Double page in-text plate (pages 114 and 115) from 1¢ Life

A leading modernist painter and assemblage artist, Rauschenberg was committed to environmentalism throughout his life, from his design of the first-ever Earth Day poster to his foundation’s commitment to environmental causes. This print is a leaf from a portfolio of poems by Walasse Ting, a Chinese immigrant who merged Eastern and Western influences in his writing and paired them with silkscreen illustrations from some of the most famous artists of his time. Rauschenberg’s pairing of water towers, stars, circles, grids, and gestural swathes of color, captures the sense of urgency expressed in the first lines of Ting’s poem: “three nightingales caught in fish net sing not hear / sea full of weed full of thousand year rainfall…”