In 1974 Rauschenberg began making works for his Hoarfrost series by combining elements of photography, collage and print-making. Working from a technique he had adapted in the late 1950s, the artist superimposed photographic images from a variety of sources onto delicate fabrics and then overlayed a gauze-like transparent cloth over certain areas, often with other images. — Christies.
These themes continue and morph in the Hoarfrost (1974–76) and Jammer (1975–76) series, both of which are represented in the exhibition. Each take hung and draped fabric as their starting point, but to different ends. The Hoarfrosts, such as Untitled (Hoarfrost) (1974), revisit the solvent transfer technique Rauschenberg first developed while traveling with Cy Twombly in the early 1950s, imparting faint and haunting imagery onto the fabric. Meanwhile, the series title is pulled from Dante’s Inferno, a nod to his earlier body of Dante Drawings (1958–60) also made with the solvent transfer process. — Mnuchin.