In Leo Steinberg’s Other Criteria: The Flatbed Picture Plane, he first discusses the printing press and uses it to characterize the the changed content of a pictorial surface by its resting angle with respect to human posture.  In other words, historically, the top of the plane is where a humans head would be and the bottom towards his or her feet.  Looking back to Renaissance paintings, this vertical positioning is essential to their style. 

Now fast forward a few centuries to the 1950s in New York and you see the work of Robert Rauschenberg.  Rauschenberg set out to change the experience of art by promoting the flatbed or work-surface picture plane.  He was not only changing the angle of imaginative confrontation, meaning he was changing the way the viewer looks at art and therefor changing the context completely, but in a Greenbergian sense creating art for art’s sake.

With Pilgrim (1960), Rauschenberg incorporates a chair into the painting.  This is not only abstract expressionism, but it changes the picture plane by making it three-dimensional.  The other dimension he adds does not have nor does it add context to the painting; but its simply a chair with stripes that match the pattern of the painting but are not the same color making the chair and painting [collectively] fall under Greenberg’s idea of art for art’s sake.  While it doesnt have so much to do with the active movements and brushstrokes of the artist like a Jackson Pollock painting, it does take the context away and insert the viewer into something they may not be completely comfortable with receiving.  Rauchenberg created a picture plane that is not relatable to anything before it and is a cross of abstract, representational, pop and modern art all collated into one magnificent genre.

However the most relatable aspect of Rauchenberg’s work is the expulsion of the medium into the third dimension and this inclusion of pieces people use on a day to day basis.  While these everyday pieces still lack context for the most part, it does add to the connection of the viewer to the artist creating a bridge between the two and allowing the viewer to be included in the artwork by adding their own imaginative confrontation.