Rauschenberg and Shochat: Art That Challenges Sexual Taboos
This paper compares Robert Rauschenberg's assemblage "Odalisk" (1955–58) with Tirza Shochat's photograph "Johanan and the Rooster" (2010), arguing that both works use rooster imagery and sexual innuendo to critique the social mores of their respective eras. Drawing on the history of modernism and the tradition of artistic taboo-breaking, the paper traces how Rauschenberg satirizes 1950s Puritanical sensibilities through deliberately phallic, dehumanized composition, while Shochat confronts contemporary gender conventions through unexpectedly feminized masculine flesh. The analysis also considers the outsider biographical perspectives of both artists and concludes that each work functions as a social prophecy — looking backward to project forward.
- Introduction: Two Works Across Half a Century: Introduces both artworks and establishes thesis
- Modernism and the Rejection of Tradition: Surveys modernism as context for both artists
- Rauschenberg's Odalisk: Satirizing the Past: Close reading of Odalisk's phallic satire
- Shochat's Johanan: Masculine and Feminine Identity: Analyzes gender subversion in Johanan portrait
- Compositional Strategies and Contrasts: Compares formal choices and pictorial approaches
- Outsider Perspectives and the 'Cock' Theme: Links artists' biographies to critical stance
- Conclusion: Looking Back to Look Forward: Synthesizes shared prophetic social critique
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper builds its argument around a single unifying motif — the rooster — showing how one recurring symbol connects two works separated by fifty years, which gives the comparison a concrete anchor rather than relying on vague thematic generalities.
- The close formal analysis of both works (compositional placement, color, costume, gesture) is integrated with cultural criticism, demonstrating that art-historical interpretation and social commentary can reinforce each other.
- The biographical framing of both artists as cultural "outsiders" is used to explain, rather than merely describe, why their work challenges convention — a move that strengthens the paper's interpretive logic.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative formal analysis: it reads each artwork's visual elements (composition, implied symbolism, clothing, gaze direction) as carriers of meaning, then maps those readings onto a shared cultural argument about sexuality and social taboo. This technique — moving from the visual to the ideological — is the core skill of art criticism writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a paired introduction of both works and a thesis, then provides historical context through a brief survey of modernism. It proceeds to analyze each artwork in dedicated sections before comparing and contrasting their compositional strategies. A biographical section grounds the artists' perspectives, and a conclusion synthesizes the forward-looking social prophecy that both works share. The structure is thesis-driven and moves logically from context → close reading → comparison → interpretation.
Introduction: Two Works Across Half a Century
Rauschenberg's Odalisk (1955–58) and Shochat's Johanan and the Rooster (2010) are separated by half a century, yet both works reflect one another artistically in terms of style, theme, and ideas. Odalisk is a parody of the nineteenth-century portrait La Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, which depicts a nude Turkish concubine reclining on a bed and peering over her shoulder at the viewer. Rauschenberg's composition — a collaged box standing one-legged on a pillow, with a rooster perched atop the box and almost peering over its shoulder at the viewer — is a satirical glance backward at the art that came before it, and a comment on the sexual themes and intonations of the modern world.
Similarly, Shochat's Johanan is a biting commentary on modern sexual mores: a semi-nude man holding a rooster (that is, a cock) in an unabashed pronouncement of masculine sexuality — a counterbalance to the assertion of female sexuality found in such works as those of Georgia O'Keeffe. This paper compares and contrasts these two works and their artists, showing how both put forward a social critique of past and present to serve as a portent of the future.
Modernism and the Rejection of Tradition
Modernism in art triumphed from the nineteenth century onward and, in the early twentieth century, virtually changed the way art came to be perceived. From the Abstractionists to the Cubists to the Surrealists to the followers of Dada, the modernists continually reinvented themselves with newer and wilder movements, firmly rejecting tradition and all its preoccupations. It was only fitting that modern artists should break so completely with the past: modern society had already split from the old world through the Protestant Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Romantic Era, each following on the heels of the last.
As European society sought to understand itself according to new Romantic and Enlightenment ideals, many artists sought to reflect the societal revolution around them by initiating an artistic revolution of their own. The Classical, the Baroque, the Realistic, and the Romantic all fell away. The Impressionists delivered the first blow — but their works still reflected an objective vision. The modern world, by contrast, emphasized subjectivity. Thus, the modernists created art that reflected nothing objective but rather something abstract, subjective, or — in the case of Duchamp — downright absurd.
Rauschenberg's Odalisk: Satirizing the Past
What one sees in Odalisk is this same rejection of the past. By satirizing Ingres and emphasizing overtly — albeit in a dehumanized way — what Ingres coquettishly conceals (showing only the backside of the reclining concubine), Rauschenberg delivers a raucous blow to complacent attitudes. The composition is satirical in more than one way: it also bites at the Puritanical obsessions of American society by offending sensibilities without "showing flesh." The composition is deliberately phallic, and the cock (rooster) perched at the top provides the leering sentiment.
If art acts as a mirror (Wolfe, 1975), this piece reflects a 1950s society so uncomfortable with its own sexuality that it cannot tolerate any public reference to it — all such matters must be dealt with obliquely, not head-on. Rauschenberg, here, anticipates the sexual revolution of the 1960s; in looking backward and laughing at the past (and the present), he makes a statement about the future. That statement is essentially: this cock knows what is coming far better than the social prudes do — watch out! As firmly as this piano leg sits upon this pillow, a new virility is going to step on the easy, complacent worldview and shock it with what it reveals. Such is what Rauschenberg's composition suggests.
Shochat's Johanan: Masculine and Feminine Identity
Shochat's work operates similarly, predicating what is to come by reflecting and commenting on the past. But while Rauschenberg's composition divests sexuality of its humanity, Shochat's invests sexuality with a startling reminder of its masculinity. Where Rauschenberg subverts convention by breaking the taboo through an arrangement of fleshless images and forms, Shochat subverts what is conventional half a century later by breaking the taboo through unexpectedly suggestive flesh. The flesh in this case is that of "Johanan," who poses with a fierce, almost iconic scowl. Dressed only in a pair of boxer briefs, he holds a cock (rooster) in front of his abdomen. The cock's clawed foot dangles in front of Johanan's hidden genitals, completing the innuendo that Johanan is literally holding his cock in his hands. The rooster's plumage is echoed in the gray hair that flares across Johanan's bare chest, suggesting that Johanan and the cock are one — or, rather, that Johanan's cock is who Johanan is: he cannot be separated from his sexuality. His identity is defined by his masculinity.
But what is masculinity? This question grows more pressing the longer one looks at Shochat's portrait. Upon closer inspection, Johanan appears to be wearing red lipstick, and his fingernails are painted red as well. This seemingly virile man is suddenly feminized through the application of traditionally feminine products — lipstick and nail polish. Coupled with the fact that his boxer briefs match the tapestry before which he stands, one is left with a composition that at first appears to subvert modern conventional sexuality through masculine assertion rather than feminine assertion. Yet this masculine man has painted lips and painted nails. The little clothing he wears matches his surroundings — and are not women more traditionally associated with "matching" apparel with setting? Here is a man holding his cock, bare-chested and grim, asserting his masculinity — but simultaneously asserting his femininity by wearing makeup. The subversion is total: not only does Shochat stare down O'Keeffe, she also stares down conventional masculinity. In this way, Shochat reflects the satirical edge of Rauschenberg's Odalisk by breaking taboos through innuendo rather than straightforward assertion.
Conclusion: Looking Back to Look Forward
These works by Rauschenberg and Shochat reflect one another in terms of motif and ideas. In looking back, they are looking forward: the past tells us where we are heading (Weaver, 1984). Both works challenge the viewer to recognize this course, this direction. Neither offers guidance — only an assessment of the situation, scathing as it may be. Both challenge the viewer to look outside the status quo and beyond conventional mores, whatever those may be.
Both also offer a portent of what is to come. Rauschenberg foretells the coming sexual revolution of the 1960s. Shochat appears to foretell the end of sexuality as we know it — and the coming of a new sexuality that has less to do with gender and more to do with what one "identifies" with, whatever that may be.
References
Johnson, Paul. Art: A New History. NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
Rauschenberg, R. (1955–58). Odalisk. Comines. Retrieved from
Shochat, T. (2010). Johanan and the Rooster.
Weaver, R. (1984). Ideas Have Consequences. IL: University of Chicago.
Wolfe, T. (1975). The Painted Word. NY: Farrar, Straus.
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