‘Runts’ are Rauschenberg’s final painting series, executed between 2006 and 2008 and, according to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, so named because the paintings are half the size of the ‘Scenarios’ (2002-2006). They were all made on one panel rather than two and broadly employ the same method. For the Runts, Rauschenberg used an inkjet printer to make digital colour prints of photographs; these prints were then transferred onto polylaminate panels using water.
Unlike his earlier collage works, which largely featured prints from newspapers and magazines, several of the images in ‘Runts’ are taken from Rauschenberg’s own photographs. Many of these were shot in Florida where Rauschenberg lived, and as a result the series has a highly personal feeling that both transcends and enhances the pictures of sunny blue skies and beach paraphernalia featured in the works.
The series was conceived as simple arrangements of photographs on a light background. Although relatively uncomplicated in terms of composition, each collage achieves a sense of balance through visually interlinked shapes as well as connections of colour and theme. They possess a deliberate rhythm and balance, subtle compositions formed by combining the beautiful and the commonplace in a way that is quintessentially Rauschenberg.