Created between 1988 and 1996, Robert Rauschenberg’s Urban Bourbon series marks a critical evolution in his exploration of materials, image-making, and visual language. Painted on an industrial metal support of aluminum, these works continue his lifelong interrogation of the interplay between painting and print, abstraction and figuration, mechanical reproduction and gestural mark-making. Colorado, a striking work from this series, exemplifies his mastery in layering photographic imagery
with painterly expression, reflecting his deep engagement with contemporary culture and the urban landscape.

By the late 1980s, Rauschenberg had turned increasingly to metal as a surface, inspired by his visit to a Chilean copper foundry during his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project. This international initiative, active from 1984 to 1991, underscored his belief in art as a universal language capable of fostering dialogue across borders. Learning from Chilean artist Benito Rojo about the use of tarnishing agents, Rauschenberg discovered the reflective, tactile, and mutable properties of metal, which he harnessed in the Urban Bourbon series. As he noted, “the metal carries the image instead
of the opposite way around, where the paint is the image on the surface.” This inversion of traditional painterly hierarchy—where substrate becomes integral rather than passive—aligns with his persistent challenge to artistic conventions.

In Colorado, as in the broader Urban Bourbon series, Rauschenberg combines gestural abstraction with silkscreened photographic transfers, creating a dialogue between spontaneity and precision. His characteristic sweeping brushstrokes, juxtaposed with screen-printed imagery, introduce a rhythmic interplay of surface tension. The luminous metallic ground further complicates this interaction, as reflections shift according to light and viewing angle, animating the composition in real time.

The title Urban Bourbon carries multiple layers of meaning, reflecting Rauschenberg’s characteristic wordplay and interest in linguistic as well as visual juxtapositions.

The phrase is widely believed to reference an anecdote involving Rauschenberg and Willem de Kooning, in which Rauschenberg, early in his career, asked de Kooning for a drawing to erase—an act that led to the now-iconic Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953). As a gesture of thanks, Rauschenberg offered de Kooning a bottle of Jack Daniel’s bourbon, linking the drink to a moment of artistic defiance and transformation. The term “urban” aligns with Rauschenberg’s long-standing engagement with city life and the integration of urban imagery into his work, harkening back to his early Combines, which
incorporated found objects from the streets of New York.

The rhyme between “urban” and “bourbon” further underscores his playful sensibility, while also suggesting a blend of the refined and the raw—an apt metaphor for the fusion of painterly gesture and industrial materiality that defines the series.