Provenance
James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica
The Robert A. Rowan Collection, Los Angeles
Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art, 15 November, 2000, lot 275
Private Collection
Phillips, New York, Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 7 March, 2013, lot 15
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Ed Ruscha, 9 December, 1990 – 24 February, 1991
Pasadena, Art Center, College of Design, Selections from the Robert A. Rowan Trust Collection, 21 May – 9 July, 1995
Literature
R. Dean & L. Turvey, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of The Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York, Gagosian Gallery, 2009, no. P1990.44, pp. 308-309 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
When Ed Ruscha left Los Angeles’ Chouinard Art Institute in 1960, Pop Art was incipient. The years that followed saw a period of radical artistic transformation; a new aesthetic emerged, deriving both image and technique from the world of commercial entertainment. Ruscha had his own role to play in this narrative. Now-canonical paintings like Large Trademark With Eight Spotlights (1962) and Hollywood (1968) sought inspiration in Los Angeles’ film industry and its distinctive iconography.

In these paintings, as elsewhere, Ruscha revealed his enduring interest in text and typography. From the very early stages of his career, words and their dual potential for both signification and materiality have been a central preoccupation of the Omaha-born artist. Many of his paintings find a single word or phrase recontextualised in suggestive interplay with typeface and background. The effect is often at once disorientating and strangely elucidating.

The present lot belongs to a distinctive period in Ruscha’s career during which textuality played a less overt role. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he made a series of silhouette paintings, interweaving light and shadow. Formerly his work had embraced the midday heat, now he turned his attention to the cold and shade. Name, Address, Phone from 1986, for instance, bodies forth a nocturnal black-and-white landscape. Against the pale glow of the sky, a cluster of trees and buildings assert their isolation. Three empty strips interrupt the canvas acting as ‘blanks in which to insert the three words of the title.’ (Richard D. Marshall, Ed Ruscha, London: Phaidon, 2005, p.210)

Anchor Stuck in Sand shares this atmosphere of portent and secrecy, depicting in granular detail the darkened silhouette of a submerged anchor. It is a highly arresting image, and one which evidently made an impression on Ruscha himself; it would return in Invisiglass, a painting of three years later, buried under a skewed clock face and the titular portmanteau. The absence of textuality from Anchor Stuck in Sand is central to its intrigue. There are neither words nor empty strips signifying their absence. Facing the unspeaking image, the viewer glimpses some vast and unfathomable mystery.

Discussing the inception of the silhouette paintings, Ruscha remarked ‘I think they mostly come from photography, although they are not photographically done or anything.’ (Ed Ruscha in conversation with Thomas Beller, Alexandra Schwartz (ed.), Leave Any Information at The Signal, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004, p.284) Using an airbrush, the artist was able to remove brushstrokes from his work, creating a still and flat surface. Manifest in Anchor Stuck In Sand is this photographic quality: a sense of haunting and depthless calm.

It is not only photography which looms large over the painting. So too does cinematography. Discussing the impact of the latter on his work, Ruscha remarked ‘I began seeing commercial Hollywood films when I was nine or ten years old … Most of the films I saw at that time were black and white. I’ve got a vivid memory of what it looked like on a big screen and the silvery feeling I got from them; I’m sure it had everything to do with my thoughts about painting.’ (Ed Ruscha, ‘Life in Film: Ed Ruscha,' Frieze, Issue 127, November-December 2009).

In the present lot, as in other paintings from the period, Ruscha returns to these early experiences. Working in black and white, he revisits this ‘silvery feeling,’ refashioning the material of mid-twentieth century cinema within a painterly form. He is especially influenced by the film noir tradition, identifying The Savage Eye and Private Property (both 1960) among his favourites. (Ed Ruscha, ‘Life in Film: Ed Ruscha,' Frieze, Issue 127, November-December 2009). With its foreboding silhouette, intimations of concealment and interplay of light and dark, Anchor Stuck In Sand owes a clear debt to this genre.

Seen from this perspective, the present lot speaks to Ruscha’s enduring concerns. As with much of his best work, it draws upon the culture of entertainment and filmmaking, realizing its potential for mystery and ambiguity. In his paintings of burning buildings and snatches of decontextualized speech, the viewer is confronted by a series of questions whose answers are continually shifting. In all its hazy uncertainty, Anchor Stuck In Sand is very much part of this tradition. As Ruscha himself remarked in the late 1980s, ‘whatever my work was made up of in the beginning is exactly what it is like today … I could have seen the silhouette paintings happening twenty years ago.’ (Ed Ruscha in conversation Bonnie Clearwater, Alexandra Schwartz (ed.), Leave Any Information at The Signal, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004, p.293).
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

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION

Ο◆36

Ed Ruscha

Anchor Stuck in Sand

1990
acrylic on canvas
153 x 285.1 cm (60 1/4 x 112 1/4 in.)
Signed and dated 'Ed Ruscha 1990' on the reverse. Further signed, titled and dated 'EDWARD RUSCHA "ANCHOR STUCK IN SAND" 1990' on the stretcher.

Estimate
£300,000 - 500,000 ‡

Sold for £374,500

Contact Specialist
Peter Sumner
Head of Contemporary Art, London
psumner@phillips.com
+44 207 318 4063

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London 29 June 2015 7pm

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Rob Pruitt
Country Boy
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡
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2
Ai Weiwei
Coloured Vases (in 6 parts)
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3
Jonas Wood
Fish Tank
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4
Harold Ancart
Untitled
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5
Nate Lowman
Orange Maxima
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6
Robert Gober
Drain
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7
Rosemarie Trockel
False Alarm
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8
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Three Sided with X Out of Shell Standing Flat SF4.a)
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9
Carol Bove
Untitled
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10
Sherrie Levine
Caribou Skull
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11
Raqib Shaw
Arrival of the Horse King from the series Paradise Lost
Estimate £700,000 - 1,000,000 ♠
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12
Mark Bradford
Waiting on Forever
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13
Chris Ofili
Homage
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14
Banksy
Study for Happy Choppers
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15
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #423
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16
Andreas Gursky
James Bond Island III
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17
Andreas Gursky
Chicago, Mercantile Exchange
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18
Andy Warhol
Untitled (Imperial Car Detail)
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19
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #264
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20
Carroll Dunham
MOUND F
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21
Takashi Murakami
Pom and Me
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22
Damien Hirst
Veneration
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23
Ai Weiwei
Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads
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24
Ai Weiwei
Grapes
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 †
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25
Yue Minjun
Free at Leisure No. 11
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26
George Condo
Stanley Steamer (Fat Jim)
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27
Andy Warhol
Marilyn Monroe
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28
This lot is no longer available.
29
Andy Warhol
Flowers
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30
Bruce Nauman
Hanging Heads # 1 (Blue Andrew, Mouth Open / Red Julie with Cap)
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31
Fred Sandback
Untitled (Rust Brown Diagonal)
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32
Andy Warhol
Gun
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33
Andy Warhol
Gun (Cowboy six shooter)
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34
Ed Ruscha
Fairly Small Torpedos
Estimate £100,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £230,500
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35
Ed Ruscha
Ship Talk
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36
Ed Ruscha
Anchor Stuck in Sand
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
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37
Ed Ruscha
She Slept With Two Windup Alarm Clocks
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38
Gilbert & George
Spitalfields
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39
Sigmar Polke
Carnival
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40
Albert Oehlen
Landschaft
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41
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (894-14)
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42
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43
Lucian Freud
Annie
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44
Maurizio Cattelan
Richard
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45
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46
Thomas Demand
Vault
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47
Sarah Lucas
Wichser Schicksal (Wanker Destiny)
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48
Neo Rauch
Wald
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49
Damien Hirst
Phenylpropiolic Acid
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠†
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50
Richard Prince
Untitled (Van Door)
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51
Sergej Jensen
Untitled (Schwarz/Durchsichtig)
Estimate £25,000 - 35,000 ‡♠
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52
Danh Vo
We the People (detail), Element #D2
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡♠
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53
Richard Prince
Untitled (Three Men's Hands with Watches)
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London 29 June 2015 7pm

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Ed Ruscha

Ο◆36

Ed Ruscha

Anchor Stuck in Sand

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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