Rauschenberg and Whiteread: Erasure, Casting and Coating

Rauschenberg made Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) by erasing another artist’s drawing. SFMOMA’s account treats the inscription and frame as parts of the finished work. The act of erasure cannot be established from the sheet’s appearance alone.^[1]

Hekikan is not the same operation transferred from paper to wood. Removing marks and adding coating over grain or wear change their materials differently. Inaccessible information offers a comparison, while removal and covering remain distinct.^[3]

Whiteread’s Ghost (1990) casts an interior in plaster. The National Gallery of Art describes a construction of plaster panels with impressions of the room’s surfaces facing outward. The relationship changes between space occupied by a person and a solid cast of its interior.^[2]

In Interdependence, the divided wood’s curves define resin at the centre, while the wooden halves remain within the work. Making an interior solid and constituting a new form through two materials in contact share a relation between surfaces and other forms, but retain different structures.^[4]

The comparison asks what is removed, added or cast; where the original thing remains; and which records establish the act. These criteria describe differences more precisely than a shared vocabulary of absence or traces. It is an analytical comparison of museum records and the artist’s formal work records, rather than a documented claim of direct influence.

An erased sheet, plaster surface or black-coated board does not disclose its entire production through appearance. Records add the relationship to the earlier drawing in Rauschenberg’s work and to the cast room in Whiteread’s. For Hekikan, distinguishing prior use traces from coating supplies conditions for discussing the present surface.

Comparison can ask which processes must be known to distinguish the operations, rather than only whether the results look alike. Removing matter, transferring an interior surface to another material and restricting access to a surface are not alternative routes to one result. Each changes the relationship between what remains and what does not.