Rebus belongs to a body of work Rauschenberg produced between 1954 and 1964 integrating three–dimensional objects with two–dimensional painting. Jasper Johns coined the term Combine for such works, which he described as painting playing the game of sculpture. Made from layers of everyday materials found in the neighborhood of his lower Manhattan studio (comic strips, political posters, fabric, and drawings), this work maintains a flatter, sparser surface than most Combines. Rauschenberg hoped viewers would look closely and consider the multiplicity of relationships between words and images, beauty and ugliness, art and non-art.