Ed Ruscha’s Sin presents the single word ‘SIN’ with a trompe l’oeil affect to produce the illusion that the letters have been made from folded paper, emerging from “the traditionally flat, two-dimensional realm of writing into three-dimensional space.”1 Many of Ruscha’s early prints explored the power of single words and the accompanying freedom with which to represent them, as words have no prescribed size. The evocative word ‘SIN’ is accompanied by an olive, situated perilously close to the edge of the composition, as if to tease that it might roll away out of sight at any given moment. In many of Ruscha’s early prints, he included unexpected and true-to-size objects, such as an olive, a fly, or a marble. The artist once remarked, “Often when an idea is so overwhelming, I use a small unlike item to ‘nag’ the theme.”2 Does the presence of the olive allude to “the power of temptation that attends the theological concept” or does the Surrealist pairing transform a somber notion into “an old idea worthy of a laugh and a martini?”3
