34 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Ed Ruscha Fairly Small Torpedos 1974 gunpowder, pastel on paper 57.8 x 72.7 cm (22 3/4 x 28 5/8 in.) Signed, numbered and dated 'Edward Ruscha 1974 [D-224]' on the reverse.
Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. John D. Brundage, Winnetka, Illinois James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco Exhibited Austin, Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Joe Goode and Edward Ruscha: Drawings, 26 March - 24 April, 1977 New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Eight Funny Artists: Wit and Irony in Art, 26 April - 14 June, 1981 Literature E. Ruscha, They Called Her Styrene, London: Phaidon, 2000, n.p. (illustrated) L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1: 1956-1976, Gagosian Gallery, New York & Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, p. 374, no. D1974.26 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937. Moving to Los Angeles in 1956, he began work as a signpainter, and later worked in press and typesetting for an art book publisher. During this formative period he came across a Robert Rauschenberg combine and a then obscure Jasper Johns painting, Target with Four Faces, printed in a magazine: from then, he says, he was inspired to become a fine artist. This distinct genesis in print media heavily influenced Ruscha’s eventual aesthetic. Beyond simply forming a Southern Californian brand of Pop Art, Ruscha’s work displays a deep textual vision that is uniquely his own. In his pieces, words are given a physical voice, and their evocative potential fully realized in clashes between the banal and the majestic. ‘Some Pretty Eyes’ are blankly juxtaposed with ‘Some Electric Bills;’ ‘Pay Nothing Until April’ is stamped on a sublime photorealistic mountain. An admirer of J.G. Ballard and Don DeLillo, Ruscha sees the dark and apocalyptic face of modernity, but a Pop sense of humour smiles wryly through much of his work. The present lot dates from an experimental period that began in the late 1960s, and saw Ruscha explore a range of unorthodox materials. His 1969 Stains series features substances as wide-ranging as egg yolk, turpentine, beer, salad dressing, Pepto-Bismol, and the artist’s own blood. During this time, Ruscha also came to regularly employ gunpowder as a medium, enjoying its colour and texture and the ease it offered in correcting mistakes. ‘I happened to have, just by accident, this little canister of gunpowder, and I thought: well, that’s a powder, like charcoal and like graphite, and why can’t that be used?’ (Ed Ruscha Artist Ed Ruscha discusses his use of gunpowder [video], SFMOMA, July 2004). From this spontaneous inception sprung some of Ruscha’s most distinctive work. Gunpowder pieces like Nashville and So spell out their titles in white ribbons of cursive longhand, transforming the textual into the ornamental. The present lot is rather less decorous than these works. The stark black and white palette lends the piece an unnerving impassivity. The effect is of a dispassionate sci-fi news bulletin or a phrase removed from an arcane poem. Belonging to a dystopia that is both familiar and remote, the words confront the viewer as some inviolable and perhaps unwelcome truth. Yet it is a truth that remains essentially ungraspable, belonging wholly to the realm of neither fact nor fiction. As is so often the case in the artist’s work, the viewer is suspended between enlightenment and mystification. Discussing his use of gunpowder, Ruscha emphasizes pragmatic concerns; ‘the gunpowder itself is in granules. I could see it would make a good choice of materials; it could actually impregnate on paper … It became a material that I could correct.’ (Ed Ruscha in Paul Kalstrom, ‘Interview With Ruscha In His Hollywood Studio,' Ed Ruscha Leave Any Information At The Signal, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p.155). Speaking about process and materiality, he makes no mention of the associative weight of gunpowder. However given the title and content of the piece, the medium’s connotations are unavoidable. A meta sensibility creeps into the work, just as it does in his trompe l’oeil splash of water forming the word ‘Drop
34 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Ed Ruscha Fairly Small Torpedos 1974 gunpowder, pastel on paper 57.8 x 72.7 cm (22 3/4 x 28 5/8 in.) Signed, numbered and dated 'Edward Ruscha 1974 [D-224]' on the reverse.
Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. John D. Brundage, Winnetka, Illinois James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco Exhibited Austin, Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Joe Goode and Edward Ruscha: Drawings, 26 March - 24 April, 1977 New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Eight Funny Artists: Wit and Irony in Art, 26 April - 14 June, 1981 Literature E. Ruscha, They Called Her Styrene, London: Phaidon, 2000, n.p. (illustrated) L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1: 1956-1976, Gagosian Gallery, New York & Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, p. 374, no. D1974.26 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937. Moving to Los Angeles in 1956, he began work as a signpainter, and later worked in press and typesetting for an art book publisher. During this formative period he came across a Robert Rauschenberg combine and a then obscure Jasper Johns painting, Target with Four Faces, printed in a magazine: from then, he says, he was inspired to become a fine artist. This distinct genesis in print media heavily influenced Ruscha’s eventual aesthetic. Beyond simply forming a Southern Californian brand of Pop Art, Ruscha’s work displays a deep textual vision that is uniquely his own. In his pieces, words are given a physical voice, and their evocative potential fully realized in clashes between the banal and the majestic. ‘Some Pretty Eyes’ are blankly juxtaposed with ‘Some Electric Bills;’ ‘Pay Nothing Until April’ is stamped on a sublime photorealistic mountain. An admirer of J.G. Ballard and Don DeLillo, Ruscha sees the dark and apocalyptic face of modernity, but a Pop sense of humour smiles wryly through much of his work. The present lot dates from an experimental period that began in the late 1960s, and saw Ruscha explore a range of unorthodox materials. His 1969 Stains series features substances as wide-ranging as egg yolk, turpentine, beer, salad dressing, Pepto-Bismol, and the artist’s own blood. During this time, Ruscha also came to regularly employ gunpowder as a medium, enjoying its colour and texture and the ease it offered in correcting mistakes. ‘I happened to have, just by accident, this little canister of gunpowder, and I thought: well, that’s a powder, like charcoal and like graphite, and why can’t that be used?’ (Ed Ruscha Artist Ed Ruscha discusses his use of gunpowder [video], SFMOMA, July 2004). From this spontaneous inception sprung some of Ruscha’s most distinctive work. Gunpowder pieces like Nashville and So spell out their titles in white ribbons of cursive longhand, transforming the textual into the ornamental. The present lot is rather less decorous than these works. The stark black and white palette lends the piece an unnerving impassivity. The effect is of a dispassionate sci-fi news bulletin or a phrase removed from an arcane poem. Belonging to a dystopia that is both familiar and remote, the words confront the viewer as some inviolable and perhaps unwelcome truth. Yet it is a truth that remains essentially ungraspable, belonging wholly to the realm of neither fact nor fiction. As is so often the case in the artist’s work, the viewer is suspended between enlightenment and mystification. Discussing his use of gunpowder, Ruscha emphasizes pragmatic concerns; ‘the gunpowder itself is in granules. I could see it would make a good choice of materials; it could actually impregnate on paper … It became a material that I could correct.’ (Ed Ruscha in Paul Kalstrom, ‘Interview With Ruscha In His Hollywood Studio,' Ed Ruscha Leave Any Information At The Signal, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004, p.155). Speaking about process and materiality, he makes no mention of the associative weight of gunpowder. However given the title and content of the piece, the medium’s connotations are unavoidable. A meta sensibility creeps into the work, just as it does in his trompe l’oeil splash of water forming the word ‘Drop
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.jpg "Quelle: Christie's")
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