Bed is one of Rauschenberg’s first “combines,” the artist’s term for his technique of attaching found objects, such as tires or old furniture, to a traditional canvas support. In this work, he took a well-worn pillow, sheet, and quilt, scribbled on them with pencil, and splashed them with paint in a style similar to that of Abstract Expressionist “drip” painter Jackson Pollock.
Legend has it that these are Rauschenberg’s own pillow and blanket, which he used when he could not afford to buy a new canvas. Hung on the wall like a traditional painting, his bed, still made, becomes a sort of intimate self-portrait consistent with Rauschenberg’s assertion that “painting relates to both art and life…[and] I try to act in that gap between the two.”