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Lot Essay
Upon this large canvas, Ed Ruscha creates an evocative landscape at dusk. The lower half of the canvas is plunged into darkness, with the upper portion is suffused with an redolent half-light similar to that which occurs after the setting sun has disappeared below the horizon. Situated in this unoccupied landscape are two large, looming letters—an “I” and “F”— placed far apart, leaning slightly to the right and each adorned with distinctive serifs. So commanding are these two letters, with their bold interventions into this evocative landscape, it is easy to miss their two smaller cousins depicted in white gesso buried deep in the passage of inky blackness that covers the lower portion of the canvas. Painted in 1996, this work was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, the Hollywood screenwriter Dale Launer whose credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and My Cousin Vinny. Launer visited Ruscha’s studio in California and was intrigued by the painting’s If motif which struck a chord with him as he’d often wondered “What if...” The painting has remained in his private collection ever since. This If, If painting is the largest example of his If paintings; a smaller version of the painting is housed in the permanent collection of Museé Départment d’Art Ancien et Contemporain, Epinal, France.
“A lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words” Ruscha has confessed and here—in If, If—that drama is conveyed in several ways (E. Ruscha, quoted in R. D. Marshall (ed.), Ed Ruscha, 2003, p. 241). Not only is it present in the eerie atmosphere conjured up by the twilight, but also in the ominous difference in scale between the two renderings of “If, If.” The large dark letters loom up portentously over the horizon line, almost like giant figures whose menacing presence places everything before them in shadow. However, there some light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel in the presence of the diminutive brilliant white sans serif font that declares another proclamation of the word “If.” As curator Richard Marshall declares, “Rushca succeeded in making the word work” (R. D. Marshall, ibid.).
By using two different fonts in this work, Ruscha highlights his use of diverse typefaces in his paintings. Fonts play an important compositional role in the artist’s oeuvre, so much so that in some of his later works he utilizes a font which he developed himself called Boy Scout Utility Modern. However, he warns about seeing particular significance in the style of font used in any particular painting, “…I would never pick a font because it projected a specific personality,” he said “I don’t want the font to echo the word I happen to be painting, because I don’t want to make puns. I’m not trying to lead the viewer down a certain path, or make it easier for them by spelling things out with a font” (E. Ruscha, quoted by K. McKenna, “Ed Ruscha in Conversation,” in R. Rugoff (ed.), Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, Hayward Gallery, London, 2010, p. 55).
Like his iconic paintings of Standard gas stations and the Hollywood sign, If, If continues Ruscha’s lifelong interest in text. His paintings often feature words, which he treats as a form of readymade, taking them and placing them out of context, or indeed without any context, on the canvas. Floating against a sublimely beautiful backdrop they gain a mysterious eloquence despite their very ordinariness. This gives a self-reflective quality to the words, which in turn encourages the viewer to spend time examining the work and reap the benefits of close-up examination.
The formal qualities of words and language have been the central theme of Ruscha’s work throughout his career. Arriving in southern California from the empty plains of Nebraska, as a young man he was immediately struck by the crowded street vernacular of the Los Angeles cityscape. His numerous trips between the emptiness of the Nebraskan landscape and the urban sprawl of suburban LA had a deep impact on the young artist, as Kerry Brougher, the curator and celebrated Ruscha scholar notes, “Ruscha’s experience on the desert highway was one of words floating on emptiness, their message of comfort attempting the mask the landscape of awe, signs and advertisements trying to fill the uneasy void of the desert (K. Brougher, Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2000, p.158). The gaudy signage and advertising hoardings that shouted their messages struck a chord with Rushca. Like Warhol, his sources are the ordinary and the everyday, the quaint and ordinary, but unlike his Pop contemporary, Ruscha’s unique combinations of forms reflect a more conceptual approach. His method of relocating “found words” into an aesthetic realm result in Duchampian overtones, while his distorted, de-contextualized words in isolation juxtaposed against strange backdrops recalls hints of Surrealism.
With its complex implications on numerous layers, If, If exemplifies Ruscha’ iconic stylistic and theoretical approach to art. As Kerry Brougher, , “Ruscha’s words hover between the flat and transversal surfaces of the graphic artist and the longitudinal, deep-space world of landscape painting” (K. Brougher, Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2000, p.161). Works such the present example highlight their literal sources and play the role of signifiers, but at the same time assert their aesthetic power and become part of a new linguistic system.
“A lot of my paintings are anonymous backdrops for the drama of words” Ruscha has confessed and here—in If, If—that drama is conveyed in several ways (E. Ruscha, quoted in R. D. Marshall (ed.), Ed Ruscha, 2003, p. 241). Not only is it present in the eerie atmosphere conjured up by the twilight, but also in the ominous difference in scale between the two renderings of “If, If.” The large dark letters loom up portentously over the horizon line, almost like giant figures whose menacing presence places everything before them in shadow. However, there some light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel in the presence of the diminutive brilliant white sans serif font that declares another proclamation of the word “If.” As curator Richard Marshall declares, “Rushca succeeded in making the word work” (R. D. Marshall, ibid.).
By using two different fonts in this work, Ruscha highlights his use of diverse typefaces in his paintings. Fonts play an important compositional role in the artist’s oeuvre, so much so that in some of his later works he utilizes a font which he developed himself called Boy Scout Utility Modern. However, he warns about seeing particular significance in the style of font used in any particular painting, “…I would never pick a font because it projected a specific personality,” he said “I don’t want the font to echo the word I happen to be painting, because I don’t want to make puns. I’m not trying to lead the viewer down a certain path, or make it easier for them by spelling things out with a font” (E. Ruscha, quoted by K. McKenna, “Ed Ruscha in Conversation,” in R. Rugoff (ed.), Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting, Hayward Gallery, London, 2010, p. 55).
Like his iconic paintings of Standard gas stations and the Hollywood sign, If, If continues Ruscha’s lifelong interest in text. His paintings often feature words, which he treats as a form of readymade, taking them and placing them out of context, or indeed without any context, on the canvas. Floating against a sublimely beautiful backdrop they gain a mysterious eloquence despite their very ordinariness. This gives a self-reflective quality to the words, which in turn encourages the viewer to spend time examining the work and reap the benefits of close-up examination.
The formal qualities of words and language have been the central theme of Ruscha’s work throughout his career. Arriving in southern California from the empty plains of Nebraska, as a young man he was immediately struck by the crowded street vernacular of the Los Angeles cityscape. His numerous trips between the emptiness of the Nebraskan landscape and the urban sprawl of suburban LA had a deep impact on the young artist, as Kerry Brougher, the curator and celebrated Ruscha scholar notes, “Ruscha’s experience on the desert highway was one of words floating on emptiness, their message of comfort attempting the mask the landscape of awe, signs and advertisements trying to fill the uneasy void of the desert (K. Brougher, Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2000, p.158). The gaudy signage and advertising hoardings that shouted their messages struck a chord with Rushca. Like Warhol, his sources are the ordinary and the everyday, the quaint and ordinary, but unlike his Pop contemporary, Ruscha’s unique combinations of forms reflect a more conceptual approach. His method of relocating “found words” into an aesthetic realm result in Duchampian overtones, while his distorted, de-contextualized words in isolation juxtaposed against strange backdrops recalls hints of Surrealism.
With its complex implications on numerous layers, If, If exemplifies Ruscha’ iconic stylistic and theoretical approach to art. As Kerry Brougher, , “Ruscha’s words hover between the flat and transversal surfaces of the graphic artist and the longitudinal, deep-space world of landscape painting” (K. Brougher, Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2000, p.161). Works such the present example highlight their literal sources and play the role of signifiers, but at the same time assert their aesthetic power and become part of a new linguistic system.