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Robert Rauschenberg recruited his friends to help un-create this work!
Rauschenberg had just finished his series of totally blank white paintings, and was wondering what to do next. He was still on the nothingness idea. He tried erasing his own drawings, but decided it wasn’t arty enough. He felt he needed to erase a valuable piece of art.
Rauschenberg greatly admired Willem de Kooning who was considered the reigning artist of the day. As an offering, he took a bottle of Jack Daniels to de Kooning’s studio where he somewhat sheepishly asked de Kooning to give him one of his drawings to erase. After some persuasion, de Kooning obliged but did not want to make it too easy for Rauschenberg. He painstakingly went through three portfolios until he found a drawing he really liked. He gave this to Rauschenberg.
Because the drawing had a lot of charcoal, pencil, and crayon on it, Rauschenberg said it took him two months and lots of erasers to completely eradicate the artwork. Not completely satisfied yet, he asked his close friend and fellow artist Jasper Johns to come up with a suitable title for this now disappeared artwork.
Of course, it caused an outrage with some people declaring it an act of vandalism. Others were captivated by the mystery of the unseen. Still others say it is about devotion and destruction.
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Here is what Wikipedia says about Erased de Kooning Drawing
Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) is an early work of American artist Robert Rauschenberg. This conceptual work presents an almost blank piece of paper in a gilded frame. It was created in 1953 when Rauschenberg erased a drawing he obtained from the abstract expressionist and American artist Willem de Kooning. Rauschenberg's friend and fellow artist Jasper Johns later framed it in a gilded frame and added a written caption to mimic the framing style of the Royal Academy and monogramming found on Renaissance drawings and prints. The caption reads: "Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953" (see picture). It has been in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) since 1998. SFMOMA describes the work as a "drawing [with] traces of drawing media on paper with a label and gilded frame."
Some consider Erased de Kooning Drawing a Neo-Dadaist conceptual artwork. Others argue that the action of erasing highlights his relationship to a group of artists known as "The American Action Painters", as codified by American critic Harold Rosenberg.
Check out the full Wikipedia article about Erased de Kooning Drawing
I probably will never understand this kind of "art": Erased de Kooning Drawing, or Malevich's black square. World of art - one big riddle! I prefer more logical works, more simple tools.