Added Art or Combines Art is used an existing piece of artwork as its canvas for a second creation, just as traditional graffiti uses the wall of a building for the canvas. It is essentially the graffiti of artwork. Added Art is a merging of high and low art, using the concepts of graffiti, in a high art environment. Adding to someone else’s work has been a very common occurrence in graffiti for decades. In the urban environment, it is typically considered aggressive or antagonistic in nature, but also form of competition. However, it is still considered a taboo in the more established high arts, even though it has been practiced for over fifty years by stalwarts such as Rauschenberg in his Erased de Kooning Drawing.

Rauschenberg is well known for his “Combines” of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both.

Rauschenberg’s approach was sometimes called “Neo Dadaist,” he wanted to work “in the gap between art and life” suggesting he questioned the distinction between art objects and everyday objects, he’s paintings of numerals, flags, and the like, were reprising Duchamp’s message of the role of the observer in creating art’s meaning.

Rauschenberg picked up trash and found objects that interested him on the streets of New York City and brought these back to his studio where they could become integrated into his work. He claimed he “wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn’t a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing.”

Rauschenberg’s comment concerning the gap between art and life can be seen as a statement which provides the departure point for an understanding of his contributions as an artist. In particular his series of works which he called Combines served as instances in which the delineated boundaries between art and sculpture were broken down so that both were present in a single work of art. Technically “Combines” refers to Rauschenberg’s work from 1954 to 1962, but the artist had begun collaging newsprint and photographic materials in his work and the impetus to combine both painting materials and everyday objects such as clothing, urban debris, and taxidermied animals such as in Monogram continued throughout his artistic life.

His transitional pieces that led to the creation of Combines were Charlene (1954) and Collection (1954) where he combined collage technique and started to incorporate objects such as scarves, comic strips, and faux architectural cornice pieces. Considered one of the first of the Combines, Bed (1955) was created by dripping red paint across a quilt. The quilt was later stretched and displayed as a work of art. Some critics according to The Daily Telegraph considered the work to be a symbol for violence and rape.

Critics originally viewed the Combines in terms of the formal aspects of art, shape, color, texture, and the composition and arrangement of these. This 1960s view has changed over time so that more recently critics and art historians see the Combines as carrying coded messages difficult to decipher because there is no apparent order to the presentation of the objects. Canyon (1959) features a stuffed bald eagle which drew government ire due to the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, but the stuffed angora goat with paint applied to its snout in his Monogram (1955-1959) was without controversy.

Rauschenberg took a step in what could be considered the opposite direction by championing the role of creator in creating art’s meaning. Rauschenberg’s paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well – photographs transferred to the canvas by means of the silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that implies. In this respect, his work is contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art.

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffiti artists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx and Now Gallery in the East Village, Manhattan.”Graffiti is revolutionary, in my opinion”, he says, “and any revolution might be considered a crime. People who are oppressed or suppressed need an outlet, so they write on walls—it’s free.”

In more recent examples, Banksy has done several added art pieces over Damien Hirst’s “spot” painting, and Mat Benote used an untitled work by Robert Morris at the MoMA in NYC as a canvas. A very interesting example was done by the Chapman Brothers, who painted over sketches originally created by Adolf Hitler.