PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, UNITED KINGDOM
51
Ed Ruscha
News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues
- Estimate
- £8,000 - 12,000
£15,000
Lot Details
The complete portfolio of six organic screenprints in colours, on Silverbrook Antique Finish paper, with full margins, with title page and colophon listing the ingredients used for each print,
1970
62.7 x 84 cm (24 5/8 x 33 1/8 in)
all signed, dated '1970' and annotated 'A.P.' in pencil (one of 25 artist's proofs, the edition was 125), published by Editions Alecto, London, all in very good condition, contained in original red velvet portfolio.
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Including:
News: screenprint, organic, split fount for background, printed with blackcurrant pie filling, over red salmon roe.
Mews: screenprint, organic, background printed with Bolognese sauce, split fount for letting, printed with blackcurrant pie filling over cherry pie filling, over mixed raw egg.
Pews: screenprint, organic, background printed with Hershey's chocolate flavour syrup and Camp coffee and chicory essence (6:4), with squid ink for lettering.
Brews: screenprint, organic, split fount lettering printed with axle grease, over caviar.
Stews: screenprint, organic, split fount lettering printed with crushed baked beans, caviar, fresh strawberries, cherry pie filling, mango chutney, tomato paste, daffodils, tulips, and leaves.
Dues: screenprint, organic, background and lettering printed with Branston Pickle.
Also includes leaflet with photos by Tony Evans of Ed Ruscha shopping Covent Garden and series of contact sheets showing Ed Ruscha and Lyndon Haywood at work on printing this series.
"Lyn (Haywood) and Ed Ruscha would go out to buy products, Ruscha was interested in the colours from unorthodox materials...We had the problem that egg salmon roe for example might change over a month from when it was first proofed. Some of the images with time have got darker, others lighter, as the cellulose in the good cartridge paper that was used reacts with the organic stains and changes the colour...Baked beans and crushed daffodils, for example, gave you little colour, others like salmon roe printed darker than one might think." (Kevin Harris, interviewed by Tessa Sidey for Editions Alecto: Original Graphics, Multiple Originals 1960-1981, Lund Humphries, London, 2003).
News: screenprint, organic, split fount for background, printed with blackcurrant pie filling, over red salmon roe.
Mews: screenprint, organic, background printed with Bolognese sauce, split fount for letting, printed with blackcurrant pie filling over cherry pie filling, over mixed raw egg.
Pews: screenprint, organic, background printed with Hershey's chocolate flavour syrup and Camp coffee and chicory essence (6:4), with squid ink for lettering.
Brews: screenprint, organic, split fount lettering printed with axle grease, over caviar.
Stews: screenprint, organic, split fount lettering printed with crushed baked beans, caviar, fresh strawberries, cherry pie filling, mango chutney, tomato paste, daffodils, tulips, and leaves.
Dues: screenprint, organic, background and lettering printed with Branston Pickle.
Also includes leaflet with photos by Tony Evans of Ed Ruscha shopping Covent Garden and series of contact sheets showing Ed Ruscha and Lyndon Haywood at work on printing this series.
"Lyn (Haywood) and Ed Ruscha would go out to buy products, Ruscha was interested in the colours from unorthodox materials...We had the problem that egg salmon roe for example might change over a month from when it was first proofed. Some of the images with time have got darker, others lighter, as the cellulose in the good cartridge paper that was used reacts with the organic stains and changes the colour...Baked beans and crushed daffodils, for example, gave you little colour, others like salmon roe printed darker than one might think." (Kevin Harris, interviewed by Tessa Sidey for Editions Alecto: Original Graphics, Multiple Originals 1960-1981, Lund Humphries, London, 2003).
Literature
Ed Ruscha
American | 1937Quintessentially American, Ed Ruscha is an L.A.-based artist whose art, like California itself, is both geographically rooted and a metaphor for an American state of mind. Ruscha is a deft creator of photography, film, painting, drawing, prints and artist books, whose works are simultaneously unexpected and familiar, both ironic and sincere.
His most iconic works are at turns poetic and deadpan, epigrammatic text with nods to advertising copy, juxtaposed with imagery that is either cinematic and sublime or seemingly wry documentary. Whether the subject is his iconic Standard Gas Station or the Hollywood Sign, a parking lot or highway, his works are a distillation of American idealism, echoing the expansive Western landscape and optimism unique to postwar America.
Browse ArtistHis most iconic works are at turns poetic and deadpan, epigrammatic text with nods to advertising copy, juxtaposed with imagery that is either cinematic and sublime or seemingly wry documentary. Whether the subject is his iconic Standard Gas Station or the Hollywood Sign, a parking lot or highway, his works are a distillation of American idealism, echoing the expansive Western landscape and optimism unique to postwar America.