Watching the Clock

Today world timekeepers add or subtract seconds from official clock time to follow the rotation of Earth. Essentially, it is Leap Second Day!

This piece by Robert Rauschenberg is good for keeping track of time. It features two clock faces.

Reservoir was made while Rauschenberg was closely involved with dancer Merce Cunningham and performance art. Created in 1961, it represents a high point in his "combine paintings," works in which found objects are attached to flat surfaces in seemingly accidental relationships and then united through the application of paint. His interest in art as an ongoing process … is apparent in the inclusion of two electric clocks.

The clock at the upper left was set to record the hour when Rauschenberg began this combine painting, while that at the lower left was set when it was finished. Continuing to run, the clocks are typical of the multiple references of Rauschenberg's objects. They record a time interval directly pertinent to the painting as a work of art; they function as normal clocks; and they serve as pictorial elements within a larger design.

Source: National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: National Museum of American Art with Bulfinch Press, Little Brown and Company, 1995).

Pictured: Robert Rauschenberg, born 1925, Reservoir, 1961, oil, wood, graphite, fabric, metal, and rubber on canvas, 85 1/2 x 62 1/2 x 15 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc.