Beschreibung:

36 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION Ed Ruscha Anchor Stuck in Sand 1990 acrylic on canvas 153 x 285.1 cm (60 1/4 x 112 1/4 in.) Signed and dated 'Ed Ruscha 1990' on the reverse. Further signed, titled and dated 'EDWARD RUSCHA "ANCHOR STUCK IN SAND" 1990' on the stretcher.
Provenance James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica The Robert A. Rowan Collection, Los Angeles Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art, 15 November, 2000, lot 275 Private Collection Phillips, New York, Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 7 March, 2013, lot 15 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Ed Ruscha 9 December, 1990 – 24 February, 1991 Pasadena, Art Center, College of Design, Selections from the Robert A. Rowan Trust Collection, 21 May – 9 July, 1995 Literature R. Dean & L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of The Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York, Gagosian Gallery, 2009, no. P1990.44, pp. 308-309 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay When Ed Ruscha left Los Angeles’ Chouinard Art Institute in 1960, Pop Art was incipient. The years that followed saw a period of radical artistic transformation; a new aesthetic emerged, deriving both image and technique from the world of commercial entertainment. Ruscha had his own role to play in this narrative. Now-canonical paintings like Large Trademark With Eight Spotlights (1962) and Hollywood (1968) sought inspiration in Los Angeles’ film industry and its distinctive iconography. In these paintings, as elsewhere, Ruscha revealed his enduring interest in text and typography. From the very early stages of his career, words and their dual potential for both signification and materiality have been a central preoccupation of the Omaha-born artist. Many of his paintings find a single word or phrase recontextualised in suggestive interplay with typeface and background. The effect is often at once disorientating and strangely elucidating. The present lot belongs to a distinctive period in Ruscha’s career during which textuality played a less overt role. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he made a series of silhouette paintings, interweaving light and shadow. Formerly his work had embraced the midday heat, now he turned his attention to the cold and shade. Name, Address, Phone from 1986, for instance, bodies forth a nocturnal black-and-white landscape. Against the pale glow of the sky, a cluster of trees and buildings assert their isolation. Three empty strips interrupt the canvas acting as ‘blanks in which to insert the three words of the title.’ (Richard D. Marshall, Ed Ruscha London: Phaidon, 2005, p.210) Anchor Stuck in Sand shares this atmosphere of portent and secrecy, depicting in granular detail the darkened silhouette of a submerged anchor. It is a highly arresting image, and one which evidently made an impression on Ruscha himself; it would return in Invisiglass, a painting of three years later, buried under a skewed clock face and the titular portmanteau. The absence of textuality from Anchor Stuck in Sand is central to its intrigue. There are neither words nor empty strips signifying their absence. Facing the unspeaking image, the viewer glimpses some vast and unfathomable mystery. Discussing the inception of the silhouette paintings, Ruscha remarked ‘I think they mostly come from photography, although they are not photographically done or anything.’ (Ed Ruscha in conversation with Thomas Beller, Alexandra Schwartz (ed.), Leave Any Information at The Signal, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004, p.284) Using an airbrush, the artist was able to remove brushstrokes from his work, creating a still and flat surface. Manifest in Anchor Stuck In Sand is this photographic quality: a sense of haunting and depthless calm. It is not only photography which looms large over the painting. So too does cinematography. Discussing the impact of the latter on his work, Ruscha remarked ‘I began seeing commercial Hollywood films when I was nine or ten years old … Most of the films I saw at that time were black and white. I’ve got a vivid memory of what it looked like on a big screen and the silvery feeling I got from them; I’m sure it had everything to do with my thoughts about painting.’ (Ed Ruscha ‘Life in Film: Ed Ruscha ' Frieze, Is