Ed Ruscha - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, May 18, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Karsten Schubert Ltd., London

  • Exhibited

    London, Karsten Schubert Ltd., Ed Ruscha Recent Works on Paper, June 29 – August 13, 1988

  • Literature

    This work will be included in the forthcoming Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of Works on Paper. Volume III 1980 - 1991, edited by Dr. Rainer Crone and Dr. Petrus Schaesberg

  • Catalogue Essay

    Edward Ruscha’s artwork first came to the fore in the 1960s as part of the
    West Coast Pop Art Movement. Since that time he has remained one of the
    most important figures in American Art. Selected in 2005 as the sole
    representative of the United States in the 2005 Venice Biennale he was the
    first California-based artist to receive such an honor.

    In 1983, Ruscha painted the work Brave Men Run in My Family which
    depicts an uncharacteristicly hyper-realistic image of a sailboat on a
    tempestuous sea with the title phrase running from upper left to lower right
    of the canvas face. Ruscha revisited the idea of the ship for the present
    work entitled Hope, 1988.The ship is now a flattened, shadowy phantom
    and the sea is dissolved into a blurry, blackened mist; evoking a mood one
    would equate with a grainy black-and-white film which reflects Ruscha’s
    ongoing fascination with cinema. In this case the text is replaced by a
    singular block of color positioned in the upper right corner which increases
    the foreboding nature of the image. Ruscha offers no transparent
    translations or easy interpretations for the imagery used or the blocked
    text. He presents, rather, a work that is entirely effective not because of its
    symbolic content but for its apparent draining thereof.

  • Artist Biography

    Ed Ruscha

    American • 1937

    Quintessentially 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.

    View More Works

129

Hope

1988
Acrylic on paper.
60 1/8 x 40 1/4 in. (152.7 x 102.2 cm).
Signed and dated "Ed Ruscha '88" lower right.

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Sold for $420,000

Contemporary Art Part II

18 May 2007
10am & 2pm New York