Combine painting

A combine painting is an artwork that incorporates various objects into a painted canvas surface, creating a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture. Items attached to paintings might include photographic images, clothing, newspaper clippings, ephemera or any number of three-dimensional objects. The term is most closely associated with the artwork of American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) who coined the phrase to describe his own creations. Rauschenberg’s Combines explored the blurry boundaries between art and the everyday world. In addition, his cross-medium creations challenged the doctrine of medium specificity mentioned by modernist art critic Clement Greenberg. Frank Stella created a large body of paintings that recall the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg by juxtaposing a wide variety of surface and material in each work ultimately leading to Stella's sculpture and architecture of the 21st century.

Rauschenberg and his artist friend/flat mate Jasper Johns used to design window displays together for upscale retailers such as Tiffany's and Bonwit Teller in Manhattan before they became better established as artists. They shared ideas about art as well as career strategies. Paul Schimmel of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art described Rauschenberg's Combine paintings as "some of the most influential, poetic and revolutionary works in the history of American art." But they've also been called "ramshackle hybrids between painting and sculpture, stage prop and three-dimensional scrap-book assemblage" according to Guardian critic Adrian Searle. Searle believed the "different elements of the Combines have been described as having no more relation than the different stories that vie for attention on a newspaper page." Jasper Johns, as well, used similar techniques; in at least one painting, Johns attached a paintbrush right inside his painting.

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