Erased de Kooning Drawing: Artist Accounts and Museum Interpretation

SFMOMA’s reference sheet identifies major accounts of the making of Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953). It dates the first full publication of the story to 1964, eleven years after completion, and includes a 1999 interview. The work’s date and the dates of its making accounts differ.^[1]

An artist account can be examined for when, where and about which event it was given. A contemporary record and a later recollection occupy different positions as evidence. Authorship alone does not remove this temporal difference.

SFMOMA’s artwork overview leaves questions about whether the erasure constitutes homage, provocation or destruction. Establishing its making history differs from settling one meaning for the act.^[2]

The first task compares records of events; the second examines the remaining object, its inscription and relationships in making. The artist’s account and the museum’s interpretation both provide information. Identifying how evidence supports a judgement allows another interpretation to be compared with it.

Hekikan can likewise distinguish the making fact of coating panels from interpretations derived from it. Separating photographed surfaces, intentions in the formal statement and later comparative analysis allows records to be updated without losing information about the time of making.^[3]

The independent museum interpretation referenced here concerns Rauschenberg, not Hekikan. Actual criticism of Hekikan would require the critic’s identity, the work encountered, viewing conditions and text, and would be recorded separately from the artist’s research notes.

An artist’s account and a museum’s introduction can concern the same event while serving different purposes. One records what the maker later explained; the other organises production and interpretation from the position of a collecting and presenting institution. Identifying writer, recording date and subject makes the standpoint of a cited account explicit.

This distinction is not supplied by citing an institution as authority alone. SFMOMA’s questions about Erased de Kooning Drawing concern that work’s production and remaining object. A comparison with one’s own work must state both shared questions and different making conditions. Borrowing a comparator’s evaluation differs from using evidence to examine differences.