.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Lauded as one of the most influential artists working today, Ed Ruscha’s poignant and often humorous musings on commercial culture and society have existed in a variety of media since his first major works in the 1960s. Employing both his trademark text and a marked interest in atmospheric backgrounds, City with the Jitters is a quintessential example of the artist’s style and practice in the 1980s. Painted in the year following a major travelling retrospective mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the work continues Ruscha’s textual trend with an additional investigation into the spatial properties of his compositions.
Emblazoned across this murky gradation is a slogan timeless in its simplicity. Like much of Ruscha’s oeuvre, City with the Jitters has a universal quality that resounds with today’s audience as much as it did with the viewers in 1984. The word ‘jitters’ can be manifold in its meaning, and multiple readings enhance the work’s staying power. Is it the giddy, hopeful energy of creation and continuous productivity? Or is it a darker nervousness that sets the viewer on edge? A constant buzz of human activity echoes into the shadowy reaches of the composition. The crisp edges of the word ‘CITY’ cut starkly into the black background, while ‘JITTERS’ seems to wash out and dissolve. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again,” Ruscha mused in 2013 to The New Yorker (C. Tompkins, “Ed Ruscha’s L.A.,” New Yorker, July 2013). By allowing his text to interact with its surroundings, Ruscha is able to explore his interest in typography and design while also questioning how the legibility and delivery of text can affect its meaning.
While text may be the first point of entry into many of Ruscha’s works, his paintings and drawings are not writings. Instead, they endeavor to combine and juxtapose bleary colorfields and images with knife-sharp idioms and phrases. In City with the Jitters, the cool aquamarine of the lower portion transitions gradually into the violet and black of the upper. Like streetlights bleeding into space, the constant glow of movie spotlights, or the predawn light of the California desert, Ruscha’s choice of background lends itself to a reading inextricably linked to the constant commotion of Los Angeles. The fervent energy of a moving metropolis contrasts sharply with the moody transition from light to dark.
It is prudent that Ruscha’s work be discussed within the context of its creation. Working on the West Coast, the artist composed his paintings, drawings, prints, and artist books thousands of miles from the New York Pop and Conceptual artists. Intertwined with both movements, and addressable in conversations about their broader impact, Ruscha’s works are nevertheless separate from those of Warhol, Joseph Kosuth, and their compatriots. Existing in the same Californian air as David Hockney (who moved there in 1963), a certain West Coast sensibility is palpable. The Hollywood sign emerges frequently (as in his Hollywood Study works in the late 1960s and Hollywood of 1984), and references to the Sunset Strip and an abundance of sun-drenched clouds abound. Depictions of desert skylines and open spaces accompany seemingly arbitrary words like Dinner Plate, Sawblade, Hit Record (1982), while the sleek sheen of Ruscha’s typography references consumer culture and the glitter of advertising.
The 1980s mark a turning point in Ruscha’s practice, one which is typified in pieces like City with the Jitters. An increased interest in representational imagery and an exploration of its use in his canvases led to the artist employing photorealistic backdrops for his phrases like those seen in Wild Cats of the World (1985). Evolving from flat colorfields into representations of sunsets, sunrises, and other atmospheric phenomena, Ruscha’s works are suddenly filled with illusionistic depth where before only monochromatic planes existed. City with the Jitters continues this trend by abstractly replicating the effects of light in a dark space. Like a car headlight on a nighttime drive, or the glow from an unseen window, the tripartite gradation suggests the viewer’s vantage point as they peer into the gloom. At the same time, this inspection is stymied by the confrontational nature of Ruscha’s own typeface, Boy Scout Utility Modern. Beginning in 1980, and prevalent from then on, the squared-off, all-caps letters confuse the illusionary space of the composition. Delivering brief messages and quotes at the forefront of the picture plane, the words also resemble the Hollywood sign for which Ruscha had such fondness. City with the Jitters combines many of the most recognizable aspects of Ruscha’s practice, and is exemplary of his mature painting style.
Emblazoned across this murky gradation is a slogan timeless in its simplicity. Like much of Ruscha’s oeuvre, City with the Jitters has a universal quality that resounds with today’s audience as much as it did with the viewers in 1984. The word ‘jitters’ can be manifold in its meaning, and multiple readings enhance the work’s staying power. Is it the giddy, hopeful energy of creation and continuous productivity? Or is it a darker nervousness that sets the viewer on edge? A constant buzz of human activity echoes into the shadowy reaches of the composition. The crisp edges of the word ‘CITY’ cut starkly into the black background, while ‘JITTERS’ seems to wash out and dissolve. “I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again,” Ruscha mused in 2013 to The New Yorker (C. Tompkins, “Ed Ruscha’s L.A.,” New Yorker, July 2013). By allowing his text to interact with its surroundings, Ruscha is able to explore his interest in typography and design while also questioning how the legibility and delivery of text can affect its meaning.
While text may be the first point of entry into many of Ruscha’s works, his paintings and drawings are not writings. Instead, they endeavor to combine and juxtapose bleary colorfields and images with knife-sharp idioms and phrases. In City with the Jitters, the cool aquamarine of the lower portion transitions gradually into the violet and black of the upper. Like streetlights bleeding into space, the constant glow of movie spotlights, or the predawn light of the California desert, Ruscha’s choice of background lends itself to a reading inextricably linked to the constant commotion of Los Angeles. The fervent energy of a moving metropolis contrasts sharply with the moody transition from light to dark.
It is prudent that Ruscha’s work be discussed within the context of its creation. Working on the West Coast, the artist composed his paintings, drawings, prints, and artist books thousands of miles from the New York Pop and Conceptual artists. Intertwined with both movements, and addressable in conversations about their broader impact, Ruscha’s works are nevertheless separate from those of Warhol, Joseph Kosuth, and their compatriots. Existing in the same Californian air as David Hockney (who moved there in 1963), a certain West Coast sensibility is palpable. The Hollywood sign emerges frequently (as in his Hollywood Study works in the late 1960s and Hollywood of 1984), and references to the Sunset Strip and an abundance of sun-drenched clouds abound. Depictions of desert skylines and open spaces accompany seemingly arbitrary words like Dinner Plate, Sawblade, Hit Record (1982), while the sleek sheen of Ruscha’s typography references consumer culture and the glitter of advertising.
The 1980s mark a turning point in Ruscha’s practice, one which is typified in pieces like City with the Jitters. An increased interest in representational imagery and an exploration of its use in his canvases led to the artist employing photorealistic backdrops for his phrases like those seen in Wild Cats of the World (1985). Evolving from flat colorfields into representations of sunsets, sunrises, and other atmospheric phenomena, Ruscha’s works are suddenly filled with illusionistic depth where before only monochromatic planes existed. City with the Jitters continues this trend by abstractly replicating the effects of light in a dark space. Like a car headlight on a nighttime drive, or the glow from an unseen window, the tripartite gradation suggests the viewer’s vantage point as they peer into the gloom. At the same time, this inspection is stymied by the confrontational nature of Ruscha’s own typeface, Boy Scout Utility Modern. Beginning in 1980, and prevalent from then on, the squared-off, all-caps letters confuse the illusionary space of the composition. Delivering brief messages and quotes at the forefront of the picture plane, the words also resemble the Hollywood sign for which Ruscha had such fondness. City with the Jitters combines many of the most recognizable aspects of Ruscha’s practice, and is exemplary of his mature painting style.