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Lot Essay
Underneath the intense purples and oranges of a Technicolor Los Angeles sunset the monumental landmark letters, shown in a 'wide-screen' format, are a celebration of the artifice of the American landscape. While Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) and Standard Station (1966) included elements of everyday architecture, with Hollywood Ruscha's subject is reduced to a single word. His visual modus operandi closely parallels that of the Hollywood itself: a word is inserted into a somewhat disparate environment, thereby questioning both the word and the place - and the connection between the two.
The extreme horizontal format, the natural choice for the broad perspectives of the American landscape, also mimics quintessentially American styles of presentation, such as cinemascope and the enormous roadside bill boards, which clutter up the highways across the vast open spaces.
By focusing on the sign alone, Ruscha explores the myth and reality of Hollywood and its main industry. Ruscha depicts the sign perched at the crest of the hill, a symbol of the glitz and glamour encapsulating an entire culture - one coveted by people who do not live there but only experience it as projection, through film, television, and advertising. Nestled into the no man's land at the edge of suburbia, often obscured by thick smog, the sign encapsulates an idea, an illusion.
Ruscha once explained that 'Hollywood is like a verb to me. It's something that you can do to any subject or anything.' His notion of 'Hollywoodification' , so beautifully expressed in this depiction of a single, charged word and lurid, dazzling colours - makes this print seminal work of the first generation of Pop.
The extreme horizontal format, the natural choice for the broad perspectives of the American landscape, also mimics quintessentially American styles of presentation, such as cinemascope and the enormous roadside bill boards, which clutter up the highways across the vast open spaces.
By focusing on the sign alone, Ruscha explores the myth and reality of Hollywood and its main industry. Ruscha depicts the sign perched at the crest of the hill, a symbol of the glitz and glamour encapsulating an entire culture - one coveted by people who do not live there but only experience it as projection, through film, television, and advertising. Nestled into the no man's land at the edge of suburbia, often obscured by thick smog, the sign encapsulates an idea, an illusion.
Ruscha once explained that 'Hollywood is like a verb to me. It's something that you can do to any subject or anything.' His notion of 'Hollywoodification' , so beautifully expressed in this depiction of a single, charged word and lurid, dazzling colours - makes this print seminal work of the first generation of Pop.