Canyon

Robert Rauschenberg, 1959 · Gallery 408 · Floor 4

This painting cannot be sold. Federal law. That eagle's the problem. 1959. Robert Rauschenberg gets a phone call from his friend Sari. She lives above Carnegie Hall. And the way he tells it, her neighbor's just died. One of the last of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. The janitors have pushed his belongings into the hallway. Among them, a stuffed eagle. Does he want it? Alright, so... Rauschenberg's already the guy people offer this stuff to. He's been putting real things into paintings. A quilt. A tire. A stuffed goat. People keep asking whether they're paintings or sculptures. His son says he made up a word to scare them off. Combines. So the eagle goes back to his studio. He cuts off its tail so it'll fit against the canvas. Wings out. That open cardboard box underneath it. Below that, a pillow hanging from a string. Tied around the middle. Like a butt. And up on the left, in the black frame, that's his son, Christopher. A baby reaching up. He calls it Canyon. An art dealer, Ileana Sonnabend, buys it. Keeps it for decades. Then the eagle becomes a problem. Federal laws protect these birds. Dead ones, too. You can't just sell one because you've put it in a painting. Rauschenberg has to send a notarized statement saying the bird was killed before 1940. After that, Sonnabend can keep it. Selling it is still out. Then she dies in 2007, and her children inherit it. The appraisers have to put a number on it for the estate. Can't legally sell it. They put down zero. The IRS comes back with sixty-five million. Same painting. And a bill for about forty-one million in taxes and penalties. Now, according to the family's lawyer, an IRS official suggested there might be a buyer after all. Some billionaire in China. Willing to buy it and hide it. So the family's supposed to pay tax on a sale they're not allowed to make. Their lawyer puts it this way: sell it to pay the tax, and you go to jail. Eventually, they make a deal. The family gives Canyon to a museum. The IRS drops the tax claim. The family gets no tax deduction for the gift. In 2012, it comes here. Rauschenberg had a simpler explanation for why he used stuffed animals. He wanted to give them another life. He said, "I always thought, it's too bad they're dead." And then: "I thought I can do something about that."

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