This landmark conceptual work by Robert Rauschenberg was created in 1953 through the meticulous erasure of a drawing by Abstract Expressionist master Willem de Kooning, whom Rauschenberg approached directly and who reluctantly agreed to provide a drawing for the experiment. The nearly blank sheet retains only faint ghostly traces of the original marks, challenging fundamental assumptions about creation, authorship, and what constitutes a work of art. Fellow artist Jasper Johns devised the labeling and framing scheme, inscribing the title, artist name, and year on a small plaque below the paper as an integral component of the finished piece. The gilded frame and handwritten label are essential to the work's identity, providing the sole legible evidence of the conceptually charged act at its origin.