Editing Postmodern art (section)

===Assemblage art===
{{Main|Assemblage art}}
Related to [[Abstract expressionism]] was the emergence of combined manufactured items&nbsp;— with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of [[Robert Rauschenberg]], whose "combines" in the 1950s were forerunners of Pop Art and [[Installation art]], and made use of the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and [[commercial photography]], exemplified this art trend.{{Citation needed|date=June 2019}}

[[Leo Steinberg]] uses the term postmodernism in 1969 to describe Rauschenberg's "flatbed" picture plane, containing a range of cultural images and artifacts that had not been compatible with the pictorial field of premodernist and modernist painting.<ref>Douglas Crimp in Hal Foster (ed), ''Postmodern Culture'', Pluto Press, 1985 (first published as ''The Anti-Aesthetic'', 1983). p44. {{ISBN|978-0-7453-0003-0}}</ref> [[Craig Owens (critic)|Craig Owens]] goes further, identifying the significance of Rauschenberg's work not as a representation of, in Steinberg's view, "the shift from nature to culture", but as a demonstration of the impossibility of accepting their opposition.<ref>Craig Owens, ''Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture'', London and Berkeley: University of California Press (1992), pp74-75.</ref>

[[Steven Best]] and [[Douglas Kellner]] identify Rauschenberg and [[Jasper Johns]] as part of the transitional phase, influenced by [[Marcel Duchamp]], between modernism and postmodernism. These artists used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism.<ref>Steven Best, Douglas Kellner, ''The Postmodern Turn'', Guilford Press, 1997, p174. {{ISBN|978-1-57230-221-1}}</ref>

[[Anselm Kiefer]] also uses elements of assemblage in his works, and on one occasion, featured the bow of a fishing boat in a painting.