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Lot Essay
With the bravado of Pop and a nod to Surrealism, Ed Ruscha turns language itself into a type of found-object art, as he morphs two-dimensional words into a sculptural representation. Evoking the florid, highly stylized cursive script of mid-20th century neon signs and the glamour and glow of Hollywood motion picture credit sequences, Ed Ruscha’s Ribbon Drawings series—of which the present work is an exemplary example—is both stylish and enigmatic, voluptuous and mysterious.
This elegant monochrome work on paper has a smooth polish and sophistication exceptional for a drawing. The letters entwine, the “W’s” set in initial capitals, the dual “e’s” that follow curling in on themselves, the entire effect suggesting the appearance of folded ribbons or of paper curlicues. The handwriting is decidedly not the artist’s own hand, but instead a “depiction,” a representation of a certain sleek and chic style, the sophisticated script in amusing contrast with the juvenile words. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture,” Ruscha said, “almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again” (E. Ruscha, quoted in L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1, 1956- 1976, New Haven, CT, 2014, p. 39).
The view is frontal, the letters floating in space, occupying a mysterious, indeterminate geography. Subtle shadows suggest that the words are illuminated by a soft light source in a physical space. There is a feeling of depth, the letters not so much on the paper as hovering above it. They appear tonally reversed, glowing white against a darker-colored ground that Ruscha carefully modeled in gunpowder. The words have a corporeality that makes us spectators, not just readers, almost as though we are standing in front of real objects with the manifest tangibility of sculpture. The strange and intriguing fascination of this work is the uncanny illusion of palpable dimension and materiality it offers. It is a highly realistic image of an object that doesn’t actually exist in the world.
The choice of language in Wee Wee is good-humored, casually subversive within the context of the world of high art, derived from the lexicon of children, ‘naughty’ words that deliberately run counter to the conventions of high art. They are open ended, found sounds that Ruscha might have overheard in conversation or spied while thumbing through a dictionary. Here Ruscha savors the dichotomies between high and low art, the serious and the comical.
Ruscha achieved the warm black tonalities of the present work through his use of the highly unusual medium of gunpowder (as indicated by the letters ‘gp’ in the lower right corner), an alternative to the far more traditional graphite, which he had previously worked with. Using a painstaking and complex process involving stencil and tape for laying down the lettering, and cotton balls and Q-tips for working the gunpowder material into the paper to produce an effect of varied lighting and the illusion of depth and dimension, he accomplished the smooth and almost seamless results he sought.
These deceptively simple trompe l’oeil drawings are in fact sophisticated explorations of art and language. From the outset of his career, Ruscha has been captivated by the visual potential of words and typography, exploring this obsession throughout his professional life. The present work, and the series from which it originates, is one of his most conceptually intriguing and graphically exciting takes on a theme that has so engaged him. The Ribbon Drawings series are collectively considered “one of Ruscha’s most important bodies of drawing” (L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1, 1956-1976, New Haven, CT, 2014, p. 23). Notably, Ruscha’s first solo exhibition in New York in 1967 was a survey of works from this series.
Drawings have been a significant part of Ruscha’s artistic output throughout his career, attesting to the importance of the medium for him. Increasingly, his works on paper are being considered by art historians, critics and collectors as a crucial and historically significant part of his production, and they have been the subject of two retrospective exhibitions: in 1998, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized a retrospective solely devoted to Ruscha’s works on paper. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective focusing on the works on paper. Approaching age 80, Ruscha is one of America’s most important living artists. In the 1950s and 1960s he was a member of the “Cool School” artists associated with Los Angeles’s legendary Ferus Gallery, and has maintained his stature into the 21st century, in 2012 the legendary novelist J. G Ballard declared that “Ed Ruscha has the coolest gaze in American art” (J. G. Ballard, quoted in P. Haldeman, “In L.A., Art + Film + Fashion,” New York Times, October 30, 2012).
This elegant monochrome work on paper has a smooth polish and sophistication exceptional for a drawing. The letters entwine, the “W’s” set in initial capitals, the dual “e’s” that follow curling in on themselves, the entire effect suggesting the appearance of folded ribbons or of paper curlicues. The handwriting is decidedly not the artist’s own hand, but instead a “depiction,” a representation of a certain sleek and chic style, the sophisticated script in amusing contrast with the juvenile words. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture,” Ruscha said, “almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again” (E. Ruscha, quoted in L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1, 1956- 1976, New Haven, CT, 2014, p. 39).
The view is frontal, the letters floating in space, occupying a mysterious, indeterminate geography. Subtle shadows suggest that the words are illuminated by a soft light source in a physical space. There is a feeling of depth, the letters not so much on the paper as hovering above it. They appear tonally reversed, glowing white against a darker-colored ground that Ruscha carefully modeled in gunpowder. The words have a corporeality that makes us spectators, not just readers, almost as though we are standing in front of real objects with the manifest tangibility of sculpture. The strange and intriguing fascination of this work is the uncanny illusion of palpable dimension and materiality it offers. It is a highly realistic image of an object that doesn’t actually exist in the world.
The choice of language in Wee Wee is good-humored, casually subversive within the context of the world of high art, derived from the lexicon of children, ‘naughty’ words that deliberately run counter to the conventions of high art. They are open ended, found sounds that Ruscha might have overheard in conversation or spied while thumbing through a dictionary. Here Ruscha savors the dichotomies between high and low art, the serious and the comical.
Ruscha achieved the warm black tonalities of the present work through his use of the highly unusual medium of gunpowder (as indicated by the letters ‘gp’ in the lower right corner), an alternative to the far more traditional graphite, which he had previously worked with. Using a painstaking and complex process involving stencil and tape for laying down the lettering, and cotton balls and Q-tips for working the gunpowder material into the paper to produce an effect of varied lighting and the illusion of depth and dimension, he accomplished the smooth and almost seamless results he sought.
These deceptively simple trompe l’oeil drawings are in fact sophisticated explorations of art and language. From the outset of his career, Ruscha has been captivated by the visual potential of words and typography, exploring this obsession throughout his professional life. The present work, and the series from which it originates, is one of his most conceptually intriguing and graphically exciting takes on a theme that has so engaged him. The Ribbon Drawings series are collectively considered “one of Ruscha’s most important bodies of drawing” (L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume 1, 1956-1976, New Haven, CT, 2014, p. 23). Notably, Ruscha’s first solo exhibition in New York in 1967 was a survey of works from this series.
Drawings have been a significant part of Ruscha’s artistic output throughout his career, attesting to the importance of the medium for him. Increasingly, his works on paper are being considered by art historians, critics and collectors as a crucial and historically significant part of his production, and they have been the subject of two retrospective exhibitions: in 1998, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized a retrospective solely devoted to Ruscha’s works on paper. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective focusing on the works on paper. Approaching age 80, Ruscha is one of America’s most important living artists. In the 1950s and 1960s he was a member of the “Cool School” artists associated with Los Angeles’s legendary Ferus Gallery, and has maintained his stature into the 21st century, in 2012 the legendary novelist J. G Ballard declared that “Ed Ruscha has the coolest gaze in American art” (J. G. Ballard, quoted in P. Haldeman, “In L.A., Art + Film + Fashion,” New York Times, October 30, 2012).