Title of Artwork: “Canyon”
Artwork by Robert Rauschenberg
Year Created 1959
Summary of Canyon
Pieces of wood, a pillow, a mirror, and a stuffed bald eagle are just some of the materials that make up Canyon, one of Rauschenberg’s most famous and divisive assemblages.
The eagle, sitting on top of a cardboard box and staring at a pillow suspended below the assemblage, seems to fly out of the canvas. A portrait of Rauschenberg’s son, strongly delineated in black over a mint green patch of paint, emerges from the disjointed cacophony of objects.
All About Canyon
To complete his collection, Rauschenberg purchased a taxidermied eagle from fellow artist Sari Dienes, who had found the bird among the belongings of a recently deceased neighbour who had shot it while serving as one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
The government has recently taken issue with the stuffed eagle, despite the fact that in 1988 Rauschenberg filed a notarized note stating that the bird was killed before the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act went into effect. The estate of former owner Ileana Sonnabend declared Canyon to be worthless in 2007 due to the fact that selling the property would violate the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
In 2011, however, the U.S. government rated the work at $15 million, and it also assessed an undervaluation penalty against Sonnabend’s descendants. When Sonnabend’s estate gave the piece to the Museum of Modern Art, the United States government abandoned their 40 million dollar plus claim against it.
Over the course of several years, the eagle became the centre of enormous bureaucratic drama, but it also serves as the most effective source of symbolism and imagery in the work. Critics have found allusions to anything from McCarthyist nationalism to the Greek myth of Ganymede within the taxidermied bird, but Rauschenberg has always given the viewer complete freedom of interpretation.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
