ARBURST_de Kooning ERASED by Bob Rauschenberg

Related to our previous post, we would like to recover one of our favourite works from de Kooning...

...whe he was remixed/erased by Rauschenberg 1953.

Because of the importance of de Kooning work relating abstaction, expresionism, gestural painting, etc... his work, specially the Woman I series was key to a big amount of American painters in the beginning of the 50´s BUT to some of his younger followers, such as Rauschenberg, his continuous shifting from figures to abstract colour fields and back again made him very difficult to truly "evolve" to moder painting.

To Rauschenberg eyes, de Kooning took the right direction and approach, BUT he was unable to get ride of the figurativism that he loved but knew had to discard to get to Modern Painting.

Therefore, Rauschenberg had to kill his father/master.

He asked de Kooning for one of his drawings "to be erased" and, with his authorization, he proceeded to erase the drawing.

By this, he achieved two things (that we find very inspiring):

- Reinforce the idea of abstract expressionism as a way to comunicate in modern way, by obtaining "ghostly monochromatic work without imaginery" through the process of erasing.

- Metaphorically erase de Kooning because, as a Master, he was "something" in the middle of the way to "progress", specially due to his reluctance to abandon the figure in painting.

We like the idea of obtaining new meanings and approaches through reworking previous finished work from another.

If you are interested, you can rad and excerpt in de Kooning biography, here.