Robert Rauschenberg
American, 1925–2008
Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953
Traces of drawing media on paper with label and gilded artist’s frame
Rauschenberg was fascinated by the idea of making drawings through erasure. After starting with his own creations he quickly determined that this experiment required him to begin with an undeniably significant artwork. He persuaded Willem de Kooning, an artist he greatly respected, to give him a drawing to erase. Two years later Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns devised this frame with a matter-of-fact label identifying how the work came to be. A watershed in twentieth-century art, Erased de Kooning Drawing is now considered a pioneering example of art focused on ideas rather than finished objects.
