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Lot Essay
‘It means something symbolically, almost like a logo, or a solitary thought… I’m not working the human figure so much as I am the story that’s behind it. So if there is a painting of a Spanish dancer, it’s more a Spanish dancer than it is a woman wearing a Spanish dress. I like the idea of taking a particular subject and not questioning its integrity, committing myself to it’
(R. Dean and E. Wright, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York 2007, p. 178).
A striking example from Ed Ruscha’s Silhouette series, Señorita, 1989 is a dramatic shadowy portrait of a single Spanish dancer. A near translucent silhouette against a modulated grey background, the work vacillates between the earthly and the unearthly, the manmade and the supernatural, retaining the sense of semantic ambiguity central to Ruscha’s practice.
Interviewed on this series, the artist explained that his enigmatic shadow paintings were chiefly inspired by black and white photography and old celluloid film. ‘The dark paintings came mostly from photography, although they are not photographically done or anything. I feel that they are related to the subject of photography they are dark and strokeless, they’re painted with an airbrush’ (E. Ruscha, quoted in T. Beller, ‘Ed Ruscha’, Splash, February 1989, unpaged). Black and white films were also a great influence upon Ruscha, as he reveals: ‘I began seeing commercial Hollywood films when I was nine or ten years old, at a neighbourhood theatre in Oklahoma. Most of the films I saw at that time were black and white. I’ve got a vivid memory of what they looked like on a big screen and the silvery feeling that I got from them; I’m sure it had everything to do with my thoughts about painting and it probably scooted me onto the world of art. (E. Ruscha, quoted in ‘Life in Film: Ed Ruscha’, in Frieze, Issue 127, November-December 2009, https://www.frieze.com/issue/article/life_in_film_ed_ruscha [accessed 29th May 2014]. In Senorita Ruscha fuses together these too sources, the stillness of black and white photography combined with film to create a work that is stationed somewhere between tranquility and dynamism.
Meticulously rendered through spray painting acrylic onto the canvas, Ruscha experimented with a technique that had the ability to produce a powdery effect like that of his dry pigment drawings. Indeed Ruscha’s Silhouette series was the first time in which the artist had used this medium. This slightly out of focus soft edged figure, combined with the minute modulations of tone, achieved through the use of spray painting, demonstrates the artist’s ability to capture the essence of black and white cinema and place it flat upon the canvas; a dynamic sense of movement in what is essentially a static image: ‘For me it got to the core of something I wanted to do..., which was to put speed into a flat, static picture. That composition put zoom in my work, and that’s the essential ingredient of those pictures that I liked’ (E. Ruscha quoted by K. McKenna, ‘Ed Ruscha in Conversation’, in Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2010, p. 57).
Incorporating the striking dancer’s silhouette, even without the title, the profile is immediately recognisable. As the artist suggests, ‘It means something symbolically, almost like a logo, or a solitary thought… I’m not working the human figure so much as I am the story that’s behind it. So if there is a painting of a Spanish dancer, it’s more a Spanish dancer than it is a woman wearing a Spanish dress. I like the idea of taking a particular subject and not questioning its integrity, committing myself to it.’ (R. Dean and E. Wright, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York 2007, p. 178). In light of his references, the work begins to possess a sort of timelessness, no matter the boundaries of language, or place, or culture, the silhouette of a woman resonates in the same way across borders ensuring that his paintings surpass any sort of historicity and in turn resonate with viewers today.
(R. Dean and E. Wright, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York 2007, p. 178).
A striking example from Ed Ruscha’s Silhouette series, Señorita, 1989 is a dramatic shadowy portrait of a single Spanish dancer. A near translucent silhouette against a modulated grey background, the work vacillates between the earthly and the unearthly, the manmade and the supernatural, retaining the sense of semantic ambiguity central to Ruscha’s practice.
Interviewed on this series, the artist explained that his enigmatic shadow paintings were chiefly inspired by black and white photography and old celluloid film. ‘The dark paintings came mostly from photography, although they are not photographically done or anything. I feel that they are related to the subject of photography they are dark and strokeless, they’re painted with an airbrush’ (E. Ruscha, quoted in T. Beller, ‘Ed Ruscha’, Splash, February 1989, unpaged). Black and white films were also a great influence upon Ruscha, as he reveals: ‘I began seeing commercial Hollywood films when I was nine or ten years old, at a neighbourhood theatre in Oklahoma. Most of the films I saw at that time were black and white. I’ve got a vivid memory of what they looked like on a big screen and the silvery feeling that I got from them; I’m sure it had everything to do with my thoughts about painting and it probably scooted me onto the world of art. (E. Ruscha, quoted in ‘Life in Film: Ed Ruscha’, in Frieze, Issue 127, November-December 2009, https://www.frieze.com/issue/article/life_in_film_ed_ruscha [accessed 29th May 2014]. In Senorita Ruscha fuses together these too sources, the stillness of black and white photography combined with film to create a work that is stationed somewhere between tranquility and dynamism.
Meticulously rendered through spray painting acrylic onto the canvas, Ruscha experimented with a technique that had the ability to produce a powdery effect like that of his dry pigment drawings. Indeed Ruscha’s Silhouette series was the first time in which the artist had used this medium. This slightly out of focus soft edged figure, combined with the minute modulations of tone, achieved through the use of spray painting, demonstrates the artist’s ability to capture the essence of black and white cinema and place it flat upon the canvas; a dynamic sense of movement in what is essentially a static image: ‘For me it got to the core of something I wanted to do..., which was to put speed into a flat, static picture. That composition put zoom in my work, and that’s the essential ingredient of those pictures that I liked’ (E. Ruscha quoted by K. McKenna, ‘Ed Ruscha in Conversation’, in Ed Ruscha, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2010, p. 57).
Incorporating the striking dancer’s silhouette, even without the title, the profile is immediately recognisable. As the artist suggests, ‘It means something symbolically, almost like a logo, or a solitary thought… I’m not working the human figure so much as I am the story that’s behind it. So if there is a painting of a Spanish dancer, it’s more a Spanish dancer than it is a woman wearing a Spanish dress. I like the idea of taking a particular subject and not questioning its integrity, committing myself to it.’ (R. Dean and E. Wright, Edward Ruscha: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume Four: 1988-1992, New York 2007, p. 178). In light of his references, the work begins to possess a sort of timelessness, no matter the boundaries of language, or place, or culture, the silhouette of a woman resonates in the same way across borders ensuring that his paintings surpass any sort of historicity and in turn resonate with viewers today.