All About Sky Garden (Stoned Moon) by Robert Rauschenberg

Title of Artwork: “Sky Garden (Stoned Moon)”

Artwork by Robert Rauschenberg

Year Created 1968

Summary of Sky Garden (Stoned Moon)

With space travel becoming a possibility by 1969, Rauschenberg and many Americans were excited by the promise for human-technological partnership that may be achieved through space travel.

All About Sky Garden (Stoned Moon)

An invitation from NASA was extended to Robert Rauschenberg in July of 1969, and he was given free reign over NASA’s facilities and grounds while he was at Cape Canaveral in Florida to witness the historic launch of Apollo 11, as well as to take advantage of NASA’s official photographs and technical documents during his visit. When asked about NASA’s missions, Rauschenberg remarked, “The whole enterprise seemed one of the only things at that time that was not involved with war and devastation.”

The visit gave Rauschenberg new hope. That sense of hope, particularly poignant in the volatile late 1960s setting of civil rights movements and anti-war protests against the Vietnam War, is exemplified in his Stoned Moon series (1969-70).

Rauschenberg used NASA-supplied images to create the prints. When he first found this technique in the early 1960s, he soaked magazine reproductions in lighter fluid and then rubbed the backs of them with a dry pen nib to transfer them to paper.

The crimson of the booster rocket contrasts with the blue and green of Cape Canaveral’s natural surroundings, evoking the sensory overload felt by those who watched the Apollo 11 launch.

This particular lithograph, called Sky Garden, is an incredible 89 inches in height and was the largest hand-pulled lithograph ever manufactured.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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