composition that suggests the chaos and energy of American life. The five plates required for the color photoetching process, each printing a different color, allow Rauschenberg to create the chromatic richness of his paintings in the print medium, while the photoetching technique allows him to incorporate photographic images with a fidelity that would be impossible in traditional etching. The year 1983 places this print in the period when Rauschenberg was producing his most technically ambitious prints at Universal Limited Art Editions, the workshop that had been the site of his most significant print collaborations since the 1960s.

Rauschenbergs photoetchings are among the most technically accomplished prints of the late 20th century, and The Razorback Bunch demonstrates his ability to combine photographic and hand-drawn imagery in a single composition. The print influenced the development of photo-based printmaking and the broader tradition of combining mechanical reproduction with artistic expression.

A 1983 color photoetching from five plates by Rauschenberg combining photographic imagery of animals, machinery, and landscape with hand-drawn marks in a composition titled after the wild hogs of his native Texas, refusing the distinction between mechanical reproduction and artistic expression.