Ed Ruscha - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, October 12, 2023 | Phillips

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  • ‘‘I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.’’
    —Ed Ruscha

    Ed Ruscha is one of America’s most influential and successful living artists and is known for his iconic ‘word’ paintings. His distinctive body of work – falling between the Pop and Conceptual art movements – challenges preconceived verbal and visual constructs. Metro Mattresses is one of three ‘word’ works on paper executed for the series and exhibition Ed Rusha: Metro Mattresses at Sprüth Magers, Berlin in 2016. Commercially trained like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in magazine publishing and advertising, Ruscha’s work is arresting in its striking immediacy and graphic simplicity. His idiosyncratic artistic practice has earned him the honour of retrospective exhibitions of his works on paper at institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles in 1998 and at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2004. The present work epitomises Ruscha’s clever manipulation of text and image; the work loudly reads in a quasi-Garamond font:

     

    METRO

     MATTRESSES

     

    Smeared across the muted red background, the text speeds horizontally across the work. This echoes the experience of glimpsing barely perceptible signs from fast-moving cars, or the metro. After all, the work recalls Ruscha’s interest in the vernacular of the American West: billboard and highway signs, gas stations and movie credits. Inspired by Dada and Surrealist jeux de mots, the artist is known for his witty, onomatopoeic, polysemous, and discordant typography such as ‘OOF’, ‘BOSS’ and ‘Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills’. In the present work, the non-hierarchical handling and alliteration of the two words ‘Metro Mattresses’ implies congruence to an otherwise meaningless construction. Here, Ruscha introduces a compelling interplay between the public and private sphere. The disparate ‘Metro’ and ‘Mattresses’ do however coalesce in their functionality, banality, and as they are repositories for travel, whether physical or in dreams.

    ‘‘[Ruscha is] an inspiring example of what it means for an artist to be original in a very specific, even limited way, and to be so true to his originality that he is able to try something of everything.’’
    —Roberta Smith

    Executed in 2015, the present work marks a return to the technique Ruscha developed in the late 1960s for his small series of ‘liquid works’ where the text appears smudged, smeared, and blurred; the artist has developed a rigorous and careful technique to achieve this effect. After priming the ground by binding dry pigments to the paper and preparing the stencils, the artist sprays white acrylic paint through the stencil in a technique he calls ‘reverse-stencilling’.i The artist then draws a sheet of high-density foam over the acrylic paint, producing this smeared effect. The motionless and matte background – Ruscha believes backgrounds ought to be like ‘stage settings’ – contrasts with the traversing sheen of the acrylic text.ii ‘It makes you dizzy’, Ruscha stated in reaction to the information overload the digital age has ushered into society: Does this then explain his return to the ‘liquid word’ works?iii Ruscha’s greatness lies in the continually fresh and keen observation he brings to our ever-changing society. ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN is currently on show at the Museum of Modern Art until 13 January 2024. It is the artist’s most comprehensive retrospective to date and showcases Ruscha’s enduring art-historical importance and legacy.

     

     

     

    i  Ed Ruscha, quoted in Thomas Beller, “Ed Ruscha,” Splash, Feb. 1989, n.p.

    ii Ed Ruscha, quoted in ‘Ed Ruscha, The Tension of Words and Images | Artist Interview | TateShots’, YouTube, online

    iii Yan Ceh, “On Experiment” (interview), Crash (Paris), Summer 2015, online

    • Provenance

      Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles
      Sprüth Magers, Berlin
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Berlin, Sprüth Magers, Metro Mattresses, 3 November 2015 - 16 January 2016

    • Literature

      Lucy Bradnock; Lisa Turvey, eds., Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné of The Works on Paper: Volume Three, 1998-2018, New Haven, 2023, p. 336 (illustrated)

    • 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 OF AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR

128

Metro Mattresses #2

signed and dated 'Ed Ruscha 2015' lower right
dry pigment and acrylic on paper
38.1 x 56.5 cm (15 x 22 1/4 in.)
Executed in 2015.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for £101,600

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Charlotte Gibbs
Associate Specialist
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cgibbs@phillips.com

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+44 20 7318 4084
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20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 12 October 2023