'Erased Rauschenberg' Sells For $21,000

Nikolas Bentel, left, and Ho Jae Kim with 'Erased Rauschenberg' (2017)

Courtesy of Nikolas Bentel

A former Rauschenberg sold in an online auction this month for $21,000, more than twice what it was worth when it was still a Rauschenberg.

Confused? Here's the backstory:

Earlier this year, a young artist in New York named Nikolas Bentel bought an original Robert Rauschenberg from a 25-year-old artist and collector named Ho Jae Kim. Kim had owned the piece for only six months, but Bentel made an intriguing offer. He didn't want the piece because he liked it, or because he wanted to own a Rauschenberg, or even as an investment. He just wanted to destroy it, one square inch at a time.

More accurately, he wanted to "erase" the small 1973 work on paper, Untitled, by covering it with ads. Kim sold him the work for $10,000, and Bentel promptly began selling off its 9x12-inch surface area at $92.59 per square inch, the precise amount he needed to recoup what he paid for the piece, thereby turning it into an entirely new work of art: Erased Rauschenberg.

Why? To make a statement about a world that views art more as an investment, no different than gold or real estate, than as something with cultural or critical merit. When Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi sold late last year for $450 million, Bentel says the idea -- which had been percolating for a year and a half -- became a call to action.

"It’s at the point where a lot of art pieces are there only for the buying and selling of property," says Bentel, 24. And if the art economy can not only condone but facilitate the literal destruction of an original Rauschenberg, he adds, "then maybe we should consider other models." 

In erasing the piece, Bentel says he also wanted to "pop the bubble" of the blue-chip art world and allow "all the fringe people" at its margins to enter it, at a relatively minimal cost. So he sold the ad space mainly to players in minor art markets who wanted to "establish a presence" on such a high-profile project without being part of the rarefied world of Sotheby's or New York's gallery scene.

His secondary motivation was more grounded: to auction the ad-covered work for $20,000 and donate the proceeds to a scholarship fund for artists in the New Museum's NEW INC program, an art and design incubator where Bentel is a resident. The auction ran from March 5th to the 9th, and he received two bids. The winning $21,000 offer came from a collector in Europe who had also purchased ad space on the piece, but wishes to remain anonymous as its ultimate buyer.

As for the art establishment, Bentel says he's gotten almost entirely positive feedback. "I was surprised by how few people were angry about it," he says, noting that even the Rauschenberg Foundation "is really excited about it," no doubt because the piece is a direct homage to Rauschenberg's own "erasure" of an original Willem de Kooning in 1953.

Regarding Erased Rauschenberg's future, Bentel is no less precious than he was when papering over the original with ads. "Someone asked me if I was worried if someone bought it and then destroyed it and turned it into another piece," he says. "And I’d be fine with that."
