Monogram (artwork)

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Monogram is a “combine” sculpture and painting by American artist Robert Rauschenberg, made between 1955 and 1959. It features a stuffed Angora goat with its midsection passing through a car tire, set on a wooden platform with four casters and attached to two conjoined canvases. The work includes oil paint, paper, fabric, metal, wood, a rubber shoe-heel, and a brass plaque.

Today it is in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, after Pontus Hultén bought it for the collection in 1965.

Rauschenberg created a series of works from 1954 to 1964 that merged painting and sculpture, a group he called Combines. Monogram is a prime example—an independently standing sculpture that also incorporates painted canvases. He bought the goat for $15 from a Seventh Avenue thrift store in New York.

Monogram evolved in three stages over four years:
- 1955–56: The goat sat on a shelf linked to a wall painting (later expanded into Rhyme, 1956) because Rauschenberg didn’t like that the goat could be viewed from only one side.
- 1956: The goat was surrounded by a tire (the tread repainted white) on a narrow wooden platform, with a vertical panel partly painted and collaged.
- 1959: On Jasper Johns’s suggestion, a square panel on wheels was placed on the floor, centering the goat as if in a pasture.

Rauschenberg said he avoided fixed meanings in his work; he believed each viewer brings their own interpretation. Critics have suggested many readings—religious symbolism, references to sacrifice, even erotic interpretations—but the artist resisted simple, single messages. Monogram remains one of his most famous and provocative works.