hank
Top image: AFTER, Bottom Image: BEFORE
2003, Erased Allan McCollum drawing – Visible Marker #767,
graphite on paper, original frame
5-1/8 x 7-1/8 inches
Private Collection
This work is about the fear that every artist
possesses, which is that their work will be destroyed and lost. hank is
a direct response to Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing
from 1953, which I felt was never an act of vandalism, but rather a mutual
agreement between the artists, thereby making it a collaboration. The
conceptual risk of that work is diminished when this permission is granted,
in contrast to the subversive power of graffiti, which negates authority.
I don’t believe Allan McCollum has ever seen or heard about hank.