22 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Ed Ruscha Psycho Spaghetti Western #8 2010-11 acrylic, used motor oil on canvas 48 x 110 in. (121.9 x 279.4 cm) Signed and dated "Ed Ruscha 2010-11" on the reverse. This work will be included in a future volume of Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, edited by Robert Dean.
Provenance Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles Exhibited Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, ED RUSCHA PSYCHO SPAGHETTI WESTERNS, February 25 - April 9, 2011 Literature ED RUSCHA PSYCHO SPAGHETTI WESTERNS, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, 2011, p. 17 (installation illustrated), p. 51 (illustrated) J. Finkel, "Q&A: Ed Ruscha on Psycho Spaghetti Westerns," Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2011 Catalogue Essay Ed Ruscha’s late series Psycho Spaghetti Westerns unveiled in 2011, offer a new vision of the contemporary American landscape. In the present lot, Psycho Spaghetti Western #8, 2010-2011, Ruscha constructs an eerie surrealist, yet contemporary still life. The scene reveals a stark, stratified view of a highway, reimagined as a display-case for the mundane, commonly discarded items of passing by vehicles. Here, the American still life has been stripped of its floral domesticity, and instead is bedecked with today's curios. Yet, through Ruscha's treatment, the scraps of a tire and a worn mattress create a beautiful melancholic portrait of America. Ruscha explains the local vernacular associated with the motif, “That’s a gator—truck drivers call ’em that, I started seeing these things on the highway and I thought, it’s the perfect excuse to make a picture.” (Ed Ruscha in D. Goodyear, “Moving Day,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2011) The Psycho Spaghetti series forms a notable body of work for Ruscha, taking visual cues from his earlier paintings of the 1960's which similarly depicted images upon vaguely defined fields. Now, a mature painter, the artist harkens back to his earlier explorations with a new vision. For Ruscha the open road of the highway represents the epitome of American liberty and rebellion. “I like the open road and driving on the highway, especially in the Western U.S. I always liked the Pasadena Freeway. It was built in 1938 and is the oldest freeway in the United States.” (Ed Ruscha in D. Goodyear, “Moving Day,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2011) From Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of the Open Road” to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the promise of the highway has become synonymous with the idea of personal freedom. As Dean Moriarty expressed in Kerouac’s epochal book: "Somewhere along the line I knew there would be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." (J. Kerouac, On the Road) The possibility of greatness lies on the open road, even if this American landscape seemed to offer only a world of debris and disorienting instability. From out of the wreckage of life on the road, these “pearls” could be found in unexpected objects and sights along the way. The cinematic genre of the spaghetti western also involved dislocation and the collision of cultural modes. Overdubbed, extremely violent parables of the Old American West were filmed in Italy and Spain during the 1960s. Ruscha explains this conflation of cultural references: “tangled up messes like spaghetti, and we're living out here in the West, and we're all psycho.”(Ed Ruscha J. Finkel, “Q&A: Ed Ruscha on 'Psycho Spaghetti Westerns,”Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2011) The present lot, Psycho Spaghetti Western #8, 2010-2011, is compositionally soothing in color and form even though it depicts seemingly sad and forlorn items after their abandonment. The pinkish background is reminiscent of Ruscha’s early 1970’s works on paper rendered in gunpowder that depicted floating words, such as “Rooster” upon a reddish powdered pigment background. This smoldering, sfumato technique originated in the High Renaissance and early Baroque periods, and comes from the Italian verb “sfumare” meaning “to tone down or evaporate like smoke.” This smoky grey and cream background also alludes to Surrealist landscapes, as seen in Yves Tanguy’s Arrières-pensées (Second Thoughts), 1939, which were traditionally employed to geographically dislocate the scene from any real or recognizable world. Tanguy referred to these as mindscapes, a scene in which
22 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Ed Ruscha Psycho Spaghetti Western #8 2010-11 acrylic, used motor oil on canvas 48 x 110 in. (121.9 x 279.4 cm) Signed and dated "Ed Ruscha 2010-11" on the reverse. This work will be included in a future volume of Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, edited by Robert Dean.
Provenance Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles Exhibited Los Angeles, Gagosian Gallery, ED RUSCHA PSYCHO SPAGHETTI WESTERNS, February 25 - April 9, 2011 Literature ED RUSCHA PSYCHO SPAGHETTI WESTERNS, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, 2011, p. 17 (installation illustrated), p. 51 (illustrated) J. Finkel, "Q&A: Ed Ruscha on Psycho Spaghetti Westerns," Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2011 Catalogue Essay Ed Ruscha’s late series Psycho Spaghetti Westerns unveiled in 2011, offer a new vision of the contemporary American landscape. In the present lot, Psycho Spaghetti Western #8, 2010-2011, Ruscha constructs an eerie surrealist, yet contemporary still life. The scene reveals a stark, stratified view of a highway, reimagined as a display-case for the mundane, commonly discarded items of passing by vehicles. Here, the American still life has been stripped of its floral domesticity, and instead is bedecked with today's curios. Yet, through Ruscha's treatment, the scraps of a tire and a worn mattress create a beautiful melancholic portrait of America. Ruscha explains the local vernacular associated with the motif, “That’s a gator—truck drivers call ’em that, I started seeing these things on the highway and I thought, it’s the perfect excuse to make a picture.” (Ed Ruscha in D. Goodyear, “Moving Day,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2011) The Psycho Spaghetti series forms a notable body of work for Ruscha, taking visual cues from his earlier paintings of the 1960's which similarly depicted images upon vaguely defined fields. Now, a mature painter, the artist harkens back to his earlier explorations with a new vision. For Ruscha the open road of the highway represents the epitome of American liberty and rebellion. “I like the open road and driving on the highway, especially in the Western U.S. I always liked the Pasadena Freeway. It was built in 1938 and is the oldest freeway in the United States.” (Ed Ruscha in D. Goodyear, “Moving Day,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2011) From Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of the Open Road” to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the promise of the highway has become synonymous with the idea of personal freedom. As Dean Moriarty expressed in Kerouac’s epochal book: "Somewhere along the line I knew there would be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." (J. Kerouac, On the Road) The possibility of greatness lies on the open road, even if this American landscape seemed to offer only a world of debris and disorienting instability. From out of the wreckage of life on the road, these “pearls” could be found in unexpected objects and sights along the way. The cinematic genre of the spaghetti western also involved dislocation and the collision of cultural modes. Overdubbed, extremely violent parables of the Old American West were filmed in Italy and Spain during the 1960s. Ruscha explains this conflation of cultural references: “tangled up messes like spaghetti, and we're living out here in the West, and we're all psycho.”(Ed Ruscha J. Finkel, “Q&A: Ed Ruscha on 'Psycho Spaghetti Westerns,”Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2011) The present lot, Psycho Spaghetti Western #8, 2010-2011, is compositionally soothing in color and form even though it depicts seemingly sad and forlorn items after their abandonment. The pinkish background is reminiscent of Ruscha’s early 1970’s works on paper rendered in gunpowder that depicted floating words, such as “Rooster” upon a reddish powdered pigment background. This smoldering, sfumato technique originated in the High Renaissance and early Baroque periods, and comes from the Italian verb “sfumare” meaning “to tone down or evaporate like smoke.” This smoky grey and cream background also alludes to Surrealist landscapes, as seen in Yves Tanguy’s Arrières-pensées (Second Thoughts), 1939, which were traditionally employed to geographically dislocate the scene from any real or recognizable world. Tanguy referred to these as mindscapes, a scene in which
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.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
