Gold Standard is a video installation that re-stages Robert Rauschenberg’s final Combine painting (of the same name) in Tokyo in 1964. The video is a ‘double’ of Rauschenberg’s original Gold Standard. It regards the moment of Rauschenberg’s performance as symptomatic of the globalization of contemporary art, as well as illuminating a ‘double standard’ in regards to authorship’s relationship to imaginaries of ethnicity. In 1964 Rauschenberg was on a world tour with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, when the Japanese art critic Tono Yoshiaki invited him for an interview at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo. While he painted Gold Standard Rauschenberg was asked a litany of questions from Tono, the artist Ushio Shinohara, and others, none of which he answered.

Gold Standard re-stages this performance within an expanded matrix of the more muted historical meta-narratives of 1960’s Japan, including Anti-American student protests, and American economic and cultural hegemony prevalent in the post-war era.

Combining archival television footage of student protest groups such as Zengakuren with cinematic re-stagings by local actors, as well as tableaux vivant re-presentations of iconic press photographs from the student movement’s archive.

The video is nested within a facsimile of Rauschenberg’s 1954 Combine painting Minutuae, a stage set for Cunningham’s ballet of the same name.

Gold Standard
1 Channel HD video installation
trt 14 min, loop
dimensions: 84 1/2 x 81 x 30 1/2 in. (214.6 x 205.7 x 77.4 cm)
Materials: Poplar, Redwood, Vinyl, Paint, 40” LCD, PC
David Kelley
©2008

Download Gold Standard PDF
Download Gold Standard Essay
Download Gold Standard Credits