Rubies and Lemons

  We gave each other permission – Robert Rauschenberg (1) In New York, 1953, Robert Rauschenberg, then 28-years old, produced one of the most defiant art works of the twentieth century. He approached the well-established abstract painter, Willem De Kooning, and asked for a drawing, which the younger artist intended to erase. De Kooning gave him a piece which he would miss, one which he also thought would be almost impossible to erase. Rauschenberg rubbed away for months, with a variety of erasers, until almost every trace of the drawing had been removed. The result, ‘Erased De Kooning Drawing’, stands as a kind of Oedipal moment, whereby the old guard is literally and figuratively erased by the next generation. It marks the symbolic erasure of the hyper-masculine, ‘heroic’ scene of the Abstract Expressionists by a young gay artist who could never fit into that stifling, macho milieu. Rauschenberg’s lover at this time, Jasper Johns, had the drawing framed in gold, and added an ‘offici