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Lot Essay
Painted in 1999, Blast Curtain is an exquisite early example of the ‘mountain paintings’ that have become one of the most iconic series of paintings in Ed Ruscha’s acclaimed career. In this work, the words “BLAST CURTAIN” are spelled out in pristine ice-white lettering and placed centrally against a vista of sun-kissed, snow-capped peaks, forested plains and a clear blue sky. An intrepid explorer of the territory where language and image meet, it is Ruscha’s choice combinations of words and images that achieve the visual and conceptual dissonance that have distinguished him as one of America’s finest living artists.
Testament to their significance within his oeuvre, over a dozen examples of Ruscha’s mountain paintings are included in the world’s most important museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Tate, London. Blast Curtain was included in a major exhibition of Ruscha’s work in 2000, which toured to museums including Hirshorn Museum, Washington D. C.; Museum of Modern Art Oxford; and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
Despite the sublime beauty of the setting and the flawless execution of the painting, it is the power of words that has consistently motivated Ruscha. The sources for the text he chooses are various, encompassing phrases that he sees while driving, reading the newspapers, watching movies, listening to the radio or that he remembers from dreams. In Blast Curtain, it was the feeling the words evoked in Ruscha that made them memorable. “I like the idea that the anxiety of modern life could be hiding behind any given mountain,” he has said, “and the sounds of the city and everything. ‘Blast Curtain’ comes from those walls, those steel walls that you see at airports to cut down on sound. And I thought that this had to be painted so I could gammer down these words. And then the idea of some kind of fantasy mountains with the palindromic idea began to like say there's some sort of crazy metaphor for glory.” (E. Ruscha, quoted in G. Adams, “King of pop art”, Independent, 8 October 2011).
Although Ruscha has worked with natural landscape imagery since the 1980s, he first began to use alpine scenery as a backdrop in 1997. Borrowing and amalgamating imagery from magazine illustrations, postcards and photographs, he chose the mountain setting because of its ability to combine visual drama with cultural ubiquity. “It's just a setting,” he says. “A theatrical setting that is quite anonymous. It's immediately recognizable ... so that it just lands itself in the world of acceptance” (E. Ruscha, quoted at ibid.) This painting was made by initially spraying a thin layer of acrylic paint onto the canvas, then working the image up with flawless precision using a brush. The text was applied using a stencil, in an angular font that Ruscha devised himself called 'Boy Scout Utility Modern'. It is unusual for having no curves, and it too has a neutral quality that appeals to Ruscha, who has used it in his work since 1980.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1937, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study design at Chouinard Art Institute. Although the landscapes that appear in his works are anonymous, they are steeped in the iconography of Hollywood and the vernacular architecture of the city he has for so long called home. He has explained, “A lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words. In a way, they're words in front of an old Paramount Studios mountain. You don't have to have a mountain back there - you could have a landscape, a farm. I have a background, foreground. It's so simple. And the backgrounds are of no particular character. They're just meant to support the drama, like the Hollywood sign being held up by sticks” (E. Ruscha quoted in R.D. Marshall, Ed Ruscha, London, 2003, p. 239).
Testament to their significance within his oeuvre, over a dozen examples of Ruscha’s mountain paintings are included in the world’s most important museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Tate, London. Blast Curtain was included in a major exhibition of Ruscha’s work in 2000, which toured to museums including Hirshorn Museum, Washington D. C.; Museum of Modern Art Oxford; and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
Despite the sublime beauty of the setting and the flawless execution of the painting, it is the power of words that has consistently motivated Ruscha. The sources for the text he chooses are various, encompassing phrases that he sees while driving, reading the newspapers, watching movies, listening to the radio or that he remembers from dreams. In Blast Curtain, it was the feeling the words evoked in Ruscha that made them memorable. “I like the idea that the anxiety of modern life could be hiding behind any given mountain,” he has said, “and the sounds of the city and everything. ‘Blast Curtain’ comes from those walls, those steel walls that you see at airports to cut down on sound. And I thought that this had to be painted so I could gammer down these words. And then the idea of some kind of fantasy mountains with the palindromic idea began to like say there's some sort of crazy metaphor for glory.” (E. Ruscha, quoted in G. Adams, “King of pop art”, Independent, 8 October 2011).
Although Ruscha has worked with natural landscape imagery since the 1980s, he first began to use alpine scenery as a backdrop in 1997. Borrowing and amalgamating imagery from magazine illustrations, postcards and photographs, he chose the mountain setting because of its ability to combine visual drama with cultural ubiquity. “It's just a setting,” he says. “A theatrical setting that is quite anonymous. It's immediately recognizable ... so that it just lands itself in the world of acceptance” (E. Ruscha, quoted at ibid.) This painting was made by initially spraying a thin layer of acrylic paint onto the canvas, then working the image up with flawless precision using a brush. The text was applied using a stencil, in an angular font that Ruscha devised himself called 'Boy Scout Utility Modern'. It is unusual for having no curves, and it too has a neutral quality that appeals to Ruscha, who has used it in his work since 1980.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1937, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles in 1956 to study design at Chouinard Art Institute. Although the landscapes that appear in his works are anonymous, they are steeped in the iconography of Hollywood and the vernacular architecture of the city he has for so long called home. He has explained, “A lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words. In a way, they're words in front of an old Paramount Studios mountain. You don't have to have a mountain back there - you could have a landscape, a farm. I have a background, foreground. It's so simple. And the backgrounds are of no particular character. They're just meant to support the drama, like the Hollywood sign being held up by sticks” (E. Ruscha quoted in R.D. Marshall, Ed Ruscha, London, 2003, p. 239).