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拍品專文
"I move in a particular mood I'm in rather than the word I happen to choose. But there are, for reasons of classical paintings, yes's and no's. I can't do a painting of a ribbon word, because ribbons belong only with drawings."
(Ruscha in H.Pindell, "Words with Ruscha," in Ed Ruscha, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interview, Bits, Pages, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2002, p.57)
Sophisticated and enigmatic, Ed Ruscha’s Ribbon Drawings series recall both the florid script of mid-century neon signage, and the glamour and iridescent glow of motion picture credit sequences from Hollywood’s golden age. They also merge Ruscha’s dry sense of humor with elements of Surrealism, Pop and even aspects of Conceptual art. These elegant drawings turn found language into high art, with the words becoming beautiful, almost sculptural, objects.
Cycle presents the titular word as if viewed from a high-angle viewpoint, with sweeping, downward perspective and the drawing itself is meticulously rendered, with the fine point of Ruscha’s pencil conjuring up a remarkable array of visual effects. The strongly horizontal orientation of the paper support gives the drawing the expansive impression of a Cinemascope motion picture screen. This dramatic horizontality became an aspect of some of Ruscha’s most notable work from this period, for example his Hollywood Sign compositions. Here, the word “Cycle,” seemingly made up of curls of ribbon or strips of paper, appears lit with an illumination that theatrically rakes across the letters as if from a studio lamp positioned at the lower right corner of the frame, brushing across the letters from right to left. A sharply defined shadow line draws a diagonal border to the left of the letter “C.” The result is an agreeably tactile effect, a characteristic of Ruscha’s later ribbon drawings.
This drawing combines Ruscha’s highly unusual choice of gunpowder with contrasting shades of soft pastel. These are brighter in the right third of the pictorial space, with delicate yellows, pinks, violets, reds and blues forming ethereal clouds of color across the right quadrant of the drawing. The tones imperceptibly merge into one another, and seem to float above the paper sheet. The coloration of the left half of the drawing is much darker, with black, grey, and subtle bluish-purple shadings, further emphasizing the impression that the light illuminating the scene is from the right side, leaving the left half darker.
In Suds, Rucha presents a tonally darker take than that of Cycle. In this work, the letters reside within a duskier color scape than they do in the former drawing. Shades of grey, some light, some darkened by intermingled brown shadings, dominate the picture space, creating a somewhat more subdued tone. A delicate blue mist drifts from the upper left corner of the drawing toward the word “Suds” at the center, some of its letters resting in front of another blue field at their feet. Small clouds of vibrant greens enliven the upper right corner and lower edge of the drawing, lending a contrasting brightness.
The letters making up the word “Suds” are of a clear, bright whiteness, again, as in Cycle, seemingly lit by a strong light source located somewhere beyond the lower right corner of the image. Here, too, the viewer looks down upon the word as if from a high camera angle. Ruscha’s choice of the word “Suds” suggests the artist’s interest in playing with the commercial language of advertising and commodities, with their high-energy sales pitches extolling the soapy, sudsy features of products like laundry detergent or dishwashing liquid.
Drawing has been a significant part of Ruscha’s artistic output throughout his career, attesting to the importance of the medium for him. Works from 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), and notably, Ruscha’s first solo exhibition in New York in 1967 was a survey of works from this series. Increasingly, Ruscha’s works on paper are being considered by art historians 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 and in 2004, the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective focusing on his works on paper.
At first glance the current works present purely as deceptively simple trompe l’oeil renderings of words. But closer inspection rewards the viewer, revealing them to be sly and sophisticated explorations of art and language. With an uncanny illusion of corporeality that makes us feel like spectators and not just readers of them, Ruscha’s ribbon words exert a strange and intriguing fascination, leading the viewer to feel almost as though we are standing in front of real objects, as tangible as sculpture.
(Ruscha in H.Pindell, "Words with Ruscha," in Ed Ruscha, Leave Any Information at the Signal: Writings, Interview, Bits, Pages, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2002, p.57)
Sophisticated and enigmatic, Ed Ruscha’s Ribbon Drawings series recall both the florid script of mid-century neon signage, and the glamour and iridescent glow of motion picture credit sequences from Hollywood’s golden age. They also merge Ruscha’s dry sense of humor with elements of Surrealism, Pop and even aspects of Conceptual art. These elegant drawings turn found language into high art, with the words becoming beautiful, almost sculptural, objects.
Cycle presents the titular word as if viewed from a high-angle viewpoint, with sweeping, downward perspective and the drawing itself is meticulously rendered, with the fine point of Ruscha’s pencil conjuring up a remarkable array of visual effects. The strongly horizontal orientation of the paper support gives the drawing the expansive impression of a Cinemascope motion picture screen. This dramatic horizontality became an aspect of some of Ruscha’s most notable work from this period, for example his Hollywood Sign compositions. Here, the word “Cycle,” seemingly made up of curls of ribbon or strips of paper, appears lit with an illumination that theatrically rakes across the letters as if from a studio lamp positioned at the lower right corner of the frame, brushing across the letters from right to left. A sharply defined shadow line draws a diagonal border to the left of the letter “C.” The result is an agreeably tactile effect, a characteristic of Ruscha’s later ribbon drawings.
This drawing combines Ruscha’s highly unusual choice of gunpowder with contrasting shades of soft pastel. These are brighter in the right third of the pictorial space, with delicate yellows, pinks, violets, reds and blues forming ethereal clouds of color across the right quadrant of the drawing. The tones imperceptibly merge into one another, and seem to float above the paper sheet. The coloration of the left half of the drawing is much darker, with black, grey, and subtle bluish-purple shadings, further emphasizing the impression that the light illuminating the scene is from the right side, leaving the left half darker.
In Suds, Rucha presents a tonally darker take than that of Cycle. In this work, the letters reside within a duskier color scape than they do in the former drawing. Shades of grey, some light, some darkened by intermingled brown shadings, dominate the picture space, creating a somewhat more subdued tone. A delicate blue mist drifts from the upper left corner of the drawing toward the word “Suds” at the center, some of its letters resting in front of another blue field at their feet. Small clouds of vibrant greens enliven the upper right corner and lower edge of the drawing, lending a contrasting brightness.
The letters making up the word “Suds” are of a clear, bright whiteness, again, as in Cycle, seemingly lit by a strong light source located somewhere beyond the lower right corner of the image. Here, too, the viewer looks down upon the word as if from a high camera angle. Ruscha’s choice of the word “Suds” suggests the artist’s interest in playing with the commercial language of advertising and commodities, with their high-energy sales pitches extolling the soapy, sudsy features of products like laundry detergent or dishwashing liquid.
Drawing has been a significant part of Ruscha’s artistic output throughout his career, attesting to the importance of the medium for him. Works from 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), and notably, Ruscha’s first solo exhibition in New York in 1967 was a survey of works from this series. Increasingly, Ruscha’s works on paper are being considered by art historians 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 and in 2004, the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective focusing on his works on paper.
At first glance the current works present purely as deceptively simple trompe l’oeil renderings of words. But closer inspection rewards the viewer, revealing them to be sly and sophisticated explorations of art and language. With an uncanny illusion of corporeality that makes us feel like spectators and not just readers of them, Ruscha’s ribbon words exert a strange and intriguing fascination, leading the viewer to feel almost as though we are standing in front of real objects, as tangible as sculpture.