Kabal American Zephyrs (1981–83/1985/1987–88)

Kabal American Zephyr is a sculptural series with many titles inspired by or appropriated from nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Rauschenberg had seen the exhibition The Bizarre Imagery of Yoshitoshi: The Herbert R. Cole Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1980. Yoshitoshi’s prints depict violent events in beautiful settings, creating what Rauschenberg later called a sense of “fantasy-macabre” that he sought to capture in his juxtapositions of found objects. In addition, he often incorporated solvent transfer imagery derived from magazines and newspapers.