"Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase": Notes on Paper in Twentieth-century Drawing

Author(s): Catherine Craft

Source: Master Drawings , SUMMER 2012, Vol. 50, No. 2, MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
DRAWINGS (SUMMER 2012), pp. 161-186
Published by: Master Drawings Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41703376

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 "Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase": Notes on Paper
in Twentieth-century Drawing

Catherine Craft

In an interview published in Master on Drawings in the artist (such as the decision to

the choice of
2006 (vol. 44, no. 3), Richard Shiff asked work in monochrome, to work small, or to use
drawing as a spontaneous and personal medium)
American artist Jasper Johns (b. 1930) about pos-
than it is on the ineluctable properties of draw-
sible definitions of drawing.1 Acknowledging that
"[probably] neither of us is comfortable following
ing's very basis: But in drawing, a point is reached,
strict definitions of what a drawing is and isn't,"
beyond which no addition can correct what is present.
Johns's comment suggests that a definition of
Shiff asked, "Are you comfortable with the term
'markmaking'? Does it solve the problem of dis-
drawing might begin with its physical limitations:
not only are the additive possibilities of pencil,
tinguishing a drawing from a painting by identify-
ing a certain class of marks or a certain waycharcoal,
of ink, and other drawing media finite, but
the physical integrity of drawing's usual sup-
applying them?" In response, Johns offered addi-
tional considerations: port - a sheet of paper - can bear far less manipu-
lation than canvas or panel.3
What come to mind, in trying [to distinguish draw- During a trip to Japan in 1964, Johns made a
few works, among them Untitled (Cut, Tear,
ing from painting], are differences in medium and
Scrape, Erase), a pencil sketch still in the collection
support. Drawings tend to be monochromatic and, often,
of the artist, which consists of a square divided
smaller in scale than paintings. The materials of paint-
into
four equally sized columns (Fig. I).4 As a
ing usually allow one to cover what is on the canvas with
more of those materials. But in drawing, a point heading
is for each column, Johns wrote a single
reached, beyond which no addition can correct whatword:
is cut / tear / scrape / erase. Beneath each
present. An eraser, thought of in time, might haveword, we see its enactment. Under "cut," a small
slice, made by drawing a sharp blade downward
helped. Compared with paintings, the best drawings
from
tend to seem more succinct, more austere, more schemat- an initial puncture, splits the paper open.
The
ic, more naked, closer to thought, closer to the force from eponymous "tear" is topped by a triangular
which they arise.2 rip of paper, while "scrape" presents a trailing area
of abrasion. At the right, under "erase," a lively
Johns's observations touch on several widely
scribble has been partly rubbed away. Followed
accepted characteristics of drawing, including its
from left to right, as reading the column headings
encourages us to do, Untitled conjures a sort of
lack of color and small scale, as well as its private
narrative of incursion, from actions that irrevoca-
and intimate nature. But he also refers to a physi-
cal characteristic of drawing that is dependent less
bly alter the paper's physical integrity - cutting,

161

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Figure 1

JASPER JOHNS

Untitled (Cut,
Tear, Scrape,
Erase), 1964

Collection of the
Artist (© Jasper
Johns / Licensed by
VAGA, New York)

then tearing - to more subtle disruptions of it in
the acts of scraping and erasing, the last of these
offering a connection to more conventional defi-
nitions of drawing.
Artists have long known that the type of paper
lines and subtle detail, while one with a rougher
texture will better retain particles of charcoal and
pastel. A fresh sheet of paper can also be a power-
ful emblem of creativity: a blank surface receptive
to the movement of the artist's hand and mind.

used in a drawing will affect its appearance. A But as Shiffs question suggests, drawing is usually
paper with a smooth surface will lend itself to fine defined in terms of making marks, with the sur-

162

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face that is being marked given little, if any, con-
sideration: paper mythologized in all its
Mallarméan blankness, but without actually being
seen. The compressed potency of Johns's sketch
suggests an alternative, offering a continuum of
actions that become possible when artists focus on
paper as material as well as tabula rasa.
In recent years, a reoriented attitude toward
paper has become a routinely considered aspect of
contemporary drawing.5 This essay proposes a dif-
ferent approach: an exploration of the use and
role of paper as a material in drawing in the years
leading up to the moment of Johns's reflection on
the options available to him when faced with a
sheet of paper. It is not a study of influences on
Johns, nor is it a history of paper's uses in
Modernism (although it follows a roughly
chronological structure). Rather, it is a series of
notes - sketches, if you will - on paper.

Cut

Modern artists challenged traditional ways of

making art by exploring unconventional process-
es and techniques, among them collage. In turn,
such investigations prompted artists to reconsider
familiar practices. In the case of drawing, artists'
use of collage encouraged them to look anew at
the paper that supported and fed their efforts,
infusing the practice of drawing with a height-
ened physicality. For instance, the papiers collés of
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) feature papers cut to fit
into the outlined shapes in an existing drawing.
But they are usually just slightly smaller, so that
the underlying contours can still be seen, as in the
drawn line visible around the strip of newsprint
applied in Bottle and Wineglass (December 1912 or
Figure 2
later) in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (Fig. 2). 6
PABLO PICASSO
Belying the careful premeditation of this approach
Bottle and Wine-
is the quality of line contributed by the added
glass, December
papers: here, and in other collages by Picasso from
1912 or later
this period, the cut edge of the paper is often
Stuttgart, Staats-
jagged and uneven, as if cut in haste or with a
galerie, Graphische
recalcitrant pair of scissors.7 Sammlung (©2012
Estate of Pablo
In Bottle and Wineglass Picasso's scissoring
Picasso / Artists
roughly follows - and disrupts - a column of
Rights Society
newsprint. Abutting this fragment is the[ARS],
work'sNew York)

163

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 other collage component, a rectangle of white
paper almost indistinguishable from the sheet of
paper that is the composition's support; without
an underlying stripe of black ink glowing from
underneath and the slightly deckled edges of the
pasted paper, it would be difficult to spot it as an
addition.8 Picasso's collages routinely make playful
use of doubling and puns: trompe-l'oeil faux bois
papers, diagonal lines mimicking perspectivai
orthogonals, ambiguities between figure and
ground, and shapes that shuttle between guitar,
torso, and head. But in this case, the use of blank
paper - and, moreover, fine art paper, the very
stuff to which Picasso attached his collage compo-
nents - is highly subversive. By gluing down
pieces of the same material serving as the support,
Picasso "marks" the original blank surface of draw-
ing to the Laws of Chance) of 1917 in the Museum
of Modern Art, New York (Fig. 3), 13 Arp then
applied glue to these pieces, and - in contrast to
the careful assignment of shapes in Cubist papiers
collés - moved them about on the paper, leaving
small smears of glue in their wake, before hitting
on an arrangement nonetheless retaining the
impression of a shifting, provisional solution.14
The line generated in the cut-outs of Henri
Matisse (1869-1954) was to be quite different
from Picasso's clipping and Arp's Dada guillotin-
ing of paper. In the early 1940s, after surgery left
him too incapacitated to paint, Matisse began
making collages by shearing through gouache-
coated sheets of paper (see pp. 187-92 of this
issue). These papers' origins as sheets similar in
size and character to those that would become the

ing with an addition, and provides, presumably, ground for his compositions generated a doubleâ
another blank surface on which to mark in the sense of drawn creation - first in his scissoring of
varied forms, then in his arrangement of them
future. (And indeed, in a number of collages, the
added "blank" is drawn on or becomes the substrate with one another. Matisse's cut-outs continued

for another collage element: see Guitar [Marchthe concerns with color and expression that he
1913; New York, Museum of Modern Art];9 Guitarhad explored in a lifetime of painting, but he also
and Cup of Coffee [Spring 1913; Washington, DC, associated them with another medium, explaining
National Gallery of Art];10 and Guitar [Spring 1913;that "cutting straight into color reminds me of the
Paris, Musée National Picasso].11) direct carving of the sculptor."15
The j uttering contours of Picasso's unevenly To the cutting strokes that created this fusion
cut papers betray the hand of the artist in almostof line and form might be added the physical sub-
parodie fashion. Such idiosyncratic personalstance of the gouache-stiffened paper itself.16 As
touches ran counter to the approach to paper byMatisse's example suggests, the very act of han-
Hans Arp (1886-1966) as a participant in Dada. Indling paper as a physical, tactile entity rather than
works of the 1910s, he and his wife, Sophiesimply treating it as a surface, seems to reorient
Taeuber (1889-1943), aimed at an ideal of anony-artists' attitude toward it. The process of cutting
mous perfection; as he later explained, "All acci-paper sunders it in ways that violate the pictorial
dent was excluded. No spots, tears, fibres, impré- plane shared by drawing and painting: cutting
cisions should disturb the clarity of our work."12 (and likewise tearing, discussed below) introduces
To achieve this goal, Arp used a paper cutter toa third dimension as the paper splits away from
generate the components of his collages and toitself. Matisse was far from the only artist to real-
remove any trace of the artist's hand, resulting inize this. Layered, twisted, rotated, glued, and
cleanly sliced, if irregular, squares. Unlikestitched, Picasso's cut papers formed *his first
Picasso's cutting of specific shapes suggestive ofGuitar sculpture.17
bottles, guitars, bowls, and parts thereof, Arp's In Johns's Untitled (Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase), the
procedure made every piece yielded by the cutter plane of the paper almost contains the cut made
a potential component, with no distinction madewithin its edges.18 The delimited cut had, until
between "usable" figure and "leftover" ground.this moment, played a specific, if largely unseen,
In such works as Untitled (Squares Arranged accord-role in Johns's art. Almost from the beginning of

164

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 Figure 3

HANS ARP

Untitled (Squares
Arranged
according to the
Laws of Chance),
1917

New York, Museum

of Modern Art (©
2012 Artists Rights
Society [ARS], New
York / VG Bild-

Kunst, Bonn)

165

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Figure 4

JASPER JOHNS

M.D., 1964

Collection of the
Artist (© Jasper
Johns / Licensed by
VAGA , New York)

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his mature career, Johns has used cut stencils of
letters and numbers in his paintings and draw-
ings.19 Laid against an art work's surface, the sten-
cil both doubled and bounded it. Usually cut
from stiff paper or paperboard, the stencil turns a
potential drawing surface into one whose negative
spaces allow the artist's materials to pass through it
in carefully controlled fashion.
The opposite of the stencil is the template,
which provides a guideline for the contours of
bounded shapes in positive rather than negative
(we might consider a template the "missing" por-
tion of a stencil) . The same year he made Untitled
(Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase), Johns explored the play
between presence and absence generated when
one cuts into a sheet of paper in another work.
M.D. (1964), also still in the collection of the
artist, features the profile of Marcel Duchamp
(1887-1968), cut from stencil board and pasted to
a somewhat lighter sheet of paper (Fig. 4). 20 At the
bottom right edge, Johns stenciled the sitter's ini-
tials M.D. in pencil, which he then smudged into
an atmospheric blur.
Johns's point of departure was Duchamp's
1957 Self-portrait in Profile , an example of which is
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(Fig. 5),21 and which Duchamp made by tearing
paper along the edge of a template (see below for
further details). Johns "took a tracing of the pro-
file, hung it by a string and cast its shadow so it
became distorted and no longer square."22
Duchamp's and Johns's works share a fascination
with the liminal state of line as the defining edge
of a form.23 Duchamp's profile exists as an
absence: that is, the portion of paper or stencil
board forms its outline as a negative (what, in
Picasso's papiers collés , would have likely been dis-
carded), while the portion removed and, presum-
ably, discarded, is actually the "positive" - that is,
Duchamp's head. Johns would reiterate this pro-
file in many works to come, most notably in the
large painting According to What (1964), 24 but it
would steadfastly reference, as it does here, the
rectangular sheet on which Johns drew, and from
which he cut away, the actual, distant trace of
Duchamp's physical presence.
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Figure 5
MARCEL
DUCHAMP
Self-portrait in
Profile, 1957
New York,
Metropolitan
Museum of Art
(©2012 Succession
Marcel Duchamp /
Artists Rights Society
[ARS], New York /
ADAGP, Paris)
Tear
Torn papers appear occasionally in Cubist papiers
collés , where they usually suggest an object found
in or taken - perhaps violently - from the real
world, as in the remnants of wallpaper in Picasso's
Guitar (1913; New York, Museum of Modern
Art). Disparate fragments, scraps, and detritus,
ripped from reality's continuum, fueled the art-
challenging boundaries of the Merz collages of
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). In most of his com-
positions, an orderly grid prevails, one that is gen-
erated by the play of the rectilinear angles of train
tickets, playing cards, and chocolate wrappers. Yet
torn papers surface with enough regularity for
their ragged layering to evoke the cyclical purges
of consumerism in such works as Erfuhrt-Erfur (c.
1924-26), a collage that is owned by Jasper Johns
(Fig. 6).25
The tears in such papers appear to have been
caused by their varied fates in the world beyond
the composition's edges; artists' handling of them
can imply an epiphanic, ťedemptive flash of
recognition. But Johns's Untitled seems to allude
167
 Arp was one of the first artists to explore the
role of destruction in artists' relationships with
paper. If in the Dada years he had been "haunted
by the idea of doing something absolute," around
1930 he was shocked to discover that the resulting
collages had been ravaged by the passing of time:
papers had buckled, faded, and cracked, and glue
had darkened and shrunk.26 In the late 1940s he

described his disgust with the failure of these

"absolute" works and the deluded presumptions
that had motivated their creation: "What arro-

gance is concealed in perfection. Why struggle for

precision, purity, when they can never be attained?
The decay that begins immediately on completion
of the work was now welcome to me."27

Although Dada is usually associated with

destructive impulses, Arp's impassioned outburst
stressed the relationship between art and destruc-
tion in a way that he had never conceived of it
during his Dada years. His artistic response was a
group of works he called papiers déchirés , collages
made from torn paper that included fragments of
his own drawings, ripped to pieces. Arp could
achieve a wide range of effects from this method,
from haphazard and almost formless to elegant
and beautifully arranged. In early attempts, the
to another sort of tearing: a deliberate act that torn pieces appeared to be applied almost at ran-
Figure 6
strikes at the heart of fantasies regarding the dom, but they were soon joined by compositions
KURT
Mallarméan promise of a blank sheet of paper. As in which elements of destroyed drawings recon-
SCHWITTERS

poetically potent as this blank sheet may be, torn figured themselves in a new, disjointed image, as
Erfuhrt-Erfur,
c. 1924-26
paper can be equally suggestive, connoting an in Composition of 1937, in the Gallatin collection
emotional or creative crisis. Tearing, after all, is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Fig. 7). 28 Arp's
Collection of Jasper
Johns (©2012
often the result of a common artistic experience - handling of papers for these works - accompanied
Artists Rights the dissatisfaction that leads artists to destroy their by the extension into space associated with tear-
Society [ARS], New failed efforts. Such destruction resonates with ing paper, discussed above - was followed by his
York / VG BH4-
Kunst, Bonn)
non-artistic uses of such material. Tearing upintensive
first a foray into sculpture.29
Arp's torn paper works also tap into the con-
sheet of paper is a common response to our rejec-
cern as
tion of the efforts expended on its surface (and, with death, destruction, and violent impulses
that
Johns's remarks imply, that we have perhaps were characteristic of the circle of writers and
tried
to correct). Although little considered, this ele-associated with Documents , the journal edit-
artists
ment of disposability is also a powerful aspect
ed by of
Georges Bataille (1897-1 962). 30 But as Arp
explored the process, handling scraps, experi-
drawing's enduring attraction. The much mythol-
ogized freedom that is drawing's domainmenting
- its with the ways different types of paper
tore, of
flexibility, its capacity for experiment, its sense and playing their furred and uneven edges
against the bioniorphic dips and curves of dis-
privacy - is also subject to the fragility of draw-
ing's support. membered drawings, the dynamic shifted to

168

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Figure 7

HANS ARP

Composition, 1937

Philadelphia
Museum of Art (©
2012 Artists Rights
Society [ARS], New
York / VG Bild-

Kunst, Bonn)

169

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Figure 8

JACKSON
POLLOCK

Number 2, 1951

Washington, DC,
Smithsonian

Institution,
Hirshhorn Museum

and Sculpture
Garden (© 2012
Pollock- Krasner
Foundation / Artists

Rights Society
[ARS], New York)

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encompass recuperation and regeneration. When
Taeuber died unexpectedly in 1943, Arp's incor-
poration of torn fragments from her prints and
drawings, as well as works they had made togeth-
er,, into his papiers déchirés became a form of
mâché sculpture created by placing glue-soaked
drawings on the wire-and-mesh armature of a
sprawling biomorphic form.36
Pollock's use of these drawings seems to have
stemmed as much from his fascination with the

mourning - as, for instance, in Untitled of 1947 in special properties of different types of paper as
the Arp Museum, Rolandseck.31 Instead of rend- from any inherent disappointment in his efforts.
ing garments, he rent pieces of paper, thus creat- In fact, he rarely destroyed work, in sharp contrast
ing works of art that memorialized the collabora- to Lee Krasner, who regularly did so when dis-
tive processes that had characterized the couple's pleased with the results.37 Krasner's working
relationship. process had been deeply informed by her studies
Dissatisfaction, destruction, and collaboration with Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), who routinely
would also intersect in the work of two other used collage for corrections, applying pieces of
paper to students' works to suggest shifts or
artists who used torn paper. Late in 1950, Jackson
Pollock (1912-1956) began making drawings
changes in composition - a method emphasizing
from a stack of Japanese paper given to him
the by
provisionality of any art work and its suscep-
Tony Smith (1912-1980). The paper was so tibility to adjustment, correction, or change by
absorbent that it soaked up whatever liquid means of fragmentation and overlay. Early on,
Pollock applied to it, its absorbency leaving Krasner drew on this experience, deploying col-
behind a ghostly echo of a drawing on underlying lage to revise work and plan large compositions,
sheets: as Pollock watched ink retreat from his but in the early 1950s, her dissatisfaction with her
efforts
touch in the moments after its application to the and her prior involvement with collage
dovetailed.38 At just about the time that Pollock
paper, he could focus his attention on the surface
as much as the mark itself.32 His interest in the was working with the Japanese papers, Krasner
entered her studio and examined a group of
paper support of these drawings extended to two
1951 collages, both of which contain fragments of black-and-white drawings:
recent
a torn-up orange and black drawing.33
Japanese papers are typically difficult to tear,
I hated them and started to pull them off the wall and
and Pollock's experimental uses of them suggest
tear them and throw them on the floor and pretty soon
that handling them prompted thoughts about the
thewhole floor was covered with them. Then another
way their strength and resilience contrasted with
morning I walked in and saw a lot of things there that
their seemingly insubstantial absorbency. In to interest me. I began picking up torn pieces of
began
Number 2 , 1951 in the Hirshhorn Museummy
and
own drawings and re-glueing them.39
Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (Fig. 8),34
Pollock soaked these torn papers with rivet In
glue
the collages that followed, Krasner not only
to make them more malleable and to bind them,
used her ripped-up drawings but took Pollock's
in essence re-enacting the papermaking process
discards as well, apparently with his full knowl-
edge and support.40 In Collage of 1955 in the
by generating less a collage than a veritable sheet
Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York (Fig.
out of disparate fragments saturated in a liquid
medium..That Pollock was thinking in terms of - the scraps of paper she reconfigured into a
9),41
densely
and was inspired by - paper per se is supported by layered, large-scale composition contain
the memory recorded by his spouse, Lee Krasner
drips, splatters, and strokes of ink recognizably in
(1908-1984), of him "[laying] down whole draw-
Pollock's hand. Such collages, like those by Arp,
negotiate questions of artistic identity and
ings soaked in Rivet glue and then [overlaying]
them."35 The tactile dimension of his experiments
destruction by means of pape'r - a fragile and vul-
with paper extended that same year to a papier
nerable material, easily torn or otherwise dam-

171

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Figure 9

LEE KRASNER

Collage, 1955

New York,
Pollock-Krasner

Foundation (©
20Í2
Pollock-Krasner
Foundation / Artists

Rights Society
[ARS], New York)

aged. Arp's papiers déchirés possess intimations of as well, resulting in large-scale collaged composi-
mortality and natural forces, but for Krasner a tions that were often created on top of existing
slightly different dynamic was at work: the need paintings.
to consolidate her own artistic identity at a time Perhaps no other Abstract Expressionist artist
when she was viewed almost entirely in relation was more associated with collage than Robert
to her husband.42 Motherwell (1915-1991), who made its practice
Pollock's and Krasner's increased involvement central to his art. A great ádmirer of Arp, he used
with paper in the early 1950s - even what
torn paper extensively, although its associations
with violence and destruction left him deeply
appeared to be its destruction - nonetheless func-
tioned as a sort of surrogate for, or supplement to,
uncomfortable: "Tearing the paper in collage is like
the tradition of drawing. For both of them, han-
killing someone."43 As a result, torn paper assumed
dling and tearing paper prepared them to under-
a far different range of associations in his art.
Motherwell's collages of the late 1940s echoed
take the process-oriented act of painting as an ear-
lier generation might have used preparatory
Arp's preference for torn, uneven edges, their
sketches. The thin, absorbent Japanese paper
rough contours creating an impression of gesture
seems to have supported Pollock's shift from not
theoften associated with the hard edges of con-
ventional papiers collés.44 In such works as In Gray
intensive painterly physicality of the drip paintings
and
to the more attenuated material presence of Tan in the Krannert Art Museum, Urbana-
the
black poured paintings of 1951. In Krasner's case,
Champaign (Fig. 10), 45 and Elegy in the Harvard
Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA,46
her torn paper collages led her to cut up paintings

172

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 Figure 10

ROBERT

MOTHERWELL

In Gray and Tan,

1948

Urbana- Champaign,
University of Illinois ,
Krannert Art
Museum and

Kinkead Pavilion (©
Dedalus Foundation,
Inc. / Licensed by
VAGA, New York)

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 both of 1948, the ragged edge of the paper
becomes the mark of the artist's presence, the col-
laged equivalent of a brushstroke. The identifica-
tion between the torn and painted edge is partic-
ularly important for In Gray and Tan , where torn,
triangular-shaped pieces of mottled blue paper lie
atop a triangular form painted in pale blue and
white stripes, conjuring an ambiguous play
between torn and painted elements.47 The identi-
fication between gesture and edge would prove
decisive in the development of Motherwell's
Elegy to the Spanish Republic series of paintings. In
At Five in the Afternoon , an early work in this
series,48 the ragged, interpenetrating forms echoed
the torn papers of his collages, and the painterly
verve of this new conception of edge generated a
formal energy that asserted the materiality of the
painting's surface.49
Tearing paper created a new sort of line, clear-
ly "hand-made," with intimations of tempera-
mental immediacy well-suited to the expressive
and existential concerns of Motherwell's genera-
tion; among his peers, Esteban Vicente (1903-
2001) and Franz Kline (1910-1962), in particular,
turned to ripped pieces of paper to enliven their
collages. Such uses of torn paper gain their power
from the impression of being the result of a spon-
taneous act, but as in painting, the appearance of
spontaneity can also be cultivated. Tearing paper is
by no means a chance operation, although its
appearance of being one is likely one of its appeals
to artists.50 Depending on how it has been made,
paper tears in fairly predictable ways. Handmade
papers without a pronounced grain may tear
unevenly or leave a fine, furred edge, while most
mould-made or machine-made papers have a pro-
nounced grain allowing even, fairly straight tears
to be made along it. Still, tearing creates the
impression of an event that absolutely separates
before and after. A tear is a uniquely specific event.
Or is it? Can a tear - with its spectacular irreg-
ularity signaling a singular moment of rupture - be
replicated and repeated? In 1934 Marcel Duchamp
published The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,
Even (The Green Box), a version of which is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Fig.
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II),51 which contained notes created almost two
decades earlier for his large composition The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
(1915-23; Philadelphia Museum of Art).52
Although he envisioned these notes as the work's
literary and conceptual companion, his presenta-
tion of them was subversively idiosyncratic. As
Duchamp conceived and worked on The Large
Glass , he did what we all do: whenever an idea
struck him, he jotted it down on whatever he had
at hand, writing queries, instructions, and
reminders and making little doodles and sketches
on hotel stationery, graph paper, and bits of paper
torn from one place and another. Rather than sort-
ing, collating, and printing these notes in a con-
ventionally legible fashion, he elected instead to
issue them in facsimile, some ninety-three notes
loose in a shallow green box.
The resulting untidy pile belies the exacting
care Duchamp took in the notes' fabrication. He
photographed them, reproduced them as collo-
types, then hand-tore them along the edges of
specially made templates that mimicked the orig-
inal shape of each note. In other words, Duchamp
tore these pieces of paper over and over - the edi-
tion size was 300, plus twenty de luxe versions - to
create an appearance of spontaneity that traffics in
the improvised nature of thought, the seductive
appeal of the sketch, and above all the creative
urgency that compels us to take up any scrap
when an idea seizes us: all the elements, in other
words, that invest drawing with its special, even
mythic, identity, but repeated dozens of times to
provide each Green Box with an aura of unique-
ness and intimate chaos.
Duchamp returned to the connection
between template and torn edge in the late 1950s
when he created the unique work for the de luxe
edition of Robert Lebel's Sur Marcel Duchamp.
Each box would contain his Self-portrait 'in Profile
(see Fig. 5), a paper silhouette made by laying a
zinc template of the artist's profile atop sheets of
origami paper, then tearing; the result was mount-
ed on black velvet. Exactly when Duchamp 's use
of tearing and templates came to Johns's attention
is unclear, although by 1960 he had acquired a
 Figure 11

MARCEL

DUCHAMP

The Bride Stripped

Bare by Her
Bachelors Even

(The Green Box),

1934

New York,
Metropolitan
Museum of Art
(©2012 Succession
Marcel Duchamp /
Artists Rights Society
[ARS], New York /
ADAGP, Paris)

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 Green Box , and by the time he made Untitled (Cut,
Tear, Scrape, Erase) (see Fig. 1) he was in the midst
of a thoroughgoing exploration of Duchamp's
work and thought. An earlier work by Johns fur-
ther suggests that Duchamp's repetitive tearing -
contra the expressiveness connoted by the Abstract
Expressionist tear - might have resonated with
long-held concerns.
Scraping also highlights the limitations of
drawing that Johns touched on in his discussion
with Shiff. Painters routinely scrape away pigment
to make corrections, an option that is strictly lim-
ited in drawing. Unlike a canvas or panel, which
can be both covered over and scraped down, a
piece of paper can withstand only so much appli-
cation or removal of materials before it weakens

In 1954, while working in a bookstore, Johns and begins to give way. Furthermore, scraping
would fold slips of paper from a pad used to take tends to abrade the paper left behind, so that it
orders, then tear them so that, when they were holds drawing media differently than unscraped
unfolded, the tears made "a symmetrical design:" paper. Thus marks appear darker in scraped areas,
"The idea was to make something symmetrical as more media is caught in the roughened sur-
that didn't appear to be symmetrical."53 Johns then faces. In the late 1950s, Johns began to make
daubed green oil paint over pieces of paper that paintings showing the results òf such actions, as in
he had folded, torn, and unfolded - creating a Device (1961-62) in the Dallas Museum of Art,55
work (now in the Menil Collection, Houston)54 where strips of wood attached to the canvas act as
that was a painting, in terms of its medium, and a compasses that have scraped circular paths of
drawing, in terms of its creased and torn support. paint. But given paper's physical limitations, this is
The uneven, if regular, surface of the paper gives less of an option in drawing. In fact, in a number
the impression of a repeated and contained ges- of Johns's drawings of the 1960s, scraping is often
tural syncopation that provides a variation on the represented by the combination of a drawn,
era's focus on torn edge as painterly gesture: a trompe-Voeil scraping tool, such as a ruler, and the
vehicle of repetition, tearing becomes in Johns's application of a liquid medium like the tempera
hands the "paperly" surrogate for a brushstroke. and graphite wash used in two versions of No (also
made when Johns was in Tokyo) to suggest the
Scrape ooze of displaced paint.56 An important excep-
tion - and
Tearing and cutting paper puts an emphasis ona crucial forerunner of Untitled -
occurred
edge: typically, these actions start at a paper's mar- in 1961 with Sketch for "Good Time
Charley
gins. Indeed, sheets of paper are created by being ," now in the Metropolitan Museum of
cut - or in the case of hand- or mould-made Art, New York (Fig. 12). 57
paper, torn - from a larger whole. Johns's Untitled
Usually Johns makes drawings after paintings,
demonstrates that both cutting and tearing may preparatory studies only when he needs
creating
take place within a sheet of paper's confines,
to but
resolve a compositional or structural problem.
In pro-
scraping is of a different character. A scrape this case, the resulting painting Good Time
duces a subtle lateral tear: it concerns not the edge - one of Johns's first paintings to show a
Charley
device
but rather the breadth and depth of the paper. In that has actually been used to strip away
paint58
Johns's drawing, it occupies a liminal position in - closely follows the pencil-and-ink
the range of actions proposed. To begin sketch's
with, a specifications: a ruler, attached to the
stretcher
scrape's origins are ambiguous, more so than a cut bar by a wing nut, scrapes an arc of
encaustic paint before being halted by a small
or tear; paper may be - accidentally or purpose-
fully - abraded by tools, fingernails, or other sur-
metal cup stamped with the words of the title and
attached
faces passing against it. A scrape turns actions exe- to the canvas upside down. Johns used
cuted in space (e.g., cutting and tearing)thick
into blotting paper for the drawing, and it
allowed him to abrade the area of the paper
operations performed by direct, planar contact
across the paper. encompassed by the ruler's projected sweep. The

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Figure 12

JASPER JOHNS

Sketch for "Good

Time Charley,"
1961

New York ,
Metropolitan
Museum of Art (©
Jasper Johns /
Licensed by VAGA,
New York)

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 scraped arc is slightly darker than the rest of the
sheet, likely due to the fixative Johns used to hold
in place curling fibers of paper gathered into
themselves, the results of him rubbing the paper.59
Thus, none of the paper has actually been
removed; incidental ripples of fibers suggest not
the ruler's projected movement, but instead
Johns's hand, at work on the sketch.
With this sketch and more extensively in
Untitled (Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase), Johns's incur-
sions emphasize the vulnerably composite nature
of paper. Bound together from a wet solution of
pulp, a sheet of paper's fibers can be folded, crum-
pled, severed, sliced, fragmented, and abraded. It
is vulnerable to tools, but also to the artist's bare
hands, which can scratch and rend it. This fragile
immediacy carries associations with the human
body, with our very skin: three of Johns's terms -
cut, tear, scrape - are not only verbs and nouns,
actions and results, but also injuries that can befall
us. The scrapes Johns executes especially drive this
point home, for the subtle damage they inflict on
the paper's surface resembles the rubbing away of
a layer of skin. In fact, Untitled is seemingly com-
posed to minimize these metaphorical associations
with the body by containing each discreet action
in a columnar taxonomy.
A close examination of the surface of Sketch for
" Good Time Charley " indicates that the scraping is
accompanied by extensive erasure, especially
along the margins established by the ruler and
penciled arc marked with the word "scrape." One
curving line is set about half an inch inside anoth-
er, and each is erased at different points, leaving
faint traces; the paper where Johns drew the ruler
is likewise smudged and somewhat darkened, as if
it, too, had been previously rubbed with an eras-
er. In these areas, erasing and scraping converge
and mingle, and at the farthest reach of the circle's
curve, the traces of both fade away. Although it is
rare - and difficult to detect - in Johns's drawings,
the scrape plays a crucial role. Especially at a time
when he was exploring the physical, psychologi-
cal, and intellectual implications of all kinds of
marks, impressions, and surface disruptions,
scraped paper acted as a sort of membrane or skin,
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a conduit between the sculptural implications of
tearing and an identification with the traditional
practices of painting and drawing conjured by the
planar pressure of rubbing and erasure.
Erase
The far right column of Johns's Untitled (Cut,
Tear, Scrape, Erase), labeled "erase," is a bit like the
punchline of a rigorous, restrained, and steadily
building joke. The cut, the tear, and the scrape
remain demurely confined to their respective
columns, but the desultory scribble providing
fodder to Johns's demonstration gets the better of
him, overrunning the drawing's boundaries in
nervy loops. Insult is added to injury: the erasure
is not only partial but not quite successful, with
penciled traces diminished, yet still visible.
Although erasure plays a notable role in Sketch
for (<Good Time Charley," it is often difficult to
gauge the role of erasure in other drawings by
Johns; if done successfully, after all, erasure is all
but unnoticeable. But it is fair to say that erasure
has been part of Johns's understanding of drawing,
paper, and their possibilities from the very begin-
ning of his life as an artist, particularly through
contact with perhaps the key moment in the
annals of erasure: the Erased De Kooning Drawing
of 1953 by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) in
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Fig.
13). 60 When Rauschenberg made this work, they
had likely not yet met, but Johns would eventu-
ally provide the hand-lettered label for the mat
and gold-leaf frame that houses the drawing.
In the midst of an experimental period during
which he made paintings from such materials as
dirt and gold leaf, Rauschenberg asked himself
whether a drawing might be made entirely from
erasing. At first, he tried erasing his own drawings,
but he found this ineffective because it gave him
"only fifty percent" of what he wanted: -"I had to
start with something that was a hundred percent
art, which mine might not be."61 He then asked
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) for a drawing to
erase. "I went to Bill and told him I'd been work-
ing for several ^veeks trying to do that, to use the
eraser as a drawing tool."62 Initially reluctant, De
Figure 13

ROBERT

RAUSCHENBERG

Erased De Kooning
Drawing, 1953

San Francisco, San

Francisco Museum of
Modern Art (©
Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation /

Licensed by VAGA,
New York)

Kooning soon agreed, going through stacks of Duchamp made by drawing a moustache on a
drawings to find one with a combination of media postcard of the Mona Lisa.65 Like Duchamp's ges-
that would present a challenge. Erasing De ture, Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing
Kooning's drawing took weeks; Rauschenberg has been hailed as a landmark of Post-modernism

had to work slowly so as not to tear or crease the
paper as he rubbed the drawing away, and by his
own account he ended up using about forty
erasers of fifteen different types in the process.63
By selecting De Kooning, Rauschenberg
chose perhaps the most prominent painter among
the Abstract Expressionists, and his act would be
widely interpreted as a symbolic patricidal gesture.
The composer John Cage (1912-1992) likened
Rauschenberg's erasure to L.H.O.O.Q.,64 a work
because of its subversive appropriation of another
artist's work. In considerations of drawing, the
work has been further viewed as heralding the
end of its practice. In 1997, Leo Steinberg - a
knowledgeable commentator on both traditional
drawing and Rauschenberg's work - talked about
Erased De Kooning Drawing :
It now occurs to me - looking oveY Rauschenberg's work
after 1953 - that he hardly draws anymore.... And

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Figure 14

CY TWOMBLY

Untitled, 1955

Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation (© Cy
Tiwmbly Foundation)

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even in 1953 , he sensed where he was heading - toward
a visual art that had no further use for the genius of
drawing. He may himself have begun to use the eras-
er... to see drawing expunged.
He was on a perilous course. From Leonardo down
to Matisse and de Kooning, drawing had been what
Vasari defines as the indispensable common ground of
painting , sculpture , and architecture - disegno. And
now Rauschenberg says: not in my book. He was
expelling from the art of painting what for five hundred
years had been its soul ; and he wanted de Kooning's
consent - implicitly a benediction - to speed him on.66
Steinberg's remarks were informed by his recol-
lections of a telephone conversation he had with
Rauschenberg about the erased drawing some
forty years earlier. Interestingly, Steinberg had not
then actually seen the drawing: he had only heard
about it, through the conversational network of
the art world. When he asked Rauschenberg
whether it would make any difference if he saw it,
the artist responded, "Probably not." Indeed,
Steinberg observed, "Since then, I've seen the
Erased De Kooning Drawing several times and find
it ever less interesting to look at."67 Steinberg
instead credited Rauschenberg's decision to erase
as the driving force of the work, in which the
erased drawing becomes an artifact, the documen-
ly sketched rectangular framework as Johns's own
errant doodle - gathers in a slightly darkened haze
suggestive of the erasure of underlying layers.
In fact, by devising a project devoted to the
role of erasure in drawing, Rauschenberg
acknowledged a veritable tradition of erasure.
Although known for the razor-sharp sureness of
his line, Matisse also created numerous drawings
in which repeated positionings and repositionings
of figures rest on, and interpenetrate, a hazy gray
field of rubbed and effaced charcoal. De Kooning's
close friend Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) also made
extensive use of erasure in drawings and large-
scale studies for paintings. But by 1953, perhaps
no one had become more thoroughly associated
with the use of erasure than De Kooning himself.
His habitual revision, erasure, and assembling of
painted and drawn elements were integral to a
manner of painting that many artists of his gener-
ation had begun to imitate. In fact, De Kooning's
proficiency in such processes - as in Seated Woman
(1952) in the Museum of Modern Art (Fig.
15)70 - rendered him a particularly good judge of
what made a drawing difficult to erase. The ele-
ment of destruction that so disturbed Steinberg
when he first heard about Rauschenberg's act is
surely a subtext of the Erased De Kooning Drawing,
but its resonance far exceeds the shock value of

tation of a work of conceptual art. Rauschenberg's supposedly Oedipal response to

Despite its "uninteresting" appearance, the
concerns of this essay suggest that, far from being
a clear inception point of Post-modernism, the
Erased De Kooning Drawing should be understood
less as a point of origin for Post-modernism than
as deeply related, if ambivalently, to a Modernist
tradition of drawing - albeit one rooted not in
his elder. His obliteration of the drawing gains
force from De Kooning's long-standing reputa-
tion for incessantly reworking his compositions,
with the result much the same as outright
destruction; much of his early work was lost as
he reworked or discarded paintings that dissatis-
fied him.

"genius" but in a concern for the practice's medi- A peculiar and aggressive homage, the Erased De
um and materials. This concern also informs the Kooning Drawing took De Kooning's own meth-
work of Cy Twombly (1928-2011), who made ods to such extremes that it ended up eradicating
its source. And in fact, Rauschenberg's ironic
erasure a vital and active aspect of his drawing
practice. In a 1955 pencil sketch that was owned
tribute to his elder also performed one of draw-
by Rauschenberg, the thin vertical tracks of antraditional roles: preparing the way for paint-
ing's
eraser cut through a tangle of lines eraseding.
andSoon after completing the Erased De Kooning
redrawn (Fig. 14). 68 Similarly, in a sheet fromDrawing
the , Rauschenberg began the Red Paintings ,
same year owned by Johns,69 a compacted mass of vibrantly hued canvases featuring collaged
dense,
scribbles - as unsuccessfully contained by a rough-
scraps of newsprint and fabric as well as broadly

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Figure 15

WILLEM DE

KOONING

Seated Woman,
1952

New York, Museum

of Modern Art
(© 2012 The
Willem de Kooning
Foundation / Artists

Rights Society [ARS],

New York)

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ipplied swathes of paint conjuring the gestural
>weep of De Kooning's brushwork.71
The Erased De Kooning Drawing is often spoken
jf as if De Kooning's drawing had been destroyed,
wiped out, obliterated. But this is not the case: a
ghostly palimpsest of the drawing remains, its
smudged traces tattooed into the paper's surface.
Kauschenberg's erasure is thus not entirely suc-
cessful, but then no erasure ever is. Every rubbing
away, every pressure on the paper can only drive
the drawing media deeper into the paper's fibers.
(Johns's intermingling of erasure and scrape in
Sketch for "Good Time Charley" is the emphatic
proof.) The Erased De Kooning Drawing presents a
few faint, failed smudges - beyond that, there is
only the physical existence of an undistinguished,
"uninteresting" piece of paper. Such papers pro-
vide an impure surface on which, once more, to
make marks. Or - as long as the paper can take
it - to cut, tear, scrape, erase.
Catherine Craft is adjunct assistant curator for research
oranges, whose spherical forms are almost subsumed by
dense graphite hatchings covering much of the oil-
soaked paper support. Although this article concerns
paper, it should be noted that Johns has also made draw-
ings on plastic, another support defined by what might be
considered the limitations of its smooth and impenetrable
surface.
4. Pencil; 289 x 289 mm; see Jeffrey Weiss with John
Elderfield et al, Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting,
1955-1965, exh. cat., Washington, DC, National
Gallery of Art, and Basel, Kunstmuseum, 2007, no. 83,
repr. (in color).
5. In the 2007 Washington-Basel exhibition catalogue,
curator Jeffrey Weiss (see his essay "Painting Bitten by a
Man," in ibid., pp. 23-46) argued for Johns's impact in
the 1960s on such artists as Mel Bochner (b. 1940), Eva
Hesse (1936-1970), and Richard Serra (b. 1938), whose
Verb List (1967-68) resonates with Johns's sketch. Artists
of the 1970s used paper in distinctive ways, including the
folded and torn works of Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), the
cut drawings of Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978), and
the manipulation of carbon sets by Joshua Neustein (b.
1940). Paper's subsequent role in contemporary drawing
has become too extensive and too varied to summarize.
Regarding more recent uses of paper, see Scott Gerson,
"Mixed Media: Contemporary Drawing Materials in the

and exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings
Collection," in Christian Rattemeyer, The Judith Rothschild
Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection: Catalogue
author's note
raisonné, New York, 2009, pp. 68-71. On the efflores-
This essay has its origins in works by Jasper Johns,
cence of contemporary drawing, see Karen Kurczynski's
assessment in
Marcel Duchamp, and other artists included "Drawing is the New Painting," Art Journal,
70, 2011, pp. 92-110.
Paper Trails: Selected Works from the Collection ,
6. Inv. no.
1934- 2001, an exhibition that I organized atZXXVIII
the DR 544. Cut-and-pasted newspaper,
charcoal, pencil, and cut-and-pasted paper over ink; 622
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011 with Maria
x 475 mm; see Anne Umland, Picasso Guitars, exh. cat.,
Prather and Ian Alteveer in the Department of
New York, Museum of Modern Art, 2010, no. 30, repr.
Nineteenth-century, Modern, and Contemporary
(in color).
Art. Many thanks to Jasper Johns for patiently
7. Paper components with jagged edges are prominent in
answering my questions about the works under
many of Picasso's Cubist papiers collés, including Violin (3
discussion here. I am deeply grateful toDecember
Joshua 1912; Paris, Centre Pompidou, inv. no. AM
Neustein for our discussions about the nature
2914 D);and
Siphon, Glass, Newspaper, and Violin (December
1912 or later; Stockholm, Moderna Museet, inv. no. NM
possibilities of paper.
6083); Head of a Man with a Hat (December 1912 or later;
Paris, Centre Pompidou, inv. no. AM 2916 D); Man with
a Hat and Violin (December 1912 or later; New York,
NOTES
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 1999.363.64);
Guitar (Spring 1913; Paris, Musée National Picasso, inv.
1. See "Flicker in the Work: Jasper Johns in Conversation
no. MP248); and Head (Spring 1913; Edinburgh, Scottish
with Richard Shiff," Master Drawings, 44, no. 3, 2006,
National Gallery of Modern Art, inv. no. GM 3890); see
pp. 275-98.
New York 2010, nos. 24, 26, 40, 42, 73, and 74, all repr.
2. See ibid., pp. 278-79. (in color).

3. How much a sheet of paper can take appears as an impli- 8. On the layering of paper over ink in this work, see the
cit concern in two early drawings by Johns of dried website for New York 2010, www.moma.org/interactives/

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 exhibitions/ 201 1 /picassoguitars/featured-works/ Í4.php (last 20. Collage and pencil on board; 552 x 451 mm; see Anne
accessed 11 February 2012). Collins Goodyear and James W. McManus, Inventing
Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture, exh. cat.,
9. Inv. no. 967.1979. Cut-and-pasted paper and printed
Washington, DC, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, no.
paper, charcoal, ink, and chalk on colored paper on
66, repr.
board; 664 x 496 mm; see ibid., no. 75, repr. (in color).
21. Inv. no. 2007.49.37 (Bequest of William S. Lieberman,
10. Inv. no. 1985.64.105. Collage with charcoal and white
2005). Torn and pasted paper on velvet-covered paper-
chalk; 605 x 350 mm; see ibid., no. 77, repr. (in color).
board; 337 x 244 mm; see Arturo Schwarz, The Complete
11. See Note 7 above. Works of Marcel Duchamp, 2 vols., New York, 3rd rev.
edn., 1997, vol. 2, no. 557, repr.
12. See Hans Arp, "And So the Circle Closed," in On My
Way: Poetry and Essays, ed. with a preface by22.
Robert
See John Coplans, "Fragments According to Johns: An
Motherwell, New York, 1948, p. 76. Interview with Jasper Johns," The Print Collector's
Newsletter, 3, no. 2, 1972, pp. 29-32; reprinted in Kirk
13. Inv. no. 496.1970 (Gift of Philip Johnson). Cut-and-
Varnedoe, ed., Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes,
pasted colored paper on colored paper; 332 x 259 mm;
see Anne Umland and Adrian Sudhalter with Scott
Interviews, New York, 1996, p. 140. Regarding the dis-
tortions that resulted from this procedure, see Richard
Gerson, Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art,
Shiff, "Anamorphosis: Jasper Johns," in Foirades/ Fizzles:
New York, 2008, p. 45, repr. (in color).
Echo and Allusion in the Art of Jasper Johns, exh. cat., Los
14. Regarding the "laws of chance" usually credited Angeles,
with Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, and
generating such works, see Anne Umland's astute analy-
University of California, Wight Art Gallery, 1987, p.
151.
sis in ibid., pp. 44-49, and my discussion of Arp's papiers
déchirés in the present text. Picasso's approach to collage
23. In a statement made in 1959, Johns cited his interest in
also involved aspects of improvisation. In Musical Score
Duchamp, but also in Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519),
and Guitar (Autumn 1912; Paris, Centre Pompidou, inv.
quoting the latter's "Therefore, O painter, do not sur-
no. AM 3555 D) and Bar Table with Guitar (1913, private
round your bodies with lines..."; see Dorothy C. Miller,
collection), collage components have been left pinned
Sixteen Americans, exh. cat., New York, Museum of
into place, suggesting that their placement was experi-
Modern Art, 1959-60, p. 22.
mental and potentially temporary; see New York 2010,
nos. 20 and 76, both repr. (in color). 24. Private collection (oil on canvas with objects, six panels;
2.24 x 4.88 m); see Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: A
15. See Henri Matisse, Jazz, Paris, 1947; quoted in Jack
Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern
Flam, ed., Matisse on Art, London and New York, 1973,
Art, 1996, no. 105, repr.
p. 12.
25. Collage of papers, board, and primed canvas on paper;
16. It is possible to think of Matisse's cut-outs, with one layer
216 x 191 mm; see Isabel Schulz, ed., Kurt Schwitters:
of paper atop another, as "very shallow reliefs," for their
Color and Collage, exh. cat., Houston, Menil Collection;
composite physical nature is a crucial aspect of their iden-
Princeton University Art Museum; and Berkeley,
tities; see John Elderfield, The Cut-outs of Henri Matisse,
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific
New York, 1978, p. 7.
Film Archive, 2010-11, no. 43, repr. (in color). Johns
17. Picasso constructed the 1912 Guitar from paperboard, also owns a 1928 Schwitters collage, für Henry Cowel, als
paper, string, and painted wire. In her essay in New York Anerkennung seines Spiels (184 x 162 mm), in which torn
2010, "The Process of Imagining a Guitar," Anne paper is not a prominent element; see ibid., no. 53, repr.
Umland makes a strong case for its status as an independ- (in color). The connection between torn paper and con-
ent work, not a study or mock-up, prior to the creation sumer society became a visual trope for a generation of
of the better-known sheet-metal Guitar of 1914. artists including Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé (b. 1926),
Mimmo Rotella (1918-2006), and Raymond Hains
18. Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) had comparably cut the sur-
(1926-2005).
face of his Concetto spaziale works. The delimited cut in
26. See "Conversation at Meudon between Arp and Bryen
drawing would become more common in the generation
of artists who followed Johns, such as Gordon Matta- (1955)," in Marcel Jean, ed., Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays,
Clark and Joshua Neustein. Memories, trans, by Joachim Neugroschel, in the series
Documents of 20th-century Art, ed. by Robert
19. Johns obtained his stencils readymade; see Leo Steinberg,
Motherwell, New York, 1972, p. 337.
"Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of His Art," in Other
27.
Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-century Art, London See Arp 1948, p. 77.
and New York, 1972, p. 32.
28. Inv. no. 1947-88-4 (A.E. Gallatin Collection, 1947).

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 Collage with torn paper; 292 x 324 mm; see James Thrall Gallery, New York.
Soby, Arp , exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern
42. Between 1951 and Pollock's death in 1956, this situation
Art, 1958, no. 24, repr.
was further complicated by the fact that Pollock was suf-
29. According to a proposal by Jane Hancock ("Arp's fering from a profound creative block.
Chance Collages," in Stephen C. Foster, ed., Dada/
43. See Motherwell's 1965 interview with Bryan Robertson,
Dimensions, Ann Arbor, 1985, pp. 79-80, n. 65), Arp
Motherwell Archives, Dedalus Foundation, New York.
turned to sculpture in a search for permanence in
Motherwell reproduced Arp's collages not only in On
response to the ephemerality of the torn papers.
My Way - the 1948 Documents of Modern Art antholo-
30. See Briony Fer, On Abstract Art, New Haven, 1997, pp. gy that he edited for Wittenborn and Schultz - but also
67-73. Hancock (1985, p. 68) links Arp's inception of in Possibilities, the important journal he co-edited with
the torn-paper works to the death of his mother in 1929. Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978). Motherwell chose to
illustrate works by Arp, such as Drawing and Torn and
31. Stiftung Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber-Art e.V.,
Colored Papers (1946; private collection; collage; 349 x
Rolandseck. Collage and torn drawing; 300 x 237 mm;
251 mm; see New York 1958, no. 26, repr.), whose
see Eric Robertson, Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor , New
direct and vigorous qualities resonated with Motherwell's
Haven, 2006, fig. 27.
own collages of this period.
32. These drawings would lead to the poured black enamel
44. He did not make use of old work as systematically as Arp
works of 1951 and the so-called "return" of the figure
did, but Motherwell's 1948 collages suggested a back-
that characterized them, but it is interesting to note that,
ward glance in their echo of the distinctively speckled
apart from the occasional surfacing of a recognizable
papers that appear in a number of his most important
image, figuration is not a pressing issue in these drawings.
early collages, such as Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive (1943;
33. See Francis V. O'Connor and Eugene V. Thaw, eds., New York, Museum of Modern Art, inv. no. 77.1944;
Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings cut-and-pasted printed and painted papers, wood veneer,
and Other Works, 4 vols., New Haven, 1978, vol. 4, nos. gouache, oil, and ink on board; 717 x 911 mm); see E.
1039 and 1040, both repr. A. Carmean, Jr., The Collages of Robert Motherwell, exh.
cat., Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1972, no. 11, repr.
34. Inv. no. 66.4084 (Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn
Foundation). Collage of paper soaked in glue, pebbles, 45. Inv. no. 1955-17-1. Casein and collage on masonite; 96.5
twine, wire mesh, newsprint, and oil on fiberboard; x 76.2 cm; see ibid., no. 11, repr.
104.1 x 78.7 cm; see ibid., vol. 4, no. 1040, repr. Photo:
Lee Stalsworth.
46. Inv. no. 1949.49. Paper collage and gouache on
masonite; 749 x 610 mm; see ibid., no. 10, repr.
35. See ibid., vol. 4, p. 114. Pollock's interest in paper was
47. See Robert S. Mattison, Robert Motherwell: The Formative
further stimulated by his acquaintance with the unique
Years, Ann Arbor, 1987, p. 196.
handmade papers made by Douglas Howell (1906-1994).
Moreover, he and Krasner were much taken with the 48. Private collection (casein on board; 381 x 508 mm); see E.
collages of Anne Ryan (1889-1954), who worked exten- A. Carmean, Jr. and Eliza E. Rathbone, American Art at
sively with Howell paper; her collages were shown at the Mid-century: The Subjects of the Artist, exh. cat., Washington,
Betty Parsons Gallery when Krasner had her show there DC, National Gallery of Art, 1978-79, fig. 3.
in 1951.
49. E. A. Carmean, Jr. (see Washington, DC, National
36. Destroyed; see ibid., vol. 4, no. 1054, repr. Gallery of Art, 1978-79, pp. 105-6) notes, in his com-
parisons of these paintings with works by Matisse, the
37. See Ellen G. Landau, Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné,
importance of the painted edge in the Elegies, but does
New York, 1995, pp. 97 and 119.
not make the connection between this quality and the
38. Regarding Krasner's use of collage for revisions and stud-process of collage.
ies, see ibid., nos. 91, 95, 142, and 181-201, all repr.
50. Vicente was known for his collages composed largely
39. See Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations with 15from torn paper, but he used fine art papers, tearing them
Women Artists, New York, 1975, rev. and enlarged edn., expressly for use in his collages. The result was a gestural
1995, pp. 81-82. web of shallow space enlivened by the fuzzed and ragged
edges of its components.
40. For a photograph of Pollock with Krasner's Color Totem,
51. Inv. no. 2002.42a- ww (Anonymous gift). Box contain-
another composition incorporating fragments of works
by him, see Landau 1995, p. 311. ing collotype reproductions on various papers; 330 x 283
x 25 mm; see Schwarz 1996, no. 435, repr.
41. Oil and paper collage on board; 77.5 x 102.9 cm; see
ibid., no. 281, repr. Photo: courtesy of Robert Miller
52. Inv. no. 1952-98-1 (oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and

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 dust on two glass panels; 277.5 cm x 175.9 cm); see ibid., his own contemporaries, such as Andrew Wyeth
no. 404, repr. (1917-2009), would also have been unac eptable.
Erasing a Rembrandt would have been "too simple,"
53. See Michael Crichton, Jasper Johns, exh. cat., New York,
presumably because the she r vandalism of such an act
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977, rev. and
would have overpowered other aspects of its meaning.
expanded edn., 1994, p. 76, n. 1.
Rauschenberg explained his rejection of Wyeth by
54. Untitled (c. 1954; Menil Collection, Houston). Oil on remarking, "I don't relate to him," implying that his own
paper, mounted on fabric; 225 x 225 mm; see ibid., p. 29, feelings of respect and admiration played a role in his
repr. decision. See Washington, DC, 1991-92, p. 161; se also
Steinberg's own ac ount of their conversation in
55. Inv. no. 1976.1 (oil, canvas, wood, metal; 183.04 x
Encounters with Rauschenberg: A Lavishly Il ustrated Lecture,
123.82 x 11.43 cm); see Washington, DC, and Basel
Chicago, 2000, pp. 16-21.
2007, no. 50, repr.
62. See Tomkins 1980, p. 96.
56. Graphite, charcoal, and tempera; 514 x 445 mm (see
Washington, DC, 2009, no. 84, repr.); and graphite and 63. Rauschenberg discus es the difficulty of erasing the draw-
graphite wash; 518 x 415 mm (see ibid., no. 85, repr.). ing in Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five
During this trip to Japan, Johns also made Watchman (Los Masters of the Avant- Garde, New York, 1965, expanded
Angeles, Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection; oil on two edn. 1968; New York, 1976, p. 211; idem 1980, p. 96;
canvas panels with objects; 215.9 x 153 cm; see Barbara Rose, Rauschenberg, New York, 1987, p. 51; and
Washington, DC, and Basel 2007, no. 86, repr.), which Mark Stevens and Analyn Swan, De Kooning: An
shows a trail of scraped paint left behind by a wooden slat American Master, New York, 2004, pp. 358-60.
that appears to have pushed a wooden ball along the
length of a shelf attached to the bottom of the canvas. It
64. Paris, private col ection. Rectified Readymade:
Reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, to
is perhaps the first painting by Johns in which such a
which Duchamp added mustache, goate , and title in
scraping action was not linked to the rotation of a com-
pencil; 197 x 124 mm; se Schwarz 1996, no. 369, repr.
pass-like tool. Untitled (Cut, Tear , Scrape, Erase) and both
versions of the No drawings feature non-arcing scrapes. 65. See John Cage, "Jasper Johns: Stories and Ideas," in A
Year From Monday: New Lectures and Writings, Middle-
57. Inv. no. 1978.566 (Gift of Jim Dine). Pencil and ink on
town, 1967, p. 75; original y published in Alan R.
blotting paper; 965 x 610 mm; see Washington, DC, and
Solomon, Jasper Johns, exh. cat., New York, Jewish
Basel 2007, no. 45, repr. (in color).
Museum, 1964.
58. Private collection (encaustic on canvas, with objects; 96.5
66. See Steinberg 2000, pp. 20-21.
x 61 x 11.3 cm); see ibid., no. 46, repr. (in color); and
Harry Cooper, "Speak, Painting: Word and Device in67. See ibiid., p. 22.
Early Johns," October, 127, 2009, p. 60.
68. Pencil; 222 x 286 mm; se Nicola del Roscio, ed., Cy
i

59. Jasper Johns, email communication with the author (19 Twombly: Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings and Sketchbooks,
August 2011). 5 projected vols., Munich, vol. 1: 1951-1955 (2011), no.
119, repr.
60. Inv. no. 98.298. Traces of ink and crayon on paper, mat,
label, and gilded frame; 641 x 553 x 12.7 mm; se Walter I 59. Pencil; 216 x 263 mm; see ibid., no. 114, repr.
Hopps, Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s, exh. cat.,
70. Purchase: The Lauder Foundation Fund. Pencil and pas-
Washington, DC, Corcoran Gal ery of Art, and else-
tel on cut and pasted paper; 308 x 242 mm; see
where, 1991-92, no. 127, repr.
www. moma, org /collection /object .php ?object_id= 3 3 413.
61. See Calvin Tomkins, Off the Wal : Robert Rauschenberg and
71. Unlike Steinberg, I would argue that Rauschenberg by
the Art World of Our Time, New York, 1980, p. 96. In
no means "expunged" drawing from his work, although
deciding that he needed a drawing that was "a hundred
he radically redefined its place and function. A reconsid-
percent art," Rauschenberg was making a choice that was
eration of the role of drawing in Rauschenberg's oeuvre
the product of a stil more specific proces of elimination.
would encompass not only his transfer drawings but also
In conversation with Leo Steinberg, Rauschenberg con-
the many charcoal and pencil lines, figures, and marks in
firmed that in addition to his own work, the works of an
his Combines.
Old Master such as Rembrandt (1606-1669) or one of

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