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拍品專文
The great American artist Ed Ruscha’s Untitled is a definitive statement from the artist’s mature period. Reflecting upon the passage of time as he neared his eightieth decade, Ruscha laid out different measurements of time—Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years—across the wide expanse of his canvas. Reliant once again on his now-signature ‘Boy Scout Utility Modern’ typeface, which he first designed forty-five years previously, Ruscha reverses the predictable relationship between timescale and type size, decreasing the letter size and weight from the topmost “SECONDS” to the bottommost “YEARS.” This reversal introduces a cheeky irony into the work, making what could have been an aging artist’s meditation on temporality instead a humorous comment on the passage of time.
Untitled exposes the full impact of the many years which Ruscha has explored his famed word art paintings. His student years learning graphic design at the Chouinard Art Institute remain in evidence in the work’s composition; the artist precisely lays out each of his letters in relation to each other and to the work’s ground, elegantly construing a series of formal relationships amid the seemingly-arbitrary scale and placement of his words. Each demotion in scale follows the ground’s careful elliptical gradient curve, allowing the S in each term to inhabit the ambiguous space between dark and light, the white color of the letter almost fading to invisibility.
The careful contrast between darker and brighter tones in this monochromatic work investigates themes and motifs which Ruscha first addressed in his important early Gunpowder series, which he began in 1967. The artist’s careful alterations in gradation between layers of gunpowder were the first time in which the letters consisted of negative space, constructed out of blank canvas against a pigmented backdrop, a painterly effect Ruscha riffs on in the present work.
Ruscha has become more and more interested in time as a subject, with many of his works made in this century confronting temporality. Representing the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, his Course of Empire project grapples with the ravages of time, a theme continued in his painting Plank in Decline. Ruscha shifts focus from the effect of time to the purely conceptual subject of passing time with his 2013 lithographic series Periods. Similarly composed, this work anticipates the current lot, denoting abbreviated measurements of time in ascending scale against a mountainous backdrop. In this case, however, “YRS.” is in the largest font, whilst “SECS.” is the smallest, with the words’ scales correlating to the amount of time they represent. The conflation of image and text in this series poses suggestive questions to the viewer regarding the association between passing time and landscape, reminding of the artist’s own statement that “a lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words” (E. Ruscha, quoted in Mary Richards, Ed Ruscha, London, 2008, p. 79).
It is significant that with Ruscha’s reprisal of the Periods motif in the present work, the artist disengages with any specified backdrop, amplifying the focus on his text. Two years after his first experimentation with textual temporality, Ruscha further refines the motif, excavating the powerful symbolism inherent in this text into a unspecified spatial setting. Thus, time itself becomes the work’s subject, the comparison of seconds to minutes and so on stressed through the contrasting tones in gradient. The reversal of emphasis from years to seconds between Periods and Untitled functions as a memento mori, demonstrating that as one confronts aging, shorter spans of time gain importance.
Ed Ruscha has joined a select pantheon of artists—including old masters such as Titian and Michelangelo and modern giants like Matisse and Picasso—who have continued to create innovative work into old age. Each artist reached back through their long-lived careers, recalling and reclaiming previous periods and motifs which they then renewed and advanced. Ruscha’s temperament towards aging and the approach of death, however, most closely aligns with Rembrandt’s. In the Dutch artist’s Self Portrait at the Age of Sixty-Three at the National Gallery, London, painted in 1669 just before his passing, Rembrandt’s precise strokes execute an unvarnished image of aging as layers of grays and pinks build up into sagging folds cascading down his face as his rheumy eyes and wry smile belie a sense of unflinching acceptance. The bright illumination of the painter’s face contrasts with the dark, swirling passages which form the thinly painted, shadowy background. Both Rembrandt and Ruscha ponder a theme confronted since time immemorial as they approach the twilight of their respective careers.
Reflective and searching, Untitled combines the many decades which Ruscha has spent refining his elegant combinations of image and text into a searing memento mori, adducing the artist’s trademark whit and poetic diction toward a theme confronted by the most significant artists of the Western tradition. This late masterpiece is an elegant elegy embracing Ruscha’s most significant artistic inventions and advancements in a singular tableau.
Untitled exposes the full impact of the many years which Ruscha has explored his famed word art paintings. His student years learning graphic design at the Chouinard Art Institute remain in evidence in the work’s composition; the artist precisely lays out each of his letters in relation to each other and to the work’s ground, elegantly construing a series of formal relationships amid the seemingly-arbitrary scale and placement of his words. Each demotion in scale follows the ground’s careful elliptical gradient curve, allowing the S in each term to inhabit the ambiguous space between dark and light, the white color of the letter almost fading to invisibility.
The careful contrast between darker and brighter tones in this monochromatic work investigates themes and motifs which Ruscha first addressed in his important early Gunpowder series, which he began in 1967. The artist’s careful alterations in gradation between layers of gunpowder were the first time in which the letters consisted of negative space, constructed out of blank canvas against a pigmented backdrop, a painterly effect Ruscha riffs on in the present work.
Ruscha has become more and more interested in time as a subject, with many of his works made in this century confronting temporality. Representing the United States at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, his Course of Empire project grapples with the ravages of time, a theme continued in his painting Plank in Decline. Ruscha shifts focus from the effect of time to the purely conceptual subject of passing time with his 2013 lithographic series Periods. Similarly composed, this work anticipates the current lot, denoting abbreviated measurements of time in ascending scale against a mountainous backdrop. In this case, however, “YRS.” is in the largest font, whilst “SECS.” is the smallest, with the words’ scales correlating to the amount of time they represent. The conflation of image and text in this series poses suggestive questions to the viewer regarding the association between passing time and landscape, reminding of the artist’s own statement that “a lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words” (E. Ruscha, quoted in Mary Richards, Ed Ruscha, London, 2008, p. 79).
It is significant that with Ruscha’s reprisal of the Periods motif in the present work, the artist disengages with any specified backdrop, amplifying the focus on his text. Two years after his first experimentation with textual temporality, Ruscha further refines the motif, excavating the powerful symbolism inherent in this text into a unspecified spatial setting. Thus, time itself becomes the work’s subject, the comparison of seconds to minutes and so on stressed through the contrasting tones in gradient. The reversal of emphasis from years to seconds between Periods and Untitled functions as a memento mori, demonstrating that as one confronts aging, shorter spans of time gain importance.
Ed Ruscha has joined a select pantheon of artists—including old masters such as Titian and Michelangelo and modern giants like Matisse and Picasso—who have continued to create innovative work into old age. Each artist reached back through their long-lived careers, recalling and reclaiming previous periods and motifs which they then renewed and advanced. Ruscha’s temperament towards aging and the approach of death, however, most closely aligns with Rembrandt’s. In the Dutch artist’s Self Portrait at the Age of Sixty-Three at the National Gallery, London, painted in 1669 just before his passing, Rembrandt’s precise strokes execute an unvarnished image of aging as layers of grays and pinks build up into sagging folds cascading down his face as his rheumy eyes and wry smile belie a sense of unflinching acceptance. The bright illumination of the painter’s face contrasts with the dark, swirling passages which form the thinly painted, shadowy background. Both Rembrandt and Ruscha ponder a theme confronted since time immemorial as they approach the twilight of their respective careers.
Reflective and searching, Untitled combines the many decades which Ruscha has spent refining his elegant combinations of image and text into a searing memento mori, adducing the artist’s trademark whit and poetic diction toward a theme confronted by the most significant artists of the Western tradition. This late masterpiece is an elegant elegy embracing Ruscha’s most significant artistic inventions and advancements in a singular tableau.