Art News. Vasari Codex

article culture schedule May 28, 2025 visibility 16 link 7 artists

art bites robert rauschenberg erased de kooning drawing

American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg created his controversial work *Erased de Kooning Drawing* (1953) by taking a drawing from Abstract Expressionist legend Willem de Kooning and erasing almost all of its marks. Rauschenberg, then 28, had recently returned to New York after studies at Black Mountain College and the Art Students League. He convinced de Kooning to donate a drawing for the project with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and de Kooning insisted it be a work he would miss. The erasing took about a month and wore down roughly 40 erasers. The finished piece, framed in a traditional gilded frame and inscribed by Jasper Johns, is now held by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), which used infrared technology in 2010 to reveal traces of de Kooning's original charcoal-and-pencil figures.

newspaper Artnet News open_in_new Read original

Robert Rauschenberg at 100: How the Relentless Experimenter Rewired American Art

A global celebration marks the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg's birth on October 22, 1925, with a bumper program of exhibitions at major museums including the Museum of the City of New York, the Guggenheim in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Des Moines Art Center, the Menil in Houston, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and M+ in Hong Kong. The article highlights eight key facts about Rauschenberg's life and career, from his early use of the G.I. Bill to study art in Paris and at Black Mountain College, to his rebellion against teacher Josef Albers, and his invention of the "Combines"—radical painting-sculpture hybrids that broke with Abstract Expressionism and predicted Pop Art.