In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg was asking Willem de Kooning (21 years older), whom he regarded as "the most important artist of his time", to let him erase one of his drawings.
In order to use the eraser "as a drawing tool", however, he renounced resorting to one of his own drawings because the erased work "would return to nothing", and decided that he needed a drawing already recognized as art. De Kooning gave him a drawing "important enough for him to miss, and one that was difficult to erase". Rauschenberg needed four weeks of hard work to remove all but a few traces. He hand-lettered the title Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 on a passe-partout, added his name and the date, and placed the sheet in a gold-leaf frame.
The insistence on the dating and the museum-like labelling and framing further turned it into a monument to the appropriation and outdoing of a stage of art.
Quite recent iconoclasm is this action by Rauschenberg, and an inspiration for the continuation of my surface research project in september.
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