Ed Ruscha - New Now London Wednesday, December 6, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “Sometimes found words are the most pure because they have nothing to do with you [...] I take things as I find them. A lot of these things come from the noise of everyday life." 
    —Ed Ruscha

     

    Ed Ruscha’s So…[#1], is an arresting example of the artists career-defining combinations of text and image that capture a quintessentially American vernacular. As a Los Angeles-based artist, much of Ruscha’s work is revered for its ability to deftly translate an American state of mind, distilled into iconic visual cues such as the Hollywood Sign and Sunset Boulevard. In the present work, Ruscha conjures the intimacy of a Californian sunset as it pours through an unseen window, cinematically revealing a warm interior. Imposed over the scene is the wryly phrased word 'So...' which fluctuates between deadpan self-awareness and poetic ambiguity.

     

    Ruscha’s commercial beginnings and instantly recognisable style position his corpus alongside postwar peers such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, his unique visual style bridging Pop and Conceptual art movements. Currently the focus of a major retrospective hosted by The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Ed Ruscha / Now Then presents a comprehensive survey of the artist’s career, including over 200 works and tracking his landmark contributions to postwar American art. Much anticipated and critically acclaimed, the exhibition has cemented Ruscha’s reputation as one of the leading artists of his generation, emphasising his laconic ability to celebrate and interrogate American optimism with wit, perfectly captured in the open-ended interpretations of So…[#1].

    • Provenance

      Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999

    • Literature

      Lisa Turvey, ed., Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of The Works on Paper, Volume Two: 1977-1997, New Haven, 2018, no. D1989.27, p. 291 (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 British Collection

26

So...[#1]

signed and dated 'Ed Ruscha '89' lower right
dry pigment on paper
18.9 x 28.2 cm (7 1/2 x 11 1/8 in.)
Executed in 1989.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for £85,090

Contact Specialist

Charlotte Gibbs
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now
+44 20 7901 7993
CGibbs@phillips.com
 

New Now

London Auction 6 December 2023