Erased de Kooning 1953

Robert Rauschenberg made this drawing, titled "Erased de Kooning," sometime in the mid-20th century using graphite and paper. What we see is an almost empty picture plane that is a ghostly palimpsest of the creative act. Upon close inspection, subtle smudges and faint lines linger, which are remnants of a drawing by Willem de Kooning that Rauschenberg meticulously erased. The act of erasure becomes the artwork, which challenges conventional ideas about authorship and creativity. Rather than creating something new, Rauschenberg's work is both destructive and generative. Through this act, the work destabilizes the established art world and its values, questioning what constitutes art and who has the power to define it. The blankness here opens up new conceptual spaces, inviting us to consider the role of absence and the poetics of erasure.