Check it: The Art Exhibition of Our Picasso.

True, Robert Rauschenberg, 80, whose aesthetic queerness handily helped undermine the bloated macho heroism of abstract expressionism in the ’50s (“A New Jerusalem had been envisioned; a New Babylon emerged,” the Village Voice’s Jerry Saltz quipped), has never had a reputation problem.

But the chorus of critics referring now to Bob as the American Picasso aren’t just extending his respectability, they are focusing on his continuous, catholic and almost reckless production schedule, which has meant that many of his objects are crap. That’s most definitely the latent theme of this exhibition of combine paintings (they’re basically a combination of collage, assemblage, painting and sculpture), which I saw in LA last spring before it went to NY.

What I love about this line of criticism is that it rewards failure as productive and compelling, instead of priggishly policing some strange pristine territory that quickly becomes an airless death chamber. Cool.