Hollywood with Observatory

Hollywood with Observatory is unusual amongst Ruscha’s numerous depictions of the famous HOLLYWOOD sign. Instead of focussing on the sign itself, which is shown in its actual position slightly beneath the crest of the hill and not elevated above it, the artist has created a long, thin panorama of its backdrop, the Hollywood hills. Ruscha traces the corrugations of the skyline, both natural and man-made, bookmarked at one end by the eponymous letters and the Mount Lee communications tower, and by the Griffith Observatory at the other end. This format recalls the artist’s book Every Building on the Sunset Strip, created by Ruscha in 1966, which documents in photographs a two mile street view of the Sunset strip. This montage of shop fronts and signage has been described by Stephen Coppel as ‘a portrait of LA forever fixed in time’ (S. Coppel, C. Daunt, S. Tallman, The American Dream: pop to the present, The British Museum, London, 2017, exh. cat., p. 111). Ruscha made Hollywood with Observatory during a two-month fellowship at the renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop, named after the avenue in Los Angeles where it was located. The collaborative ethos nurtured at Tamarind between artist and printer proved to be particularly conducive and Ruscha produced twenty-two colour lithographs in total, characterised by new heights of technical sophistication (see also lot 134). Hollywood with Observatory was printed in a small edition of seventeen impressions, and, with a handful of examples already in public collections, is a rarity at auction.