Robert Rauschenberg – Jean Tinguely. Collaborations

When Jean Tinguely went to New York for the first time in 1960, his reputation as an iconoclast went before him. He soon presented his “suicidal machine”, Homage to New York, which included a contribution from Robert Rauschenberg: Money Thrower for Jean Tinguely’s H.T.N.Y. – his first kinetic object. This was intended as a talisman and heralded many years of collaboration between the two artists who wanted to re-unite art with life and whose collaborative work aimed to overcome the restricted nature of the individual artist and to achieve greater artistic freedom. This catalogue documents the collaborative projects and friendship of Tinguely and Rauschenberg, who created a new arena for art where Neo- and Meta-Dadaists, Absurdistan, tongue-in-cheek wit and a critical and analytical incisiveness came together.