Robert Rauschenberg – Tideline (1963)

Exhibition poster with the work, Tideline (1963), by the American artist, Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), published in connection with the Pop Art Design exhibition in Louisiana in 2013. Rauschenberg is one of the most important American artists of our time and he received his artistic breakthrough in the mid-1950s with his so-called "combine-paintings"—juxtapositions of things and images from the reality of the American metropolis.

Rauschenberg himself said that this part of his works was in "the space between art and life". He became a kind of link between the powerful expressions of abstract expressionism and pop art's interest in everyday realities—including the media's abundance of images as they emerged from the early 60s.

Later, a long series of travels gave Rauschenberg an insight that meant he could connect the images of mass media society with local materials and craftsmanship.

Robert Rauschenberg was among the central figures in 'Pop'—the most influential movement of the post-war years. The dialogue between art and design was intense in the years 1955-72 to a degree that has had a great significance for art and society ever since.

After the war, the world changed radically, and it is during this period that the United States takes the lead culturally in relation to Europe. A period that in the past few years has often been referred to as the Madmen era, when the USA, under the influence of mass production, new materials supported by magazines, radio, television and a growing media coverage of almost everything, made the world smaller, but at the same time to a larger market.