One of Robert Rauschenberg’s most recognisable works, a stuffed angora goat with a painted face and a rubber tyre around its middle, will take centre stage at Tate Modern’s survey of the late US artist’s work (1 December-2 April 2017). Rarely lent, the work, Monogram (1955-59), will then go to New York’s Museum of Modern Art before heading to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Monogram is a star attraction at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet and rarely travels because of its fragility; it was reportedly damaged several years ago when someone sat on it for a photograph. Achim Borchardt-Hume, the director of exhibitions at Tate Modern, says Rauschenberg felt sorry for the goat when he saw it in the window of a junk shop near his studio in New York. “He wanted to give it a new life,” he says.
Rauschenberg spent several years experimenting with the composition, eventually placing the animal on a painting, which he likened to a little garden. Borchardt-Hume says: “When you see it, you won’t forget it because there is nothing quite like it.”