Beschreibung:

7 Ed Ruscha Inferno 1987 Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm). Signed and dated “Ed Ruscha ‘87” on the reverse; also signed, titled and dated “Ed Ruscha ‘Inferno’ 1987” on the stretcher.
Provenance Eric and Carol Schwartz, Denver; Anthony Grant Inc., New York; Edward Taylor Nahem Fine Art, New York; Private Collection Exhibited H. Hopkins, California Painters: New Work, San Francisco, 1989, p. 112 (illustrated in color); R. Dean and E. Wright, Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Three: 1983-1987, Germany, 2007, pp. 274-275, no. P1987.08 (illustrated in color) Catalogue Essay Maybe they are brighter than they appear. ED RUSCHA (Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2001) Indeed, one must presume that, though the canvas of Inferno (1987) is a predominantly dark object, the glare of its title and single scrawled word illuminates all of its gloomy spaces. Ed Ruscha’s singular vision of America has been thriving for nearly six decades, and, in that time, has taken the form of panoramic views of Los Angeles (seen in his book Every Building of Sunset Strip), red wine blotting (from his series “Stains”), and even short films (he directed “Premium” in 1971 and “Miracle” in 1975). However, in the present lot, we see him return to his most trusted form, the word painting. By the time he created the “City Lights” series, of which Inferno (1987) is part, he had been employing this form for over twenty-five years. It is a prime example of Ruscha’s most reliable medium for distilling the essence of his America. Fascinated with poetry from a young age, one might label Ruscha a poet of economy, or, in the present lot’s case, a one-word poet. “Inferno”, which he employs here, is one of the many words that he generates on the road, driving to Los Angeles. It is an example of what he calls a “hot” word, or one that, regardless of whether it refers to heat at all, conjures endless amounts of connotations. Ruscha’s words occasionally take a bent toward the theme of Southwestern Americana (“Rancho, “Talk Radio”), doubtless a product of their highway-borne nature. In this manner, Ruscha’s artistic subject is not the wholly material still-life or whimsical abstraction. Rather, it is a filtered impression, a refined vision. The present lot is a bundle of two opposing colors—deep navy and stark white—and the gradients between them. The canvas measures six feet square. On the backdrop, we see the sprawl of Los Angeles seen from an elevated perspective; the quintessential locus of Hollywood glamour and booming suburbia—two essential American components. Yet, the bright spots made from generous bubbles of urban nightlife are suspiciously well organized: in a perfect grid. There seems to be no break in their regularity for the entirety of the canvas, which, presumably, exhibits a distance miles upon miles in its scope. Indeed, we may even be invited to consider the possibility of a sinister infinity of this regularity. Layered on top of the delicately faded and blurred acrylics of the city lights, in the upper center of the canvas, sits the word “Inferno” in Ruscha’s own scrawl. It stretches nearly the entirety of the canvas, screaming against the urban background. The enormous starkwhite block letters are not haphazardly dashed across the painting, however; each letter is from a unique font based upon Ruscha’s own handwriting. He blows up the letters to desired proportion, and exacts them upon the canvas. Curiously, surrounding each bend and curve of Ruscha’s terrific letters, the grouped and blurred lights of the city appear with more frequency, as if the excitement of the word itself makes them flare up with nightlife. One has to wonder as to the nature of these particular flare-ups within the universe of the painting—are they an urban landscape’s reaction to the “hot” power of Ruscha’s word, or did Ruscha’s “Inferno” find its place among the greatest area animation in the world below? One thing is for certain: His word choice signals a resurgence of a motif; Ruscha had found inspiration in the transformative power of fire in several his most lauded contributions, namely 1964’s Gas Station on Fire and Norm’s, La Cienega