Robert Rauschenberg was born on October 22, 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas. He died May 12, 2008 in Captiva, Florida. His parents were Fundamentalist Christians meaning that Robert had a Christian upbringing. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and also did combinations of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, paper-making and performance. Robert was friends with J F Kennedy. In 1969 NASA had invited Robert to witness the launch of Apollo 11, Rauschenberg was very interested in current affairs and culture and in response to this event he begin to incorporate this into his work such as his Stoned Moon series of lithographs which involved combining diagrams and images from NASA's archives with photographs from different media outlets and his own work. In 1965, Life magazine commissioned him to visualize a modern Inferno and he did not hesitate to vent his rage at the Vietnam War and other horrors, including racial violence, neo-Nazism, political assassinations, and ecological disaster.
In the 60's/70's there were many things going in in America. The cold war was taking place and had been around since around the late 1940's so it had already been taking its toll on the world by the 60's. There was the space race as well which was at its peak in the 60's with tension between America and Russia at a high which came to its conclusion in 1969 when NASA sent Apollo 11 to the moon and landed successfully. There was the Vietnam war which created divisions at home with many people creating the peace movement and protesting in an attempt to get the government to leave the Vietnam war. The civil rights movement played a big part in the 60's/70's with racial tension at an all time high and political and religious groups conflicting such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers. There were political leaders such as Martin Luther who wanted peaceful protests for the black civil rights movement and Malcolm X who believed that white people should get what they give and be treated how they treated black people. There was the historical speech of I Have A Dream in 1963 in Washington by Martin Luther King. There was also the feminist movement which began in the early 60's after World War II had ended and women wanted the right to do jobs that men did and to be of an equal status to men. On November 22, 1963 President John.F.Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas. John.F.Kennedy was a public supporter of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, development of the Space Race, building the Berlin Wall, the Civil Rights Movement, the abolishment of the federal death penalty in the District of Columbia, and increased U.S involvement in the Vietnam war all took place during his presidency.
His work "Signs" (1970) is a screen-print. In his work there is a big mainly white coloured cut-out of Neil Armstrong when he was in space on the Apollo 11 mission in the bottom left section of the artwork. Above that on the left side of the work there are some Vietnam soldiers in an army vehicle which is mostly green, then in the very top, left corner behind the soldiers there is a black and white image of people holding lit candles. Next to Neil Armstrong at the bottom taking up the middle-left there is an image of Martin Luther King in his coffin. Above Martin Luther there is an image of a black man bleeding heavily crawling forwards. Above him there is an image of some Vietnam soldiers helping an injured soldier walk with green clothes on, then above them is an image of Bobby Kennedy and he is placed over a large red image of Janis Joplin performing. Next to her there is a small black and white image of the peace movement, and below that taking up most of the far right side there is a big image of John.F.Kennedy. In the bottom right corner it looks to be an image of the black power salute in the 1968 Olympics mainly consisting of the green grass. 
Robert has created lines from the edges of the different photographs he has used, adding a white border on some of the images to make them stand out a bit more. There is a lot of contrast between dark and light colours with the red Janis Joplin being surrounded by white, Martin Luther surrounded by the white cushion in his coffin and John.F.Kennedy surrounded by a black background. The right side and top left of the artwork is quite dark in contrast to the image of the spaceman which I think could have been done to give the message that the American government is always trying to cover up all of the bad events in American with good things and pretend that the bad events are not going on and ignore them such as using the achievement of landing on the moon to cover up the rest of the stuff that was going on such as the civil rights movement, the cold war, e.t.c. There is a diagonal divide on the artwork. The use of the secondary colour green from the top left corner to the bottom right corner and the use of the primary colour red in the right section on Janis Joplin means that these two colours stand out on the artwork as they are complementary colours on the colour wheel so the use of green and red makes the colours brighter. There is also the idea of war with the green from the military wear and the red could symbolise death and blood especially considering that the people on the right side of the artwork are all dead. I think that the white contrasting with the darker colours makes the spaceman stand out and draws your eyes to him first before you take in the rest of the elements of the artwork.
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