Erased De Kooning Drawing Meaning

Absence and destruction – removing meaning to create art

In this short essay, I'd like to compare the work '4'33' (1952) by John Cage with 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' (1953) by Robert Rauschenberg.

'4'33' is a musical score in three movements, exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, that consists only of silence (or, technically, pauses). When performed, the musicians sit silently for this amount of time with their instruments in hand. While originally written for piano, it can be performed on all and with any number of instruments.

'Erased de Kooning Drawing' is a famous artwork consisting of a slightly smudged piece of paper with a frame and caption (with the name, artist and year of creation). The piece of paper once contained a drawing by the then already established artist Willem de Kooning, but this drawing was erased by Rauschenberg. De Kooning made the drawing especially for Rauschenberg, using a variety of sketching materials, like ink and charcoal, to make it difficult to erase.

Both artworks explore the concept of absence and emptiness, of removing what is there to draw attention to what is left. Rauschenberg started out on this track by making white paintings, deliberately devoid of meaning. He then went on to erase some of his own sketches, but decided that erasing the work of a more established artist would be a stronger gesture artistically. Cage, meanwhile, became interested in the concept of silence and how it can not really exist – there is always background noise. He, also, was interested in the removal of 'unnecessary' meaning (in his case, from music). '4'33' is sometimes described as a musical description of the white paintings by Rauschenberg.

Both artworks also address the status of an artist – '4'33' asks skilled musicians to sit silently behind their instruments and thus deliberately does not make use of their skills. 'Erased the Kooning Drawing' takes a more direct and obvious approach by actually destroying the work of a skilled artist. The last work especially was regarded as an act of vandalism by many.

'4'33' in a way forces the listener to notice background noises by opening their senses to it. 'Erased de Kooning Drawing', however, also evokes the unseen past. Due to the caption under the paper, we know the work by de Kooning was once there. So instead of focusing your attention only on what is left after the removal (the paper, its fibers, the smudges of ink), it also draws attention to what has been there once. In 2010, the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art digitally enhanced the remaining traces of the drawing, showing how the original could have looked. To me, this indicates that for many viewers the curiosity about the past of the paper can be stronger than the experience of the present work.