From the Collection: 1960–1969

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Robert Rauschenberg. First Landing Jump. 1961

Cloth, metal, leather, electric fixture, cable, and oil paint on board, with automobile tire and wood plank, 7' 5 1/8" x 6' x 8 7/8" (226.3 x 182.8 x 22.5 cm). Gift of Philip Johnson. © 2026 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

Curator, Anne Umland: The title First Landing Jump might refer to a notion of a parachute jumper, a leap into space, a leap into the void. It’s fundamentally an example of what Rauschenberg called Combines.

This Combine works with a traditional support, a canvas or a picture frame. It has things that we can name—a light reflector in the upper center, a tire that has been rendered functionless because it's impaled on that black and white street barrier. The three-dimensional objects project out of the canvas and into our space. He is composing a picture, albeit a very unconventional picture, out of the stuff of life.

So if art is a space that is framed within, in this case, a square, and life is the space that we’re in, this work is inhabiting both worlds.